Category Archives: compassion

Badshah Khan, leader of a nonviolent army in Afghanistan

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This is a little bit different from most of my blog posts, but I found this tale compelling and want to share. This little bit of history is new to me, and perhaps to you as well.

My friend Peggy Kelsey, who has a special place in her heart and photography for the women of Iraq and Afghanistan, posted this story on Facebook.

Who would have thought that a master of nonviolence would have come out of modern Afghanistan?

Badshah (a title meaning king) Khan lived to be nearly 100 years old, and he died in 1988.

One of his remarkable achievements is that he raised, uniformed, and disciplined an army of 100,000 Pashtun men, and it was a nonviolent army. That’s right, a  nonviolent army. An oxymoron? Let’s find out.

They faced down the British army, and the British came to fear them more than they feared armed Pashtuns. The Pashtuns had simply found the strongest weapon available: nonviolence.

Khan was a devout Muslim who would always remain a devout Muslim, one who thought his religion required nonviolence.

Did you even know there were devout Muslims who practice in nonviolence? I didn’t. Or maybe I did, but thought of them as Sufis.

Beginning in 1910, Khan opened schools in the mountainous region he grew up in. He opened schools for boys and for girls. He taught agriculture, sanitation, self-sufficiency, and nonviolent resistance to empire. Khan learned of Gandhi in 1915 and joined him in calling for nonviolent opposition to the British in 1919, for which Khan was locked up for 6 months.

Here’s a description of their nonviolent technique.

The British ordered troops to open fire with machine guns on the unarmed crowd, killing an estimated 200-250. The Khudai Khidmatgar [servants of God] members acted in accord with their training in non-violence under Ghaffar Khan, facing bullets as the troops fired on them.

“When those in front fell down wounded by the shots, those behind came forward with their breasts bared and exposed themselves to the fire, so much so that some people got as many as 21 bullet wounds in their bodies, and all the people stood their ground without getting into a panic.”

This continued for six hours. When an elite military unit called the Garhwal Rifles was ordered to fire on an unarmed crowd, its members refused and were themselves court-martialed and sent to prison.

When Badshah Khan died, the Soviets were fighting in Afghanistan. A ceasefire was declared and honored by both sides so he could be buried.

You can read more about Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan here on Wikipedia.

Helping a healer heal with sound, Reiki, and presence

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I had a most remarkable experience last night. I was planning to go to the Saxon Pub to listen to The Resentments play on the last night of SXSW after teaching my restorative yoga class, and on the way, I took a detour to check out a nearby mobile home park. (Yes, I’m still looking, but just today discovered an online directory of MH parks in Texas with phone numbers! My next home is getting closer and closer.)

Just as I was leaving, my iPhone rang. It was my friend B. We’ve had a couple of bodywork/unblocking sessions, and I’ve enjoyed getting to know him. He’s a teacher for me, someone who knows a lot about healing.

B asked me to breathe with him, which we’ve done together before, in rebirthing. Curious but game, I did.

I discerned that he was in pain from his occasional moans and sobs, and I could tell the pain was pretty intense. I pulled the car over and breathed with him for a while, not knowing what had happened, unsure if it was physical or emotional pain, not that it really matters.

All he could tell me was “I was out riding bikes with my son and something happened.” Didn’t know if he was bleeding or if something happened to or with his son… I watched my mind try to make up a story and give up.

After about 10 minutes, he asked me if I could come to where he was. I said sure, thinking he was at home. No. He gave me directions to a little woods behind a grocery store several miles away. We stayed connected on the phone as I drove.

He asked if I had any blankets in the car. Yes, B, as a matter of fact, I happen to have a dozen or so yoga blankets in my car. Good thing, because he was wearing a sleeveless t-shirt, and it was dark and starting to get chilly.

As I drove, he asked me if I had any Reiki training. Technically I’m a third-level Reiki master, but I have only done Reiki on myself and distance healing on others. He told me:

You’re about to get initiated.

He asked me if I was ready. At first I said yes, and then I said no, I couldn’t know that. All I could know was that I was willing and open to it. He was satisfied with that.

From my car, I could barely see him, back in the woods. I parked and brought some blankets over to where he was. I covered his upper body, and we began to work together.

From there on, the sequence of events gets fuzzy. We spent a couple of hours together in that little woods behind a suburban grocery store, out of sight of the hustle and bustle, healing his foot. 

He’d dropped a board on top of his foot that morning, and he worked on it then, and it seemed fine, and then he and his son went on a late afternoon bike ride. When he got off his bike, he couldn’t bear weight on that foot. The pain was excruciating. The motion of pedalling had apparently further dislocated a bone that had been impacted by the earlier injury and not quite gone back into place. Anyway, that seems to be the likeliest story.

This man works on his feet, but he was uninterested in going to any kind of medical establishment. He could have called 911 at any time from his cell phone, or asked numerous people to take him home and give him painkillers. Instead, he sent his son home on his bike. His wife, D, was working and he couldn’t get hold of her.

So he called me. Not sure why; maybe I was the only person who picked up. But we have a good strong connection, and I was able and willing to help. I helped him text his wife so she would call when she got off work.

I mentally reviewed my preparations for giving Reiki to myself. At his direction, I wrapped my hands around his foot just so, and he occasionally directed me verbally and nonverbally where to apply pressure, where to ease off, how to elongate his foot.

After a little while, my hands felt really good. I had a really good, positive, loving energetic connection with his injured foot. I could feel the pulse in it, feel the life force. I felt plugged in and connected to the Source.

We breathed together. Fast, slow, loud, soft. Mostly he led and I paced him.

We moaned, toned, sang together. Some of the toning we did was amazingly powerful. I could hear the resonance between two notes becoming so much more than those two notes. They amplified the energetic connection, almost as if we were supported and held in place by sound.

I noticed that when I could be in a position where my body was symmetrical, my energy flowed better. My crown chakra opened wide, and I felt very present, engaged, and relaxed.

B was a marvel to me. Here was someone in pain who fully faced it. Now that’s a different approach. He was totally present with it. Sometimes it was overwhelming, and he just had to lie down. Sometimes he sobbed from the pain. He was so open to his experience, even though it was intensely painful.

Pain is just sensation without the story.

He reviewed the sequence of events and admitted he had made a mistake getting on the bike, but I never heard any self-castigation. He accepted that he had made a mistake, but it didn’t mean anything, as in “therefore, I am a failure.” Just facing what is, that he had made a mistake. End-of-story. I never heard any cursing — in fact, he chided me for using strong language at one point.

He was very clear what he wanted to use his attention and energy for. He said let’s not talk about that, or let’s talk about that later.

Over time, the pain abated somewhat, he said from about 8.5 or 9 to a 7 on a 1-10 scale. That’s still pretty intense.

Then D called, and she came, and all of us held his foot and toned together. D had some Young Living Essential Oils in her purse, and he slathered them on his foot and  put some on his head. He used a whole bottle of Pan-Away on his foot. That’s what it’s for. (And by the way, I’m selling this stuff now.)

After maybe 30 minutes, D said she was ready to go home. She took his bike with her. B crawled from the woods to my car, and I drove him home. It was 10 pm, and I’m currently a gal with a job.

Today B called twice and thanked me. It was actually an incredible honor to be called upon to help, and to witness this method of healing, and to let Reiki flow through me in the service of alleviating suffering.

This afternoon when B called, he said he could now bear weight on his foot. He had continued with someone else giving him Reiki, and D had applied comfrey leaves to his foot, but he gave me a lot of credit. Really, I just met his presence.

As amazed as I am at this way of healing an extremely painful injury, I am even more amazed at his valor, presence, and most of all to his commitment to and faith in the healing power that lies within each of us, that when combined with others, can work what seems like miracles.

Trauma/stress, sleep, and brainwaves

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I have several friends who have a hard time sleeping. Could be falling asleep or staying asleep. They go through long periods of not sleeping well.

I’ve been through several of those periods myself, although not lately. I empathize with how the lack of a good night’s sleep negatively affects everything the next day — energy, alertness, performance. I feel their pain.

I’ve already mentioned that I take most of the supplements recommended in the appendix of Buddha’s Brain. I feel better than I’ve felt in years.

I honestly don’t know how good I can feel, and I’d like to find out!

When my contract job ends in 6 weeks and I can make this a priority, I intend to get my brainwaves optimized.

Here’s a link to an article, Your Brainwaves On Sleep. The author writes about the particle (chemical) and wave (brainwave) approaches to sleep.

On the particle side of the debate, there is ample experiential evidence and scientific studies that demonstrate that chemical activity in the brain can profoundly alter sleep tendencies. Many foods, medicines and other substances are well known to have promotional or inhibitory influences on sleep. Furthermore, studies have demonstrated the existence of sleep-regulatory substances, which, after accumulating in the cerebrospinal fluid of an organism and then being injected into another one, can induce the state of sleepiness.

Wave approaches to sleep focus on its cyclical aspects. A focus on wave aspects has intrinsic appeal, since sleep itself comes and goes regularly in healthy individuals. On this side of the debate, researchers have shown, for example, that there is an extra dose of sleepiness that comes in the middle of the afternoon. Within and between sleep periods, there are predictable cycles of brainwave activity. The timing of the beginning and end of a sleep period is also intimately connected with the timing of our secretion of hormones, the level of arousal of our cardiovascular system, immune system and metabolic functioning and integration of our cognitive capacities. Without good quality sleep, these systems become poorly modulated and dysfunctional over time.

I disagree that we must understand sleep as one or the other. I believe we must understand sleep — and everything else — as both particles and waves. We are bio-chemical, bio-electrical critters.

Good sleep correlates to brain activation patterns (as measured by EEG) that are reasonably balanced (left-to-right and front-to-back) and harmonized (low and high frequencies in a good proportion to one another throughout the brain). Balance and harmony are required especially in those brain areas that generally function for the purpose of internal processing and reception of external stimuli: the temporal, occipital, parietal and midline (or corpus callosum) areas.

Of course, trauma and chronic stress (or prolonged periods of stress) get the brainwaves off track. Brainwave optimization gets them back in harmony.

I hope that someday, brainwave optimization will be inexpensive, widespread, and routine in our culture. What a world that might be, with everyone’s brains functioning at their best all the time!

Letter from Japan: tender and calm amidst the surreal, stepping through the veil

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3.2.5.2011: There’s a video with music by Deva Premal and Miten that ends with the text of this letter. Click here to listen and read.

Jean Houston posted this on Facebook, a letter from a friend of a friend. The writer has been living and teaching English in Sendai, Japan, for the past decade.

I added paragraph breaks to make it more readable and bolded parts for emphasis. It’s not what you’d expect. More like living calmly amidst the surreal, with great tenderness and presence.

Great spiritual awakenings often follow tragedies, disasters, and other events. The great Mystery makes itself known.

Hello My Lovely Family and Friends,

First I want to thank you so very much for your concern for me. I am very touched. I also wish to apologize for a generic message to you all. But it seems the best way at the moment to get my message to you.

Things here in Sendai have been rather surreal. But I am very blessed to have wonderful friends who are helping me a lot. Since my shack is even more worthy of that name, I am now staying at a friend’s home. We share supplies like water, food and a kerosene heater. We sleep lined up in one room, eat by candlelight, share stories. It is warm, friendly, and beautiful.

During the day we help each other clean up the mess in our homes. People sit in their cars, looking at news on their navigation screens, or line up to get drinking water when a source is open. If someone has water running in their home, they put out sign so people can come to fill up their jugs and buckets.

Utterly amazingly where I am there has been no looting, no pushing in lines. People leave their front door open, as it is safer when an earthquake strikes. People keep saying, “Oh, this is how it used to be in the old days when everyone helped one another.”

Quakes keep coming. Last night they struck about every 15 minutes. Sirens are constant and helicopters pass overhead often. We got water for a few hours in our homes last night, and now it is for half a day. Electricity came on this afternoon. Gas has not yet come on. But all of this is by area. Some people have these things, others do not.

No one has washed for several days. We feel grubby, but there are so much more important concerns than that for us now. I love this peeling away of non-essentials. Living fully on the level of instinct, of intuition, of caring, of what is needed for survival, not just of me, but of the entire group.

There are strange parallel universes happening. Houses a mess in some places, yet then a house with futons or laundry out drying in the sun. People lining up for water and food, and yet a few people out walking their dogs. All happening at the same time.

Other unexpected touches of beauty are first, the silence at night. No cars. No one out on the streets. And the heavens at night are scattered with stars. I usually can see about two, but now the whole sky is filled. The mountains are Sendai are solid and with the crisp air we can see them silhouetted against the sky magnificently.

And the Japanese themselves are so wonderful. I come back to my shack to check on it each day, now to send this e-mail since the electricity is on, and I find food and water left in my entranceway. I have no idea from whom, but it is there. Old men in green hats go from door to door checking to see if everyone is OK. People talk to complete strangers asking if they need help. I see no signs of fear. Resignation, yes, but fear or panic, no.

They tell us we can expect aftershocks, and even other major quakes, for another month or more. And we are getting constant tremors, rolls, shaking, rumbling. I am blessed in that I live in a part of Sendai that is a bit elevated, a bit more solid than other parts. So, so far this area is better off than others.

Last night my friend’s husband came in from the country, bringing food and water. Blessed again.

Somehow at this time I realize from direct experience that there is indeed an enormous Cosmic evolutionary step that is occurring all over the world right at this moment. And somehow as I experience the events happening now in Japan, I can feel my heart opening very wide.

My brother asked me if I felt so small because of all that is happening. I don’t. Rather, I feel as part of something happening that much larger than myself. This wave of birthing (worldwide) is hard, and yet magnificent.

Thank you again for your care and Love of me,

With Love in return, to you all,

Anne

Graphic: Patanjali’s 8 limbs of yoga

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The marvelous yogini-cum-graphic-artist Alison Hinks, who created the yoga lineages flow chart I linked to earlier, has done it again.

This beautiful graphic shows the eight limbs of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras.

What’s extra nice is that she’s identified the actions you do and the experiences that happen to you because you have practiced the actions effectively.

Thank you, Alison Hinks, for adding beauty and inspiration to the world.

Confessions of a Type-A Yogi (via James MacAdam)

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I loved the honesty in this post, about yoga, the ego, and damaging your body. I think he must be referring to Paul Grilley’s Yoga Anatomy video, which shows clearly how skeletal structure varies from body to body.

“Going deep” should never mean trying to emulate another person’s yoga without taking into account your own unique body. As meditators know and as Patanjali knew, you can “go deep” without moving.

Thank you, James MacAdam, for sharing your story.

Confessions of a Type-A Yogi In my early yoga days studying Anusara Yoga with John Friend, he once told me (through my girlfriend) that I could be a great yogi like my friend Darren Rhodes.  To me, this meant that I too would be able to contort my body into incredible formations, and demonstrate my world-class athletic prowess through the art of Hatha Yoga.   … Read More

via James MacAdam

Kindness and giving challenges

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This is just informational — I’m doing my own trauma releasing exercises challenge in Feb. and March, plus selling my house, moving out, seeking the perfect vintage trailer, finding just the right place for it, and arranging to have it transported and made ready, and moving in, while I work at a temporary job full-time. I’m feeling stretched a little thin! Just a little, at times, enough to not want another challenge at this time.

So I’m not participating in either of the challenges described below. Maybe later! I love the idea and want to pass the information about these challenges on to you all, to accept or decline as you wish.

The Extreme Kindness Challenge runs Feb. 14-20. It’s sponsored by the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation. (Today’s Feb. 15, but you can start today and end Feb. 21. Or never end!)

Today’s challenge is to smile at 10 strangers. You can easily do that in the grocery store!

Here’s the link: http://www.randomactsofkindness.org/extreme-kindness-challenge.html

My friend and fellow blogger Shelley Seale is doing a year of 30 day challenges. She’s already done the “six items of clothing” challenge. You can read her blog here: http://30days2011.wordpress.com/

Now Shelley is doing a 30-days-of-giving challenge. That’s how I learned about the Extreme Kindness Challenge. She started her challenge on Feb. 11 and has donated to St. Baldrick’s Foundation to fight childhood cancer, given a couple of dollars to a panhandler, donated clothing to Goodwill, and today she donated a scientific calculator to St. Monica’s Girls Home in Kenya.

If you would like to donate to St. Monica’s Girls Home, Shelley will pick up donations given in Austin. They need sports bras, bike shorts, flip flops, and some basic office supplies. See the list on Shelley’s blog.

Is your heart challenged to connect to our world in a deeper and more meaningful way?

The end of gratitude!!!

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Not really. Made you look, didn’t I? Ha!

Today’s the last day of my 21-day gratitude challenge. Several others that I know of have participated in some way — thanks, Katie and Michael and Victoria, I appreciate your support — and I hope that others of you have been inspired to explore gratitude in your own lives.

Today I understand that gratitude is a powerful connecting force. It’s simply recognizing the interconnected nature of your life.

We truly are connected. We are interdependent. To not feel gratitude is to experience walls around your self. To feel gratitude is to let the walls down. We are one.

Remember, gratitude is a habitual bias that you can cultivate by consciously experiencing it. If you ever have a hard time feeling gratitude, think on this:

At this moment, the vast majority of human beings on this planet don’t have it nearly as good as you do.

Just recognize that you have comfort and freedom and connections beyond the imaginations of much of the world. You don’t have to feel guilty about that, either.

But you might want to do something, like at least have some compassion for the homeless, hungry, malnourished, ill, lonely, hurting, hating, suffering, dying people in this world. And these people aren’t necessarily in Third World countries, in case that image flashed into your mind. They are here among us. They are us.

And every single one of us, until we draw our last breath, has the capacity to grow up and wake up.

As Byron Katie said,

I’d say “bless your heart, sweetheart,” but I’m too late. You’re already blessed.

She also said,

Who would you be without your story?

What is the story that keeps you suffering? Can you consider just giving it up and opening to what actually is?

When I first posted about this challenge, I asked you to consider this, from Wikipedia:

A large body of recent work has suggested that people who are more grateful have higher levels of well-being.

Grateful people are happier, less depressed, less stressed, and more satisfied with their lives and social relationships.

Grateful people also have higher levels of control of their environments, personal growth, purpose in life, and self-acceptance.

Grateful people have more positive ways of coping with the difficulties they experience in life, being more likely to seek support from other people, reinterpret and grow from the experience, and spend more time planning how to deal with the problem.

Grateful people also have fewer negative coping strategies and are less likely to try to avoid the problem, deny there is a problem, blame themselves, or cope through substance use.

Grateful people sleep better, and this seems to be because they think less negative and more positive thoughts just before going to sleep.

I’m closing this challenge with one more quote from Byron Katie. Consider this radical, revolutionary thought:

It all happens for your awakening, enlightenment, and joy. There is nothing that is not for us.

Love you!

~~~

Tomorrow is the first day of the Chronic Stress and Trauma Recovery Challenge! Accept the challenge, check in, contribute to the discussion, and support us by following!

New findings on how meditation changes the brain

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Peg Syverson, Zen priest and my meditation coach at the Appamada zendo, sent out an email with a link to a New York Times article on meditation, saying “We told you!”

The article, How Meditation May Change the Brain, is by a writer whose husband went on a 10-day vipassana meditation retreat. He came back so energized and enthusiastic that he vowed to meditate for two hours a day through the end of March.

She wrote:

He’s running an experiment to determine whether and how meditation actually improves the quality of his life.

Sound familiar, those of you who followed this blog last year???

The writer admits she’s a skeptic — and then cites studies and researchers on how meditation changes the brain. The latest research shows measurable changes in gray matter that affect memory, learning, anxiety, and stress in a group that meditated for 30 minutes a day for eight weeks, compared to a control group not meditating that had no such changes.

Other studies have shown meditation increasing empathy and compassion.

What the writer believes is that through meditation, her husband became empathetic enough that he now takes out the trash and puts gas in the car because he knows she doesn’t like to do those chores.

She can go with that.

Oh, and here’s a link to the abstract of the findings about gray matter.

Meta position. Metta Sutra. A good night’s sleep.

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Several friends of mine have been experiencing relationship troubles lately, and I’ve felt an impact myself. Surprise, anger, sorrow, disappointment, empathy, compassion for all. I am still feeling some heaviness about this.

I’ve struggled to comprehend, to see the situation from each person’s point of view, to see where I was attached to things as they were, to understand the differences in values that created the conflicts, to accept what happened, to advise well when asked, to let my emotions wash through me and move through it as cleanly and clearly as I know how.

From the NLP world comes the concept of meta position, which is a location outside a situation which enables you to see the situation from a broader perspective. Meta position has a degree of dissociation, of not taking it personally, but also extending compassion to all concerned. At least, that’s how I’ve learned it.

You can “go meta” with yourself on your own inner conflicts, processes, and interactions, and you can use it to see yourself and those you care about as you imagine God might perceive the situation in the fullness of time.

You know, the really big picture, using Big Mind.

Today I’m grateful for the concept and practice of meta position.

~~~

The Metta Sutra contains Buddha’s words on loving kindness, a quality cultivated by Buddhist practice. It’s not very long and it includes these well-known words:

May all beings be happy.

I’m grateful for the Buddha for giving us the Metta Sutra. Here’s the entire text.

The Metta Sutra

This is the work for those who are skilled and peaceful, who seek the good: May they be able and upright, straightforward, of gentle speech and not proud. May they be content and easily supported, unburdened with their senses calmed. May they be wise, not arrogant and without desire for the possessions of others. May they do nothing mean or that the wise would reprove.

May all beings be happy. May they live in safety and joy. All living beings, whether weak or strong, tall, stout, medium or short, seen or unseen, near or distant, born or to be born, may they all be happy.

Let no one deceive another or despise any being in any state, let none by anger or hatred wish harm to another. As a mother watches over her child, willing to risk her own life to protect her only child, so with a boundless heart should one cherish all living beings, suffusing the whole world with unobstructed loving-kindness.

Standing or walking, sitting or lying down, during all one’s waking hours, may one remain mindful of this heart and this way of living that is the best in the world. Unattached to speculations, views and sense desires, with clear vision, such a person will never be reborn in the cycles of suffering.

Click this link to view (and print, if you desire) this translation of the Metta Sutra.

~~~

I’ve spent many years of my life taking a good night’s sleep for granted. When you aren’t sleeping well, it affects your entire sense of well-being. I’ve gone through periods like that, and it was such a relief when I slept well again.

These days I occasionally have nights where my sleep is disturbed. Last night I slept soundly and woke feeling deeply rested and ready for the day, and for that, I am most grateful.