Category Archives: media

Getting Real with Gratitude

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Today I’m sharing a note that the writer/teacher/healer Oriah Mountain Dreamer posted on Facebook, which one of my friends shared. I am grateful to have come across this (thanks, Victoria), because this season, leaving a job sooner than expected, I have a lot of emotions to acknowledge and honor.

Still, I am mostly grateful today.

Taking the “Should” Out of Giving Thanks

When I was a child being thankful was more about manners than real appreciation. When Aunt Lucy insisted that my brother and I take the candies she’d dredged up from the bottom of her purse covered in lint and other unsavoury and unidentifiable bits, my mother prodded us with a hasty, “What do you say?”

We of course responded on cue, our small voices chanting, “Thank you,” with compliance if not enthusiasm. We were not expected to enjoy the candies. We were not permitted to refuse them. We were expected to express thanks.

The confusing messages about gratitude didn’t stop there. Growing up, if I tried to get up from the supper table without finishing the peas that had been put on my plate (you know the ones – pale green, from the can and simmered for twenty minutes to finish off any texture or taste that might have survived the canning process) my mother would call me back with an admonishment about starving children on other continents who would be grateful to eat the peas I did not want. Once – and only once – I suggested that the offending vegetables should be shipped to those who could fully appreciate them.

Then there was the general principle of gratitude that was presented as one of a long list of “shoulds” emphasized if we wanted or asked for something. We should be grateful for what we have. We should be grateful that we are not starving, that bombs are not falling on our houses, that we have a long list of freedoms that others in the world do not have.

Expressions of gratitude that are compelled by rules are often reduced to empty gestures devoid of real appreciation. And the “shoulds” around gratitude don’t stop with childhood. Just today I’ve read two blogs that, in preparation for the American Thanksgiving, explicitly tell readers how and why they “should” be grateful. It’s not that I don’t think that cultivating gratitude can’t be done or that it isn’t a good idea. I just have doubts about our ability to experience the full joy of appreciation on demand.

Once, years ago, when I confessed to a therapist that I was disappointed – mostly with myself and some of what I had and had not done in my life – he cut me off before I could finish the sentence. “Well,” he said, “you know what the antidote for disappointment is, don’t you?” I waited. “Gratitude,” he said with a kind of fierce conviction. “Count your blessings. Be grateful, and you won’t be disappointed!” Feeling chastised I never brought my sense of disappointment to him again.

Counselling individuals who are often going through difficult times of confusion, ill health, financial crisis, divorce or other major losses, the statement I hear most often in initial sessions is: “I know I shouldn’t be feeling this sad (or angry or confused or scared.) I know I should feel grateful for what I do have. . . .” It’s not that people are unaware of those things of value in their lives. It’s not even that they aren’t grateful for caring family, or friends, or the job or home or health they may have. It’s that something else – some painful circumstance or choice or loss – is calling for their attention at the moment. And, if they feel they do not have the right to turn their attention to that pain because they “should” be grateful, they can neither fully appreciate what they do have nor take care of the painful inner or outer situation that needs tending.

Developing the habit of courteously acknowledging the things others do for us or offer to us is a good thing. It helps us live side by side. And, if I slow down and really see the other, I can put my heart into even simple words of common courtesy and convey real appreciation. Similarly, setting aside time on a regular basis – daily, weekly, and/or once a year – to do prayers or practices that acknowledge what is good in our lives can surely increase our ability to appreciate what life has provided. But, like all spiritual practises, if the intent has been lost in the rules, if we find ourselves having to deny the reality of the moment to try to feel something we think we “should” be feeling instead – it won’t work. Like most spiritual practises that bring us deeper into life this is not an “either/or.” It’s an “and/but.” It’s not – either I am grateful for my home or I am discouraged by my health. Some days it’s – I am discouraged about my health and I am deeply grateful to have a safe, comfortable place to live and rest.

Because the thing I am most grateful for, that aspect of life that I have learned to appreciate most deeply, is that it is large enough to hold it all. We do not need to wait until everything is perfect in the world or our lives before we make room for deep gratitude for being alive today. But we also do not need to deny the pain or confusion or despair that may be present in this moment in order to be deeply grateful for the life we have been given. Life can hold it all, can hold us all. And for this I am deeply grateful.

Leaving a job, embracing the unknown

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How much change do you need or seek?

I need a certain amount of change in my life, and I’ve worked in an environment for the last six years where people often stay in the same job for decades.

I gave two weeks’ notice at my job on Monday.

I once worked at the same place for eight years, although that job involved promotions, various managers, and several reorganizations. In my current job, I have done the same thing for the same manager for six years. I’ve liked working with her. She hasn’t been perfect, but I’ve felt comfortable with her supervising my work. She’s a literate technologist, and I appreciate her. Now she’s retiring, and I’ve come to see it is also the best time for me to leave.

Even though giving up a secure job brings insecurity, I feel strongly that I did the right thing anyway! I feel exhilarated and insecure, free and scared and adventurous.

I’m excited about the new opportunities I have — to work in a health food store, to work in a garden center, to spend more time with my granddaughter, to catch up on my reading, to devote more time to improving my blogging, maybe travel a bit, take some workshops that intrigue me.

To rediscover my own biorhythms instead of those artificially imposed by an employer’s needs — yippee!

And of course as I’ve mentioned before here, I’m selling my house, planning to downsize into a vintage trailer, and have been accepted into the Academy of Oriental Medicine of Austin with a summer start date.

I am witnessing doors open — like being asked if I’d be interested in teaching an “old men’s” yoga class!

I notice a kind of shedding that accompanies leaving this job. My mind feels sharper and more resourceful. I feel more alive.

I am not who I was six years ago. Dang, but I have done a lot of yoga since then, substituted for my teacher, and finally trained as a teacher.

I’ve taken two levels of NLP training and presented on NLP topics, with plans to do more and some coaching again.

I finally read all the Carlos Castaneda books and discovered some great poets and took up the pennywhistle.

I’ve traveled to Maui twice and discovered West Texas.

I’ve been in and out of relationship a couple of times.

I’ve been a support for my daughter while she’s gone to nursing school.

I’ve been an integral part of my granddaughter’s life.

I’ve worked hard on several health issues with a lot of success.

I’ve made some friends at work and gotten kudos for my work.

And of course, I started meditating and started this blog.

Really, I cannot count all the changes I’ve made while working in this same steady job. The job has made it possible for me to grow and change, and now it seems I’ve outgrown the job.

I’ve come to accept that truly, life is change, that change is the key characteristic of life. I walk towards it now.

Would you like some theta brain waves with that?

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According to the book I’m reading, What Really Matters: The Search for Wisdom in America, many of the biofeedback pioneers viewed the early focus on training people to experience the alpha range of brain waves as a mistake. Elmer Green, biofeedback pioneer said,

Alpha is finally only an idling state. It’s ten times better than beta when you’re tense, but beyond a certain level of relaxation, it doesn’t have that much to offer by itself. If you want to truly grow, the only way you’re going to do that is through the deeper state of theta. That’s where you can interrogate the unconscious and even gain the ability to reprogram it. The true value of alpha is that it’s a necessary bridge between beta and theta.

Green did research on theta in the early 1970s. Neurofeedback studies of yogis and monks showed that as they moved into deep levels of meditation, alpha eventually gave way to long trains of theta waves. Zen masters have described this deep state as having access to some deeper level of truth or knowing.

The challenge is to learn how to experience theta without falling asleep. Our most common experience of a pure theta state is in those moments when we are falling asleep or awakening, when our minds let go of rational thought and often spontaneously form images.

We found theta to be associated with a deeply internalized state. The state of deep quietness of body, emotions, and mind…achieved in theta training seems to build a bridge between conscious and unconscious processes and allows usually “unheard” things to come to consciousness. It’s as if you have two radio signals. One is loud, the other is very soft and faint. To hear the faint one, you have to turn the loud one down. We go into theta to get this loud noise of normal waking consciousness turned off, so we can hear the softer voice underneath. And we do that because the breadth of our consciousness turns out to extend far beyond what we’re usually conscious of.

The book goes on to relate studies done by Green and associates where they trained themselves and others to relax the body, quiet the mind, let go of emotional tension, and increase theta while remaining awake enough to be aware of the imagery that arose.

College students so trained were able to recall rich imagery, including long-forgotten childhood events. After the studies, a significant percentage of students reported positive changes, including greater clarity, more energy, improved relationships, and better concentration and recall.

Green went to India to study brain wave patterns of advanced yogis and tested Ram Sharma, who could produce nearly pure theta waves on command while remaining fully conscious, unheard of in the West.

Green later said the value of theta training…

…is the relatively rapid development of a skill in shifting, without years of trial-and-error meditation, into a state of consciousness in which one comes face to face with one’s Self…. You can feel all the mental, physical, and emotional things going on around you and in you and yet not be identified with the individual pieces.

So how can you experience theta without a neurofeedback machine? I’ve experienced it when receiving cranio-sacral therapy, esoteric acupuncture, regular acupuncture, and massage, and also through meditation.

Once experienced, it becomes easier to re-experience.

Suffering more effectively

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Every Wednesday, I get an email from Nipun Mehta called InnerNet Weekly, also viewable in a browser. Here’s the link to view this week’s message on how to suffer more effectively, written by Shinzen Young.

Therefore, there is nothing whatsoever to be said in favor of pain per se for meditators. It can just as much create new blockages as it can break up old ones. Everything depends on one’s degree of skill in experiencing it. Very little depends on the intensity of the discomfort itself. A small discomfort greeted with a large amount of skill will break up old knots. A small discomfort greeted with a large lack of skill will create new knots. The same is true with respect to big discomforts. The trick is not so much to endure massive doses of pain, but to develop that skill which will allow you to get the maximum growth out of whatever happens to come up.

Click the link above to learn more about the skills needed.

Here’s more from Thomas Merton on suffering:

Indeed, the truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers the most: and his suffering comes to him from things so little and so trivial that one can say that it is no longer objective at all. It is his own existence, his own being, that is at once the subject and the source of his pain, and his very existence and consciousness is his greatest torture. This is another of the great perversions by which the devil uses our philosophies to turn our whole nature inside out, and eviscerate all our capacities for good, turning them against ourselves.

Article: This Is Your Brain on Metaphors

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I found this article in the New York Times fascinating, particularly the information about how the brain confuses the literal and figurative.

Consider an animal (including a human) that has started eating some rotten, fetid, disgusting food. As a result, neurons in an area of the brain called the insula will activate. Gustatory disgust. Smell the same awful food, and the insula activates as well. Think about what might count as a disgusting food (say, taking a bite out of a struggling cockroach). Same thing.

Now read in the newspaper about a saintly old widow who had her home foreclosed by a sleazy mortgage company, her medical insurance canceled on flimsy grounds, and got a lousy, exploitative offer at the pawn shop where she tried to hock her kidney dialysis machine. You sit there thinking, those bastards, those people are scum, they’re worse than maggots, they make me want to puke … and your insula activates. Think about something shameful and rotten that you once did … same thing. Not only does the insula “do” sensory disgust; it does moral disgust as well. Because the two are so viscerally similar. When we evolved the capacity to be disgusted by moral failures, we didn’t evolve a new brain region to handle it. Instead, the insula expanded its portfolio.

Not only does the brain fail to distinguish rotten food from rotten behavior, it also fails to distinguish between being in need of a bath and dirty doings:

Another truly interesting domain in which the brain confuses the literal and metaphorical is cleanliness. In a remarkable study, Chen-Bo Zhong of the University of Toronto and Katie Liljenquist of Northwestern University demonstrated how the brain has trouble distinguishing between being a dirty scoundrel and being in need of a bath. Volunteers were asked to recall either a moral or immoral act in their past. Afterward, as a token of appreciation, Zhong and Liljenquist offered the volunteers a choice between the gift of a pencil or of a package of antiseptic wipes. And the folks who had just wallowed in their ethical failures were more likely to go for the wipes. In the next study, volunteers were told to recall an immoral act of theirs. Afterward, subjects either did or did not have the opportunity to clean their hands. Those who were able to wash were less likely to respond to a request for help (that the experimenters had set up) that came shortly afterward. Apparently, Lady Macbeth and Pontius Pilate weren’t the only ones to metaphorically absolve their sins by washing their hands.

And — get this — holding a warm drink affects judging personalities as warmer!

Another example of how the brain links the literal and the metaphorical comes from a study by Lawrence Williams of the University of Colorado and John Bargh of Yale. Volunteers would meet one of the experimenters, believing that they would be starting the experiment shortly. In reality, the experiment began when the experimenter, seemingly struggling with an armful of folders, asks the volunteer to briefly hold their coffee. As the key experimental manipulation, the coffee was either hot or iced. Subjects then read a description of some individual, and those who had held the warmer cup tended to rate the individual as having a warmer personality, with no change in ratings of other attributes.

The author goes on to talk about what really ends bloodshed and creates peace. Highly recommended reading!

3,000 views! Thank you, readers!

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Just a quick note to share my gratitude with you, the readers of my blog. Today my odometer rolled over, so to speak, and I have reached the milestone of 3,000 views!

Last summer, after a jump in readers, the number 3,000 came to mind as a goal I hoped to reach by the end of this year.  Now I’ve reached it a month and a half early. That means the rest of this year is pure lagniappe! Or icing on the cake, or gravy, if you prefer those metaphors.

Thank you for stopping by.

The number doesn’t really tell me much. It’s just the number of people who have viewed my blog.

It doesn’t tell me which posts and topics you like most or which titles whet your curiosity. I do know that a few of you are subscribers, some are occasional readers via Facebook and Twitter (@zafu_report), and some find my blog by accident, searching for information on, say, trauma releasing exercises or brain waves.

I posted an analysis on October 1st, and the way I put it all together bears repeating:

What I get from this analysis is that you guys, my readers, are curious about body/mind/emotions/spirit connections. You want to read about discovering/returning to some kind of integrated state of healthiness and wholeness. You’re interested in ways to frame experience, to give it context and perspective. And reading about geeky brain wave states does not put you off!

The brain geeks among you have something to look forward to. I’ve been experimenting with theta waves and will post about it before too long.

Writing and reading are a reciprocal exchange. All I can ask is that you come back, enjoy yourself, and please do not hesitate to give me feedback and comments!

Again, thank you for stopping by.

Holotropic breathwork compared to trauma releasing exercises

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I finally did holotropic breathwork yesterday evening with Patrice. It’s also known as rebirthing, since if you do it enough times, apparently you get back to, and release the trauma from, your birth experience.

I had no sense of time, memory, or when I acquired the energies I released. But release I most certainly did.

Patrice was a great coach. I didn’t know what to expect as she had me start exhaling through my mouth, then after a bit, adding inhalations through my mouth. (Both of these are such a no-no in yoga!)

She told me what I might expect (shouting, shaking, crying, coughing, all forms of physical/emotional release) and made it all sound perfectly okay to experience whatever came up for me. She helped me feel that it was safe to surrender.

She warned me not to fall asleep — that some people do that as a way to escape their emotions.

She did not have to worry about that!

Patrice had put a few needles in key points, including LI4 (associated with the ego and being grounded), and at various times, she moved her hands on my body to support the energy flow. She may have also done some medical qi gong (like reiki) on me. I wasn’t paying that much attention to her after a while…

Then we sped up the breathing. And nothing happened. The exhales were supposed to have a “ha!” sound to them, and after about 5 minutes of this, I started laughing. My ha! ha! ha!s became hahahahahaha’s. She laughed with me.

‘Cause, you know, it was totally ridiculous to be doing this! Ridiculously funny and silly and wonderful!

Then I coughed a little and that felt good so I coughed some more. Patrice helped me sit up on the table. Then I started roaring… It was like some energy was coming up from my stomach out my mouth, and it was fierce and loud, and I got red in the face several times as it just kept coming up and out of me.

And then my eyes started tearing and water gathered in my mouth, and I thought I was going to throw up. Patrice got a wastebasket.

And you know what? I never did, and she  told me later she knew that I wouldn’t. But I didn’t know that. I was vomiting something. It felt real. It just wasn’t food. It was some nasty energy that had been inside of me, now coming out.  Then that urge was over.

I laid back down. More of the ha ha ha. Faster! Sharper!

My legs soon wanted to move. Soon they were shaking involuntarily, much like in David Berceli’s trauma releasing exercises, except that my legs were straight with just a little support under my knees, instead of with my knees bent. My left hand also shook, but not my right — just like when I do the trauma releasing exercises.

I went through cycle after cycle of leg shaking. I even repeatedly kicked something out of my body (which I never do with TRE), then went back to leg shaking. The kicking seemed to be removing something energetic from my sacrum, which (if you know me or have been reading this blog regularly) is where some ancient issues have been residing in my body.

After awhile, I slowed down on the ha’s, drawing them out, making them long, and at the beginning of each exhalation, my legs would start quivering, and by the end of the exhalation, they were nearly still.

Winding down… At the end, Patrice was just rubbing my belly gently. I laid there, getting more and more still, feeling the surge of electrical energy in my body, just like after TRE.

Patrice said later that I was putting out so much heat, she had to open the door and let some cool air in. I was totally unaware of that.

I feel so grateful that I had the core strength and the stamina to stay with the process all the way through. Thank you, yoga!

So… to compare holotropic breathwork to David Berceli’s trauma releasing exercises from his book The Revolutionary Trauma Release Process…

The holotropic breathwork overuses the diaphragm, the breathing muscle. The trauma releasing exercises overuse the leg and hip muscles. With both, you deliberately create a state of overload or stress in the body, and the release brings up deeper stuff.

The trauma releasing exercises don’t include noise. I liked being noisy. But you can do the TREs in a hotel room and/or alone, so there you have it. Make noise if it works for you! There’s a place for them both.

The holotropic breathwork should definitely be done with a guide present, because you could get so wild, you might hurt yourself. (Apparently people do this in groups. That must be quite an experience!)

You can do the trauma releasing exercises alone, without a guide. At least, I’m guessing most of us can. For someone who’s recently been traumatized, it is probably best to have a guide present.

So, having heard of holotropic breathwork but not knowing what it is before doing it, this was my experience. And afterwards, Patrice gave me a compliment — that I went through a nice range of emotions.

I liked it. I want to do it again.

Reading What Really Matters: Searching for Wisdom in America

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I do not know how it happened that I missed this book! Published in 1995, it is the story of a successful journalist’s (as it says) search for wisdom in America. Tony Schwartz helped Donald Trump write a little book called The Art of the Deal, which made him rich but unsatisfied. He went on a quest that he shares in this book.

It’s Tony’s personal search, and he documents it as if writing in a journal (but with plenty of background info), rather than the “impersonal, keep your personal experience out of it” style of journalism.

He begins with Ram Dass and the influence of Eastern religions on America in the 1960s, covers the early days of Esalen, and moves on to brainwaves and biofeedback in Part I, The Pioneers.

I’m currently in the second part, Mind-Body Potentials, reading about Betty Edwards and drawing on the right side of the brain.

This quote got my attention:

As she stood by my side on that final afternoon [of a 5 day “drawing on the right side of the brain” workshop at Harvard], I suddenly understood the powerful impact of Edwards’s continuing encouragement. She creates a nurturing, nonjudgmental environment in which the expectation of success is high and the possibility of failure never enters the picture…. Put another way, the right hemisphere mode is a fragile and elusive state that can easily be overridden by the left hemisphere’s rush to judgment. At the same time, when the left hemisphere faces a challenge that it is ill equipped to meet, Edwards believes that it often simply gives up instead of turning the job over to the right hemisphere.

“We work very hard to thwart that inclination to quit,” Edward told me…. “I think of the left brain as the gatekeeper of the ego. One of its functions is to protect us from being made a fool of. In order to let the right hemisphere come forward and take over, the left hemisphere needs to be reassured that things will turn out okay. That’s what we try to do with our cheerleading. We’re creating a safe environment in which to let go of conscious control.”

One of the biggest changes I notice in myself that I believe comes from meditation is that my right brain is becoming more active. As I’ve mentioned before, whole body awareness is in the domain of the right brain. And it seems true, that the left verbal brain has to be able to let down its guard to experience wholeness. Even if just for brief periods of time at first, to know that it’s actually safe! And not just safe, but a wonderful, unnameable experience!

This is a rich book for seekers of wisdom. I am looking forward to reading about flow, learned optimism, dreams, Ken Wilber, the Enneagram, and his conclusion, entitled The Point Is to Be Real.

I wonder if he’s written anything that updates this book, which is now 15 years old. It seems like he might have something on American teachers like Byron Katie and Gangaji, who use satsang or inquiry to help people grow.

What else? Oh, I imagine he might add something about deeksha. And perhaps something about the recently discovered neuroplasticity of the brain.

What’s cutting edge in the search for wisdom?

Contemplative neuroscience: how meditation changes your brain

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Today I ran across a link to CNN’s Belief Blog, about how meditation changes the brain, complete with images of brain scans.

The article cites Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin and research on the limbic system and development of concentration and empathy, and also the left anterior region and positive emotions (available after only a few weeks of meditation). He’s the most well-known contemplative neuroscientist, being a friend of the Dalai Lama’s, who has given him access to Tibetan monks who are among the most highly experienced meditators in the world with over 10,000 hours. (At one hour per day, it would take 27 years to accumulate that much time meditating!)

It also cites (new info to me) Andrew Newburg’s study of the prefrontal cortex and attention, and the superior parietal lobe and lack of orientation to time and space. Could this explain the experience of oneness and presence in meditation? Makes sense to me.

The National Institutes of Health is funding more research in contemplative science, an encouraging sign.

Still, the nascent field faces challenges. Scientists have scanned just a few hundred brains on meditation to date, which makes for a pretty small research sample. And some scientists say researchers are over eager to use brain science to prove the that meditation “works.”

“This is a field that has been populated by true believers,” says Emory University scientist Charles Raison, who has studied meditation’s effect on the immune system. “Many of the people doing this research are trying to prove scientifically what they already know from experience, which is a major flaw.”

But Davidson says that other types of scientists also have deep personal interest in what they’re studying. And he argues that that’s a good thing.

“There’s a cadre of grad students and post docs who’ve found personal value in meditation and have been inspired to study it scientifically,” Davidson says. “These are people at the very best universities and they want to do this for a career.

“In ten years,” he says, “we’ll find that meditation research has become mainstream.”

I hope so.

Is yoga exercise and/or is it holistic?

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Ramesh Bjonnes argues in Elephant Journal that yoga is holistic, in his review of Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Yoga, by Mark Singleton.

I haven’t read the book. I am still working on a long post about T. Krishnamacharya, who was instrumental in collecting and teaching asana as part of yoga practice in 20th century India. He taught those who brought yoga to the west — Jois, Iyengar, and Devi. Apparently Singleton wrote quite a bit about that, and his book is definitely on my reading list.

If you’re not a yogi, you may not know that what we call yoga in the West is actually one of six schools of Hindu philosophy in India. What we call yoga here is actually asana, one of the eight limbs of yoga, which is a holistic practice with ethical, social, physical, mental, and spiritual dimensions.

My opinion at this time about whether yoga is physical or spiritual: Most of us in the west first encounter yoga as physical exercises that relieve stress and build strength and flexibility. That’s okay. That may be the only way into our culture.

The physical body is but one layer of our beings. A regular asana practice brings changes to the physical body as well as the other layers. Once your body has gotten accustomed to doing yoga, doing yoga feels good. You miss a few days or a couple of weeks, and you notice the loss of well-being. It is meant to be a practice, and it affects more than just the physical body.

Whether you ever study yoga philosophy or not, a regular asana practice eventually opens you to notice your chakras and understand that you are much more than matter.

And after awhile, you may become fascinated with your subtle bodies, and you will want to meditate.