Category Archives: heart

Six month assessment

Posted on by
4

The year 2010 is nearly half over. I have meditated daily for 30 minutes consistently if not perfectly for 6 months.

It’s time to assess my own progress: I have entered a period in my life that is marked by experiencing myself as more whole, healthy, happy, grounded, centered, engaged, energetic, positive, loving, playful, present, alert, aware, appreciative, grateful, and full of equanimity, vitality, wonder, and compassion than I was before this year of meditation began.

Some things have remained the same from the start: I’m still working where I work and living where I live, although I have spent time really examining these two major components of life and I feel open to change. I know myself better and might make different choices now, and I can live with the choices I made in the past for the time being. I appreciate what these choices have allowed me to experience.

I’ve been fairly regular in weekly attendance at Appamada on either Wednesday night or Sunday morning and having a practice inquiry session (“meditation coacing”) with Peg each time.

I’ve continued my association with NLP: I finished assisting for the first time at Best Resources’ NLP practitioner training in April. It was more relaxed to learn it all the second time and to help newbies learn it.

I feel closer to my family than before.

I still go monthly for acupuncture and cranio-sacral work and every 3 weeks now for chiropractic treatment.

I still have my yoga practice.

Things that have gone by the wayside: I joined a gym in February. I went when the weather was cold. I haven’t been since late March. I should quit and save that money.

I also went to a couple of Flint Sparks’ classes at Appamada on the Diamond Sutra. Not sure why, but it just didn’t jell. I dropped out.

I’ve undertaken a few new endeavors since beginning this year of sitting: I agreed to be the program director for the Austin NLP meetup.

My friend Katie and I started a Peripheral Walking meetup here in Austin in January, and I assist her with our monthly meetup.

After 12 years of doing mostly Iyengar-based yoga, I began yoga teacher training this month. That’s a big commitment — in time and money. I’m deepening my practice and learning a skill and gaining a credential that I will use in my future.

I also committed to participate in the Zen precepts program at Appamada, which meets monthly for a year and includes journaling and self-observation. We’ve had one meeting so far. The course is based on the book Waking Up to What You Do. I will write more about this because it ties in with this blog really well.

I’m also taking part in an advanced NLP study group taught by Keith Fail on strategies.

So I’m full, overflowing even, with wonderful activities, learning, and sharing.

I know myself better and see a path into my future that I like, and that path leaves a lot of space for the Universe to teach me as well.

If those of you who know me in person or who read this blog notice anything that I’m not noticing, please feel free to bring it to my attention in the comments.

Link: Best times to meditate

Posted on by
Reply

Waylon Lewis of elephantjournal.com, an online “magazine” with a Buddhist orientation, writes about the best times to meditate. I catch elephantjournal by friending it on Facebook. Sometimes there’s too much to read, and sometimes articles really catch my eye. Here Waylon articulates well (and briefly) how meditating first thing makes him a better person in his later activities and interactions with others.

I’m an a**h*le when I don’t meditate in the morning.

Sitting after a disturbing dream

Posted on by
Reply

I am feeling the aftermath of an unnerving dream, in which I make a decision that results in a pregnant woman being put in danger. As time progresses, her husband, and then I, after seeing his tears, feel increasing grief, and as a result I change my decision.

Feeling grateful for the change in decision and the wisdom to recognize a parts conflict. Thank you, dream maker, for bringing this to my conscious attention!

I have some processing to do. See you in a few, after sitting.

Okay now. First thought: Never sacrifice the Pregnant Woman. That’s a bad strategy. She brings new life, new energy. Even if I don’t know what kind of energy, it is needed in this situation or she wouldn’t have shown up pregnant.

But in this case, she doesn’t seem to know (or be empowered) to just get out of the car and walk out of the building before it is demolished. She is passive, helpless. She gives The Decider way too much authority over her.

The Decider in this case is ham-fisted, full-speed-ahead, blinders on, reckless with others’ lives. Not unlike a certain former president of the United States!

The Decider consults head, but not heart or gut. Doesn’t understand the emotional and relational consequences.

This part harks back to how my father made decisions. But it’s me, too. The Decider is an unintentional tyrant who sees life through a simplistic lens. And has a lot of yang energy!

The Crying Man loves the Pregnant Woman very much. Yet he too gives the Decider too much authority. Only by showing his feelings can he influence the Decider to change the decision.

Outcome: I’m spending the rest of today inviting harmony between yin and yang.

Waiting for the love of your life

Posted on by
2

We’re going on a little journey, so get ready.

First, find 20 minutes when you won’t be interrupted.

Next, find a quiet place to sit where you won’t be interrupted, perhaps in a chair (where you’ll sit with your back erect, not leaning against the back of the chair, and with the soles of your feet flat on the floor) or cross-legged on a cushion. You’ll probably want to elevate your butt about 3 inches. Use a zafu, a firm cushion, or folded towels or blankets.

Turn off your phone and other distractions.

Ready? Shake the tension out each leg. Shake out your arms. Wiggle your spine gently. Wiggle the tension and stiffness away. Shrug your shoulders and drop them a few times. Work your neck. How’s that?

Now sit, spine straight but not stiff. Close your eyes and open your mouth. Start checking in.

First, your breath. Feel the air entering your nostrils, expanding your chest, leaving your nostrils. Feel your body’s natural movements with each breath. Without any forcing, allow your breathing to become smooth, steady,  relaxed, and comfortable.

Check in with your head next. Feel all the parts. Especially notice any tension in your eyeballs and around your eyes, in your tongue and lips, in your jaw. Relax them. Let your jaw hang open.

This is important: I want you to get a look on your face as if you are in the dark, and a greater love than you have ever known is nearby. If you try to pursue it, you drive it away. It must find you, and the only way for it to find you is for you to be still, silent, and aware.

This love operates on s-l-o-w time. You have to match its pace for it to find you, so believe that for right now, for just this moment, you have all the time in the world to make this connection.

You are being patient and anticipating this connection at the same time. Your face has a look of wonder on it. Keep this look on your face. If you lose it, come back to it.

Now notice your neck and shoulders. Sometimes we collect tension in habitual places. Notice where these places are on your body today and relax them. Imagine each inhalation going directly to the tension, dissolving it, then each exhalation taking it out of your body.

Move down your arms, hands, fingers with your awareness.

While checking in with your back, also see yourself from the back in your mind’s eye. See yourself sitting there in silence.

Slide your awareness down the front of your body, releasing any tension you find.

Now check in with your pelvis — back, sides, front, bottom. Again release tension.

Move your awareness down your legs, feet, and toes. Notice how your entire body feels. Glowing? Lighter? More relaxed? Alert?

While you were scanning your body, love started permeating your cells. Now you are really starting to feel it. Each moment, you are becoming more and more immersed in love. Take your time and savor it.

Now, in your mind’s eye, view yourself sitting there from the front. See yourself with your eyes closed, jaw open, look of wonder on your face, suffused with love. You can move your point of view to straight overhead, to the side, wherever you want — just get a good look at yourself sitting there.

For the rest of your sitting time, let your awareness move as it will from noticing your whole body, to releasing tension from parts, to noticing the love of your life permeate your being, to being open to your experience.

(Thanks to Vivian, a member of my sangha, for having this look on her face for me to catch a glimpse of, thus inspiring my meditation and this post.)

Yoga teacher training

Posted on by
Reply

Last Thursday I started my yoga teacher training.

I am working with a private teacher, not going through a studio. There are two other students. My teacher, Eleanor Harris, has trained yoga teachers for studios before. This is the first time she’s offered it at her home.

This will be my life outside work  for the next few months. We meet Tuesday and Thursday evenings, some Friday evenings, and Saturdays. She will be offering classes at her home studio, so we will have real students to work with as we learn to teach poses and whole classes.

When complete, I will be certified to teach yoga by Yoga Alliance (RYT-200). I will be able to teach beginner, mixed level, restorative, and vinyasa flow classes.

After 12 years of yoga, in two classes I have already learned concepts new to me — linking poses and the 5 pranas.

I will be taking 6 or 7 yoga classes over 3 or 4 days a week. I’m sure it will strengthen my sitting practice.

Yoga has ideas about meditation — in fact, the Buddha was a yogi before he became enlightened (only rather ascetic about it), and yoga had a deep influence on him and thus on Buddhism.

I’ll be exploring both yoga and Zen meditation and writing about my understanding and experience of them here.

~~

Bindu Wiles is a yogi and blogger. She is undertaking a challenge — taking yoga classes 5 days a week, writing 800 words per day, for 21 days, as an online community project. I am not going to join her, but I want to support her. I may do something similar at some point!

Here’s the link to her blog, if you’d like to catch her: http://binduwiles.com/buddhism/my-new-project-21-5-800/

Practice noticing

Posted on by
Reply

These days, when I meditate early in the day, my sitting experience is very body centered, as I have mentioned before.

Of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s four attentions of meditation–technique, relaxing, making friends with oneself, and being open–I realized I’m doing it!

The technique Peg gave me is whole body awareness. Seeking whole body awareness includes relaxing, making friends with myself, and being open. Wow, brilliant direction, Peg!

In seeking whole body awareness, my attention is drawn to a part, to some specific country, mountain range, or river on my whole body map.

Breathe into it and soften it, if pain or tension is there. That’s relaxing. So is allowing my breath to slow and become effortless.

Making friends with myself means noticing my actual experience and accepting it, unjudging. I notice sensations, thoughts, emotions, my subtle body, the flow of changing experience, moments of stillness, bliss, clarity, moments of catching my attention caught by a thought, moments of coming back to center. I notice noticing.

Being open is part of noticing to. I notice pleasant sensations arise with pleasure and then fade, and another experience arises. Same with pain. It all changes.

Like a hammer striking emptiness

Posted on by
Reply

Went to Appamada to sit with my sangha today. It’s been a couple of weeks, what with babysitting while my daughter studied for nursing school finals, weekend travel, a sinus infection sapping my energy…

It was good to be back and especially good to have practice inquiry with Peg, my meditation coach. (That’s her unofficial title. Her official title is Zen priest.) So good to see her face and be in her presence again. She is calm, accepting, direct, a bit playful, very smart. I just love Peg.

Right before I saw her, I’d been sitting in the side room where people sit when they’re waiting to do practice inquiry with her. It was on my mind that I have skipped meditating for several days. I was wondering why I meditate. It’s time consuming and some days, it’s just hard to get my butt on the cushion.

I’d finally gotten to a place where I no longer felt pain when I sat. After missing a few days, I changed my practice to where I do it on awakening.

As I waited to see Peg, I was comparing in my imagination what it’s like–how I experience myself in daily life–when I do meditate and when I don’t. When I don’t, I experience myself as kind of scatter-brained, in my head, trying to make sense of things, trying to be organized (hopeless), remembering, planning. Vata, vata-deranged.

The difference when I do meditate is that I’m also centered more of the time.

Being centered feels like at least some of my awareness is anchored in the present moment. There’s another dimension to my experience when I’m centered. I feel more grounded, more connected.

So when it was my turn to see Peg, I shared this brand new insight with her and told her that life is better when I’m centered.

She liked that and she told me that the motivation for meditation changes over time.

I liked that she told me that nowadays, after 40 years of meditation and 13 years of Zen practice, she enjoys every moment of her meditation.

She also said to just consider the brain another organ. Like the heart pumps blood, the kidneys filter blood, the lungs exchange gases, so the brain thinks thoughts. These thoughts are often opinions, preferences, judgments. That’s what the brain does. I don’t need to pay them any more attention in meditation than I do to the functioning of my liver.

So it doesn’t really matter whether I like meditating. Liking and not liking are thoughts, just the brain working. The importance is in the actual sitting, and not how I feel about it.

Our reading today was Jijuyu Zammai, Self-fulfilling Samadhi, by Dogen. Dogen is significant in Zen; orphaned early, he was a monk at 13. He wondered why we practice and seek enlightenment if we are endowed with Buddha-nature at birth. He eventually took that question from Japan to China, where he studied with a Ch’an master, later returning to Japan, founding the Soto school of Zen, and writing a lot.

In the Jijuyu Zammai, Dogen’s sparkling wisdom shines as he asserts that practice and realization are the same.

This being so, the zazen of even one person at one moment imperceptibly accords with all things and fully resonates through all time… Each moment of zazen is equally wholeness of practice, equally wholeness of realization. This is not only practice while sitting, it is like a hammer striking emptiness: before and after, its exquisite peal permeates everywhere. How can it be limited to this moment?

So. How’s that for motivation?

Another book influences meditation

Posted on by
1

I recently read the book Trauma Releasing Exercises by David Berceli, kindly lent to me by John Daniewicz, a member of my sangha, after we had a wide-ranging discussion that included healing from trauma.

Berceli came up with a set of seven physical exercises based on bioenergetics whose purpose is to tire the leg and hip muscles so that they tremble, quiver, and shake. He did this after spending time in war zones in Africa and the Middle East, wanting to find a way to help victims, witnesses, and caregivers release trauma energy from their bodies without psychotherapy. Some cultures don’t include psychotherapy, and some circumstances make it impossible.

The trembling releases the energy frozen in the body from trauma or prolonged stress (which in my view and some others’ has the same effect on the body as a true trauma).

I’ve been doing the exercises a couple of times a week. They take 20-30 minutes to do. At the end, I lie on the floor, knees up, with my legs going through cycles of fine tremors, visible quivering, and gross muscle shaking.

When I feel done, I just straighten my legs and the trembling stops.  I feel more present.

Berceli has a newer, more sophisticated version of the book, The Revolutionary Trauma Release Process. Both are available on amazon.com.

The exercises are pretty much the same in both books. (By the way, the latter book got 5 stars from all 21 reviewers on Amazon, pretty remarkable in itself.)

There’s a video too, which I haven’t seen.

I think everyone should at least know about the exercises, and if you’ve ever had trauma in your life or been a caregiver to traumatized people or been under prolonged stress, please consider actually doing them, no matter how long ago it was.

This is definitely remedial work, but the more we can let go of the past, even as it resides in our bodies, the more capacity we have for being present, in my opinion.

And that’s how I tie this topic into my meditation blog. It’s about cultivating presence, and this helps.

Opening to possibility, opening my heart

Posted on by
Reply

I notice another effect of meditation. I have become more aware of repressing my thoughts, the kind of thoughts that occur to me that I immediately dismiss as impossible.

How do I really know anything is impossible? I don’t. This is definitely something to examine.

We all have internal struggles between freedom and responsibility. Sometimes those struggles can be heroic. I’m thinking of the times when doing the right thing as a parent means foregoing some self-centered pleasure.

Sometimes sacrifice becomes habit. One of my friends identifies herself as an over-functioning adult. That might fit me too.

Meditation has also made me feel more aware of my heart center, of when it feels tender,  vulnerable, and open. Just sitting with my heart center, letting it express whatever energy it’s expressing. Sometimes I don’t know the story, I just feel it.

If it’s too intense, I tap my chest, like in EFT. It helps.

Thoughts on balancing attention

Posted on by
Reply

I’m still absorbing the brilliant wisdom of the Chogyam Trungpa quote I shared earlier this week, about putting 25% of your attention in meditation on each of these 4 areas at the same time:

  • whatever technique you are using
  • relaxing
  • making friends with yourself
  • being open to the possibility of something happening during this session

That’s just 4 things. The human mind can hold in awareness 5 to 9 things at any given time, so this should be easy breezy! Right?

I like that he included making friends with yourself. I feel like I’m doing that during my sessions by paying attention to what I’m actually experiencing — thoughts, sensations, the movement of energy, emotions. When I am curious and accepting about my actual experience, I notice more repressed thoughts and emotions become conscious, so I have more awareness. It’s a good thing!

What are the old dreams you had that you put up on a shelf years ago? Take them down and dust them off. It’s not too late.

I notice energy movement inside my body. It could be my energy body or my nervous system — I don’t know that I can really tell the difference. It feels like parts are connecting to each other. It feels soothing, calming, relaxing. And occasionally I reach that state of being full of/held in complete love.

I notice that in some sessions, not much seems to happen. I wonder now if I’m not letting go of expectations enough at these times.

I use the “whole body awareness” technique, yet when I notice I’ve strayed badly and been totally unpresent for what seems like several minutes, I bring myself back to whole body awareness through attending to my breath.

And of course, the advice to put 25% on each area. Ha! No one can measure this!

So it’s a guideline, and a fresh way of understanding the meditation experience. This is welcome.