Some days we can feel completely buried by the responsibilities and obligations we carry. For some of us, when we get in this place, rather than acknowledging the magnitude of our burdens we can become self-critical and beat ourselves up for our perceived failure to "man up" (a phrase I hate, by the way).

The acronym RAIN is shorthand for a simple method to deal with overwhelm and self-criticism.

Recognize what is going on;
Allow the experience to be there, just as it is;
Investigate with kindness;
Natural awareness, which comes from not identifying with the experience.

Tara Brach is a well-known spiritual teacher and the author of several books and audio teachings, including True Refuge: Finding Peace and Freedom in Your Own Awakened Heart (2013) and Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha (2004).

Feeling Overwhelmed? Remember "RAIN"

Four steps to stop being so hard on ourselves.

By Tara Brach | Mindful Magazine


Illustrations by Michael Woloschinow
When I was in college, I went off to the mountains for a weekend of hiking with an older, wiser friend of twenty-two. After setting up our tent, we sat by a stream, watching the water swirl around rocks, talking about our lives. At one point she described how she was learning to be “her own best friend.” A wave of sadness came over me, and I broke down sobbing. I was the furthest thing from my own best friend. I was continually harassed by an inner judge who was merciless, nit-picking, demanding, always on the job. My guiding assumption was, “Something is fundamentally wrong with me,” as I struggled to control and fix what felt like a basically flawed self.

Over the last several decades, through my work with tens of thousands of clients and meditation students, I’ve come to see the pain of perceived deficiency as epidemic. It’s like we’re in a trance that causes us to see ourselves as unworthy. Yet, I have seen in my own life, and with countless others, that we can awaken from this trance through practicing mindfulness and self-compassion. We can come to trust the goodness and purity of our hearts.

In order to flower, self-compassion depends on honest, direct contact with our own vulnerability. Compassion fully blossoms when we actively offer care to ourselves. To help people address feelings of insecurity and unworthiness, I often introduce mindfulness and compassion through a meditation I call the RAIN of Self-Compassion. The acronym RAIN, first coined about 20 years ago by Michele McDonald, is an easy-to-remember tool for practicing mindfulness. It has four steps:

Recognize what is going on;
Allow the experience to be there, just as it is;
Investigate with kindness;
Natural awareness, which comes from not identifying with the experience.

You can take your time and explore RAIN as a stand-alone meditation or move through the steps in a more abbreviated way whenever challenging feelings arise.

R—Recognize What's Going On
Recognizing means consciously acknowledging, in any given moment, the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that are affecting us. Like awakening from a dream, the first step out of the trance of unworthiness is simply to recognize that we are stuck, subject to painfully constricting beliefs, emotions, and physical sensations. Common signs of the trance include a critical inner voice, feelings of shame or fear, the squeeze of anxiety or the weight of depression in the body.

In order to flower, self-compassion depends on honest, direct contact with our own vulnerability. Compassion fully blossoms when we actively offer care to ourselves.

Different people respond to the sense of unworthiness in different ways. Some might stay busy, trying to prove themselves valuable; others, fearful of failure, may become discouraged or even paralyzed. Still others may resort to addictive behaviors to avoid facing their shame and fear. Any of these strategies can lead to either defensive or aggressive behavior with others, or unhealthy attachment.

Some of us are at war with ourselves for decades, never realizing how our self-judgment and self-aversion keep us from finding genuine intimacy with others or enjoying our lives. One palliative caregiver reports that a key regret of the dying is not having been true to themselves. Rather than listening to and trusting our inner life, most of us try to live according to the expectations of others, which we internalize. When we inevitably fall short of the mark, we condemn ourselves.

Though it may sound depressing or overwhelming, learning to recognize that we are at war with ourselves is quite empowering. One meditation student described the trance of unworthiness as “…the invisible and toxic gas I am always breathing.” As he became increasingly mindful of his incessant self-judgment and feelings of inadequacy, his aspiration to free himself from his painful inner prison grew.

A—Allowing: Taking a Life-Giving Pause

Allowing means letting the thoughts, emotions, feelings, or sensations we have recognized simply be there. Typically when we have an unpleasant experience, we react in one of three ways: by piling on the judgment; by numbing ourselves to our feelings; or by focusing our attention elsewhere. For example, we might have the sinking, shameful feeling of having been too harsh in correcting our child. But rather than allowing that feeling, we might blame our partner for not doing his or her part, worry about something completely different, or decide it’s time for a nap. We’re resisting the rawness and unpleasantness of the feeling by withdrawing from the present moment.

We allow by simply pausing with the intention to relax our resistance and let the experience be just as it is. Allowing our thoughts, emotions, or bodily sensations simply to be doesn’t mean we agree with our conviction that we’re unworthy. Rather, we honestly acknowledge the presence of our judgment, as well as the painful feelings underneath. Many students I work with support their resolve to let it be by silently offering an encouraging word or phrase to themselves. For instance, you might feel the grip of fear and mentally whisper yes in order to acknowledge and accept the reality of your experience in this moment.

Victor Frankel writes, “Between the stimulus and the response there is a space, and in this space lies our power and our freedom.” Allowing creates a space that enables us to see more deeply into our own being, which, in turn, awakens our caring and helps us make wiser choices in life. For one student, the space of allowing gave her more freedom in the face of urges to binge eat. In the past, whenever she felt restless or anxious at night, she’d start thinking of her favorite food—trail mix—then mindlessly consume a half pound of it before going to bed, disgusted with herself. Learning to recognize the cues and taking a pause interrupted the pattern. While pausing, she would allow herself to feel the tension in her body, her racing heart, the craving. Soon, she began to contact a poignant sense of loneliness buried beneath her anxiety. She found that if she could stay with the loneliness and be gentle with herself, the craving passed.

I—Investigating with Kindness

Investigating means calling on our natural curiosity—the desire to know truth—and directing a more focused attention to our present experience. Simply pausing to ask, what is happening inside me?, can initiate recognition, but investigation adds a more active and pointed kind of inquiry. You might ask yourself: What most wants attention? How am I experiencing this in my body? Or What am I believing? What does this feeling want from me? You might notice hollowness or shakiness, then discover a sense of unworthiness and shame masked by those feelings. Unless you bring them into awareness, your unconscious beliefs and emotions will control your experience and perpetuate your identification with a limited, deficient self.

Poet Dorothy Hunt says that we need a “...heartspace where everything that is, is welcome.” Without such an attitude of unconditional care, there isn’t enough safety and openness for real investigation to take place. About ten years ago I entered a period of chronic illness. During one particularly challenging period of pain and fatigue, I became discouraged and unhappy. In my view I was terrible to be around—impatient, self-absorbed, irritable, gloomy. I began working with RAIN to recognize these feelings and judgments and to consciously allow the unpleasantness in my body and emotions to just be there. As I began to investigate, I heard an embittered voice: “I hate living like this.” And then a moment later, “I hate myself!” The full toxicity of self-aversion filled me.

Not only was I struggling with illness, I was at war with the self-centered, irritable person I believed I had become. Unknowingly, I had turned on myself and was held captive by the trance of unworthiness. But in that moment of recognizing and allowing the suffering of self-hatred, my heart began to soften with compassion.

Here’s a story that helps to describe the process I went through. Imagine while walking in the woods you see a small dog sitting by a tree. You bend down to pet it and it suddenly lunges at you, teeth bared. Initially you might be frightened and angry. But then you notice one of its legs is caught in a trap, buried under some leaves. Immediately your mood shifts from anger to concern. You see that the dog’s aggression sprang from vulnerability and pain.

This applies to all of us. When we behave in hurtful, reactive ways, it’s because we’re caught in some kind of painful trap. The more we investigate the source of our suffering, the more we cultivate a compassionate heart toward ourselves and others.

When I recognized how my leg was in a trap—sickness compounded with self aversion— my heart filled with sorrow and genuine self-care. The investigating deepened as I gently put my hand over my heart—a gesture of kindness— and invited whatever other feelings were there to surface. A swell of fear (uncertainty for my future) spread through my chest, followed by an upwelling of grief at losing my health. The sense of self-compassion unfurled fully as I mentally whispered, It’s all right, sweetheart, and consciously offered care to the depths of my vulnerability, just as I would to a dear friend.

Compassion arises naturally when we mindfully contact our suffering and respond with care. As you practice the RAIN of Self-Compassion, experiment and see which intentional gesture of kindness most helps to soften or open your heart. Many people find healing by gently placing a hand on the heart or cheek; others, in a whispered message of care, or by envisioning being bathed in warm, radiant light. What matters is that once you have investigated and connected with your suffering, respond by offering care to your own heart. When the intention to awaken self love and compassion is sincere, the smallest gesture—even if, initially, it feels awkward— will serve you well.

N—Natural Loving Awareness

Natural loving awareness occurs when identification with the small self is loosened. This practice of non-identification means that our sense of who we are is not fused with any limiting emotions, sensations, or stories. We begin to intuit and live from the openness and love that express our natural awareness.

Though the first three steps of RAIN require some intentional activity, the N is the treasure: A liberating homecoming to our true nature. There’s nothing to do for this last part of RAIN; we simply rest in natural awareness.

The RAIN of Self-Compassion is not a one-shot meditation, nor is the realization of our natural awareness necessarily full, stable, or enduring. Rather, as you practice you may experience a sense of warmth and openness, a shift in perspective. You can trust this! RAIN is a practice for life—meeting our doubts and fears with a healing presence. Each time you are willing to slow down and recognize, oh, this is the trance of unworthiness… this is fear… this is hurt…this is judgment…, you are poised to de-condition the old habits and limiting self-beliefs that imprison your heart. Gradually, you’ll experience natural loving awareness as the truth of who you are, more than any story you ever told yourself about being “not good enough” or “basically flawed.”

A friend of mine was sitting with her dying mother while she was in a coma. At one point the mother opened her eyes, looked at her daughter with great lucidity, and said “You know, all my life I thought something was wrong with me.” She closed her eyes, sank back into a coma and died shortly thereafter. For my friend, her mother’s words were a parting gift. They inspired her to dedicate herself to the mindfulness and self-compassion that frees us.

We each have the conditioning to live for long stretches of time imprisoned by a sense of deficiency, cut off from realizing our intrinsic intelligence, aliveness, and love. The greatest blessing we can give ourselves is to recognize the pain of this trance, and regularly offer a cleansing rain of self-compassion to our awakening hearts.

* * *

~ Clinical psychologist Tara Brach is the author of True Refuge: Finding Peace & Freedom in Your Own Awakened Heart. For guided meditations and talks, visit Tara Brach's website.

• This article also appeared in the August 2014 issue of Mindful magazine.
• Subscribe to Mindful's print edition or digital edition.

Would you like to feel more focused? More emotionally aware? More confident? Be a better lover?

If you answer yes to any of these questions, then you can benefit from taking up a mindfulness practice.

Elisha Goldstein, PhD, is the editor of A Mindful Dialogue: A Path Toward Working with Stress, Pain and Difficult Emotions (Kindle only), The Now Effect: How a Mindful Moment Can Change the Rest of Your Life, co-author of A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook, Foreword by Jon Kabat-Zinn, author of Mindfulness Meditations for the Anxious Traveler: Quick Exercises to Calm Your Mind.

Five Reasons Why Men Should Start Practicing Mindfulness

By Elisha Goldstein, Ph.D.
June, 2014

From my experience the gender that is overwhelmingly attracted to mindfulness is women, men aren’t quite as attracted to it. Why is this? In the early days, the man’s greatest responsibility was to protect the tribe. Our brains have been crafted over thousands and thousands of years to guard against vulnerability. The problem with mindfulness for men is that the practice of it asks us to look toward and open up to vulnerability because that is where the gold is. We are also asked to relate to it in very feminine language like with “warmth,” “tenderness,” and “gentleness.” However, the physical threats that men were guarding against in the past, in most cases, are no longer the threats of modern day. But the brain hasn’t figured this out yet and treats emotional vulnerability as a threat, keeping men from truly reaching our highest human potential.

But things are changing! There is an evolution afoot as more men are starting to see the benefits of integrating mindfulness into daily life.

If you’re a man or you know one, here are five reasons why I think men should give mindfulness a try.

1. Increase Focus – George Mumford taught the Chicago Bulls and the Lakers mindfulness enroute to their string of championships. Sports psychologist Michael Gervais stepped in to the Seattle Seahawks locker room and taught them mindfulness giving them a boost to their first Super bowl victory. AETNA embraced the Mindfulness at Work® program that thousands of employees have taken because Mark Bertolini, the CEO, knew the value it could bring to their organization and corporate clients. Other companies including Google, Apple, Edmunds, McKinsey, Yahoo, and so many others now have meditation rooms in their offices). Now the military is on board to stay calm and focused out in the field. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, when we intentionally practice and repeat paying attention to an intended object of awareness, of course, it would follow that we would get better and better at paying attention to what matters.
2. Improve Performance – Usually if we’re able to focus better this would increase our performance as is evident by the integration of mindfulness into business and sports. A study in the Journal of Occupational Health showed that The Mindfulness at Work® program saved employees 69 minutes per week in productivity. In a world where we’re trained in multitasking with a continuous fractured attention it’s a slippery slope to get confused between what is urgent and important and what’s not. What’s more important, the Facebook notification on the phone or the project in front of me? Is it the recent sports score update or listening to my coworker? My brain seems to side with the updates, but in reality it’s likely the least urgent and important. There’s nothing mystical about why we can be more effective at what we do if we’re training our brains to pay attention to what matters over and again.
3. Build Emotional Intelligence – Emotional intelligence has been shown to be a cornerstone of effective leadership (not to mention an essential component of mental health and healthy relationships). If we’re constantly guarding against vulnerability, guess what? We’re also guarding against the most critical decision maker in our brains – our emotions. The brain makes decisions based on our emotional state most of the time, so we don’t want to be in the dark about what is happening in our internal world. Our brain goes particularly haywire when it comes to uncertainty and fear. Mindfulness teaches us how to approach these triggering emotions in a particular way so that we not only no optimal responses, but the emotions themselves become our greatest teachers. It’s incredibly important to lean in and start to get curious about our emotional lives, understand the information they are conveying and develop the courage to embrace vulnerability. In doing this we start to feel more grounded, stronger and ignite a sense of trust and self-reliance.
4. Be a Better Lover – The practice of paying attention, on purpose, also has to do with getting increasingly better at tuning into other people in our lives. There is a lot of dissatisfaction that occurs in relationships because people are not tuned into the needs of each other. As we learn to focus and cultivate emotional intelligence we also build the strength of empathy. This is the ability to put yourself in your partner’s shoes and better understand his or her needs. You can learn to be less defensive, more receptive, a better listener and more physically present and responsive which also makes for a better sex life. The insula is a part of the brain that makes us more able to tune into the sensations of our bodies. We learned a long time ago (9 years to be exact) that mindfulness is correlated with a larger insula. In this case, bigger is better. As we learn how to tune into our bodies and are more present for our partners, everyone is more likely to get their needs met emotionally and physically. If you’re not in a relationship, this is good for the future and a fantastic reason to start practicing.
5. Train Confidence – It feels good to get increasingly better at something. We’ve all experienced this with walking, talking and driving a car (to one degree or another). This a part of the brain that records procedures in life and it gets stronger as we practice. This is no different. In Outliers Malcolm Gladwell noted it takes 10,000 hours to experience true mastery. What if you could get increasingly better at all of the benefits of mindful awareness? We can learn to experience more confidence with our focus, performance, emotional intelligence and in our relationships. Of course as we intentionally practice and repeat all of this, the changes that we experience begin to open up a much greater gift than any of this. We start to realize that mindfulness is about far more than this, it’s about experiencing the insight into who we truly are and a sense of freedom arises.

As we practice, something else wonderful happens, we begin to inspire others and this continues to have ripple effects across all the people around us. This may even be the most important motivation to practice.

Why not get started now?

Be well,

Elisha Goldstein, PhD

PS - One way to get started, reconnect or deepen your mindfulness practice is to take the 28 Day Challenge with the new online program Basics of Mindfulness Meditation: A 28 Day Program. Enjoy!

Elisha Goldstein, Ph.D. is author of The Now Effect, co-author of A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook, Foreword by Jon Kabat-Zinn, author of Mindfulness Meditations for the Anxious Traveler: Quick Exercises to Calm Your Mind, the premier eCourse Basics of Mindfulness Meditation: A 28 Day Program, the Mindful Solutions audio series, and the Mindfulness at Work™ program currently being adopted in multiple multinational corporations. Join The Now Effect Community for free Daily Now Moments, Weekly Updates and tips and free access to a Live Monthly Online Event with Elisha Goldstein, PhD. He is a clinical psychologist in private practice in West Los Angeles.

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Rick Hanson - A Caring, Joyful Heart

This quick and easy practice to cultivate a caring, joyful heart (lovingkindness) comes from Rick Hanson, author of Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom (2009), Just One Thing: Developing a Buddha Brain One Simple Practice at a Time (2010), and, most recently, Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence (2013).

A Caring, Joyful Heart

Rick Hanson, Ph.D.

posted on: January 27th, 2014

As you probably know, compassion and lovingkindness are central elements of Buddhism.

They arise naturally in response to one of those three fundamental characteristics of existence: interdependence/not-self/emptiness. They are also a beautiful path of spiritual practice. And they just feel good: “Through compassion one is free from lethargy and depression.” (Acariya Dhammapala)

Interestingly, a scientifically based tradition as hard-headed as Western psychology is also beginning to find that working with compassion and related heartfelt feelings has both mental and physical benefits.

For example, the Institute of HeartMath (in Boulder Creek, California) has researched connections between the heart and emotional well-being.

Even a regular heartbeat – e.g., 60 times a minute – still has a little variability in the interval between each beat. A large and smoothly changing variation in those intervals changes your brain waves, activates the para-sympathetic nervous system, lowers blood pressure, supports the immune system, and has other health benefits.

It also helps you feel more peaceful and happy and caring.

So let’s try a simple technique that can bring your heart beat into a healthier rhythm.

It has three parts:

1. Breathe in such a way that the length of your inhalation and exhalation are the same (perhaps counting in your mind to make the breaths even).
2. Imagine that the breath is coming into and out of the area of your heart.
3. As you breathe evenly through your heart, call to mind a pleasant, heartfelt emotion such as gratitude, kindness, contentment, or love — perhaps by thinking about a happy time, being with your children, gratitude for the good things in your life, a close friend, etc. You can also imagine that feeling moving through your heart as part of the breath.

Why don’t you try this for a few minutes, right now?

Just three to five cycles of this sort of breathing can have a noticeable effect. Also try five to ten minutes straight sometime, and see how that feels.

Of course, there are other ways to cultivate compassion, such as through metta – or compassion and lovingkindness – meditation that many people here are familiar with. In fact, metta practice could also help release oxytocin, a hormone that is involved in warm feelings of safety and contentment – and is released in women when they are nursing, to give you a sense of its qualities.

Enjoy!

ALSO...

There are many other spiritual practices and meditations on www.YourSkillfulMeans.com to help you clarify your inner experience and connect to deeper aspects of your awareness. Check them out here.

Christopher Bergland - Can Meditation Make Us More Compassionate?

From Christopher Bergland's The Athlete's Way blog at Psychology Today, this is a nice post on how meditation can help us become more compassionate. If we all could be even slightly more compassionate with ourselves and the people we encounter in daily life, the world would be a much safer and kinder place.

Can Meditation Make Someone More Compassionate?

Meditation can reshape neural networks linked to compassion

Published on December 29, 2013 by Christopher Bergland in The Athlete's Way

 

Researchers have discovered more proof that meditation can reshape neural networks linked to compassion. Compassion is a step beyond empathy because it involves a deeper and more visceral connection to another person’s suffering. Researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center recently studied how doctors relate to their patients and identified three main elements of compassion:

1) Recognition of suffering.
2) Emotional resonance.
3) An effort to remedy the suffering.

Although meditation and mindfulness are often secular and do not require religious ties, the Buddha might sum up the ideas of loving-kindness meditation (LKM) by saying, “I teach one thing and one only: that is, suffering and the end of suffering.” For Buddha—as for many modern spiritual leaders and secular meditators—the ultimate goal of meditation is to foster compassion and reduce suffering.

Through meditation you gain a heightened control of mindfulness which opens your eyes to the suffering of people around you. Systematic LKM may actually blur the lines between oneself and others by dissolving the rigid differentiation of suffering between: me, you, us, them, friend, or foe at a neural level.

While doing a basic LKM you go through a checklist of directing compassion to: loved ones, people with whom there is tension, strangers, and yourself. This type of meditation allows you to grasp the interconnectedness between your own suffering and the suffering of others from all arenas of your life.

Compassionate Bedside Manner

A December 2013 study titled “In Search of Compassion: a New Taxonomy of Compassionate Physician Behaviours” was recently published by the journal Health Expectations. The Rochester researchers believe they are the first to systematically pinpoint and catalog compassionate words and actions in doctor-patient conversations. By breaking down the dialogue and studying the context, scientists hope to create a behavioral formula that will guide medical training and education.

"Good to see you. I'm sorry. It sounds like you've had a tough, tough, week." That statement was from a doctor to a patient and used as an example of compassionate behavior as observed by a University of Rochester Medical Center team.



The researchers evaluated tone of voice, body language and overall bedside manner that conveyed tenderness and understanding, and other ways in which doctors gave reassurances or psychology comfort to patients. Researchers also observed non-verbal communication, such as pauses or sighs at appropriate times, as well as speech features and voice quality (tone, pitch, loudness) and other metaphorical language that conveyed certain attitudes and meaning.

"In health care, we believe in being compassionate but the reality is that many of us have a preference for technical and biomedical issues over establishing emotional ties," said senior investigator Ronald Epstein, M.D. His team recruited 23 oncologists from a variety of private and hospital-based oncology clinics. The doctors and their stage III or stage IV cancer patients volunteered to be recorded during routine visits. Researchers then analyzed the 49 audio-recorded encounters that took place between November 2011 and June 2012, and looked for key observable markers of compassion.

Compassion unfolds over time, researchers concluded. During the process, physicians must challenge themselves to stay with a difficult discussion, which opens the door for the patient to admit uncertainty and grieve the loss of normalcy in life. "It became apparent that compassion is not a quality of a single utterance but rather is made up of presence and engagement that suffuses an entire conversation," the study concluded.

The New Pathway: Training Doctors to Be More Compassionate



In the 1980s, both of my parents (who were going through a horrible divorce at the time) worked at Harvard Medical School in very different capacities. My father was the Chief of Neurosurgery at the Beth Israel Deaconess and my mom was part of the team working to create the New Pathway (NP) Curriculum. Among other things, the New Pathway was designed to make doctors more compassionate.

The New Pathway curriculum was designed to improve fluid and emotional intelligence. The program is a problem-based approach to medical education that emphasizes small-group tutorials and self-directed learning, complemented by laboratories, conferences and lectures. The emphasis at the New Pathway is placed on the patient-doctor relationship, and takes into account the broad social context and problems of modern medicine and health care.

Although the New Pathway does not directly emphasize meditation, it is interesting that the concept was incubating at a time when many other people at Harvard and around the world were inspired by Herbert Benson. Benson pioneered the “Relaxation Response” and the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind-Body Medicine that continues to this day at Harvard’s Mass General Hospital.

Can Meditation Make You More Compassionate?

A recent study by Northeastern University's David DeSteno, published in Psychological Science, takes a look at what impacts meditation has on interpersonal harmony and compassion. In this study, a team of researchers from Northeastern University and Harvard University examined the effects meditation would have on compassion and magnanimous behavior.

This study invited participants to complete an eight-week training in two types of meditation and then tested participants in a real-life situation designed to measure compassionate responses to a stranger's suffering.

Sitting in a staged waiting room with three chairs were two actors. With one empty chair left, the participant sat down and waited to be called. Another actor using crutches and appearing to be in great physical pain, would then enter the room. As she did, the actors in the chair would ignore her by fiddling with their phones or opening a book.

The question DeSteno and Paul Condon—a graduate student in DeSteno's lab who led the study—and their team wanted to answer was whether the subjects who took part in the meditation classes would be more likely to come to the aid of a person in pain, even when everyone else was ignoring her suffering. "We know meditation improves a person's own physical and psychological wellbeing," said Condon. "We wanted to know whether it actually increases compassionate behavior."

Among the non-meditating participants, only about 15 percent of people acted to help. But among the participants who were in the meditation sessions "we were able to boost that up to 50 percent," said DeSteno. This result was true for both meditation groups thereby showing the effect to be consistent across different forms of meditation.

"The truly surprising aspect of this finding is that meditation made people willing to act virtuous—to help another who was suffering—even in the face of a norm not to do so," DeSteno said, "The fact that the other actors were ignoring the pain creates as 'bystander-effect' that normally tends to reduce helping. People often wonder 'Why should I help someone if no one else is?'"



These results appear to prove what the Buddhist theologians have long believed—meditation can lead you to more compassion, love, and committed to end suffering for oneself and others. Although the researchers don’t know exactly why meditation heightens compassion there are two likely explanations. The first is that meditation and mindfulness improves attention and ability to focus one's attention to specific things in the environment.

The other possibility is that meditation creates neural pathways that allow the meditator to see the interconnectedness of all human suffering regardless of the relationship. Regular loving-kindness meditation builds self-love, compassion and human connection on multiple levels. If you'd like to read more on this, check out my Psychology Today blog post, "Neuroscientists Confirm That Our Loved Ones Become Ourselves."

The psychologist Piercarlo Valdesolo and colleagues found that a feeling of affiliation or connection between two people, even something as subtle as tapping their hands together in synchrony, causes them to feel more compassion for each other when distressed. The increased compassion of meditators, then, might stem directly from meditation’s ability to dissolve the neural barriers that put people in different bins based on ethnicity, religion, ideology etc.

Compassion Can Be Cultivated

In a final study from May 2013 researchers at the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the Waisman Center of the University of Wisconsin-Madison shows that adults can be trained to be more compassionate. The report, published by Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, found that training adults in compassion can result in greater altruistic behavior and related changes in neural systems underlying compassion.



"Our fundamental question was, Can compassion be trained and learned in adults? Can we become more caring if we practice that mindset?'" says Helen Weng, lead author of the study and a graduate student in clinical psychology. Adding, "Our evidence points to yes."

In the study, the investigators trained young adults to engage in compassion meditation using a traditional Buddhist technique of meditation that includes methods designed to develop loving kindness and compassion for oneself and for others.

"People seem to become more sensitive to other people's suffering, but this is challenging emotionally. They learn to regulate their emotions so that they approach people's suffering with caring and wanting to help rather than turning away," explains Weng.

To increase caring feelings for people who are suffering the compassion meditation participants were trained to increase feelings of sympathy and altruism for people who are suffering by envisioning a time when someone has suffered and then practiced wishing that his or her suffering was relieved. They repeated phrases to help them focus on compassion such as, "May you be free from suffering. May you have joy and ease."

Participants in the study practiced focused compassion towards four different categories of people. First, they focused on sending compassionate thoughts to a loved one or someone whom they easily felt compassion for, like a friend or family member. Secondly, they practiced compassion for someone they had a conflict or tension with such as an ex-partner, in-law, a backstabbing co-worker, difficult boss... Thirdly, they focused compassion towards a random stranger or group of people who were suffering. Lastly, they practiced compassion and forgiveness towards themselves.

Conclusion: Flex Your Compassion Muscle Every Day

"It's kind of like weight training," Weng says. "Using this systematic approach, we found that people can actually build up their compassion 'muscle' and respond to others' suffering with care and a desire to help."

If you’d like to read more on this topic, check out my Psychology Today blogs:

• “Mindfulness Made Simple”
• "Meditation Has the Power to Influence Your Genes"
• “The Neuroscience of Empathy”
• “Compassion Can Be Trained”
• "Too Much Crystallized Thinking Lowers Fluid Intelligence"
• ”How Does Meditation Reduce Anxiety At a Neural Level?”
• “Can Mindfulness Backfire?”
• “The Neurobiology of Grace Under Pressure”
• “Mindfulness Training and the Compassionate Brain”
• 'Meditation May Slow Age-Related Cognitive Decline"

~ Follow me on Twitter @ckbergland for updates on The Athlete’s Way blog posts.

James Fell Meditates . . . While Lifting Heavy Things

James Fell shared this article over at the Good Men Project, a reflection on his exploration of meditation to help him focus and relax while trying to run a 3:25:00 Boston Marathon. I don't know if he made his time, but he learned a lot about his own approach to meditation.

Like James, I tend to be most focused and in the present moment (other than during sessions with my therapy clients) while lifting heavy weights. There is nothing like a heavy squat day to keep your mind focused in the moment . . . failing to do so could mean serious injury.


One of the thought leaders in this field is Rob McNamara, author of Strength to Awaken, Make Strength Training Your Spiritual Practice and Find New Power and Purpose in Your Life (2011). You can listen to (or read) a nice conversation with Rob (conducted by Vince Horn) over at the Buddhist Geeks Podcast.

How the Universe Responded When I Tried Meditation

October 19, 2013 by James Fell

James Fell meditates. He just happens to be lifting heavy things while he does it.

That’s the last time I listen to Jane Seymour.

It was her idea. She was telling me about how great Transcendental Meditation is, and how after a 20 minutes session she obtains amazing powers of concentration. She also told me that her son, a musician, does TM right before performing; again, to help with concentration.

It got me thinking that perhaps it was worth a shot. Not because I have trouble sleeping (I don’t), or that I’m stressed out (I’m not), but because if it actually does help the mind relax and focus, then perhaps it would be something that could get me in the proper headspace immediately before my attempt to qualify for the Boston Marathon this fall.

I’m learning that concentration is going to be key. I can’t just power my way through this like I did in Los Angeles last year. In the past few months I’ve learned a great deal about proper running technique, and being able to hold form and run in as efficient a manner as possible is critical to sustaining the 4:40 per kilometer pace (roughly a seven-and-a-half minute mile) for the entire 42.2km in order to finish in under the required 3 hours and 25 minutes to meet the Boston Athletic Associations time requirements for my age group.

Sorry about all that metric stuff for my American readers. I know it weirds you out, but I’m running this race in Canada, so I need to think in kilometers. If you get confused, there’s an app for that.

Anyway, maintaining proper form and pace takes a lot of concentration, and when I run my mind has a tendency to wander. I used to listen to music all the time while running, but had to stop that because it hampers the ability to concentrate. Music is great for beginner and intermediate exercisers; it helps them create a “dissociative state,” which means it distracts them from the discomfort of training and allows them to push harder and longer. However, when you get to an advanced level, music actually inhibits running performance. To go to the wall, you need to be in an “associative state,” which is like embracing the pain, or something. (Read my entire article for the Chicago Tribune about using music for fitness motivation here).

And I’ve been doing some runs at marathon pace and putting all of my brainpower into expending as few calories as possible. This isn’t about fat loss – if I was chasing that an inefficient technique where I ran like I had a scorpion shoved down my running shorts would be the best way to maximize caloric burn per mile. It’s about enhancing my ability to sustain the fastest pace possible for the full distance, and to do that I need to not waste a single iota of energy. It means perfect form, with minimal vertical movement, a soft landing on each stride. A glide like I’m on a low-flying magic carpet.

Yeah, gotta think about all that. Get to the meditation part.

As a confirmed skeptic, I don’t go in for what Eric Cartman would refer to as “tree-hugging hippie crap,” so I began my investigations in to meditation not by going to any official Transcendental Meditation site, but by reading what others outside the organization had to say, and I found this story, which automatically put my guard up. Meditation may be valuable, but I balk at lining someone’s pockets with thousands of dollars to lead me down the garden path and off the deep end into mystical bullshittery.

I’m a pretty good do-it-yourself learner, and I didn’t think I needed some $2,500 yogi-guided course to learn how to relax and enhance my concentration. So I searched some more, and came across this article at “How Stuff Works.” It seemed pretty basic, but since I wasn’t trying to learn brain surgery I figured basic = good enough.

I should mention that during this whole learning process I was sitting on the deck at my parents’ condo on the coast of B.C. with my wife. She wanted to give it a whirl too, so I read her the basic instructions I found at How Stuff Works and we decided to try it and see what happened.

The first thing I noticed was that there was too damn much stuff to remember. Breathe in and pretend like it’s a lotus blossom opening in your stomach, and then the lotus blossom closes when you breathe out. Let your mouth hang partially open. Don’t close your eyes, but don’t focus on anything either. Imagine some kind of totem image in your mind. Repeat your mantra over and over. (TM says you’re supposed to get your mantra given to you from an official yogi as part of the $2,500 fee, and then keep it secret so it doesn’t lose it’s magical powers, but I don’t mind telling you that the one I came up with was running specific: “glide” was the word I chose.)

As far as a totem image goes, an appealing part of the female anatomy popped into my head – my wife was sitting next to me, remember – so I went with that.

And it was all too much.

After a while I ditched most of it and just tried to relax and do the opposite of letting my mind wander, if that makes any sense. This was about being able to enhance concentration for focusing on running form, so I just imagined good running technique over and over in my mind while lying there in the sun next to my beautiful and also meditating wife, who finished top of her class from med school and has never shown any indications of lacking the ability to concentrate.

It was a few minutes later when I felt a wet blob fall on my chest.

“Son of a bitch!” I exclaimed, looking down at the brown goo that had suddenly appeared on my bare pectoral muscle. “A bird just shit on me!”

My wife burst out laughing like I hadn’t heard in a long time. “Well, I guess that tells you what the universe thinks of your ability to meditate.”

With love from The Universe.

Yeah, we all had a good laugh. The bigger laughs came about 10 minutes later.

After cleaning up I’d given up on the meditating and was just enjoying a beer on the deck when my 14-year-old son came out with a look of undisguised mirth on his face. “Dad,” he said, “I should tell you that I was up on the next deck above eating chocolate ice cream, and some fell from my spoon and landed on you. When I heard you swear I couldn’t help it, I just ran away laughing.”

Well, everyone else laughed harder. For some reason I was disappointed that it was ice cream and not poop. Not sure why. Perhaps I’m warped.

Anyway, screw meditation. If it works for you, great. I don’t think I need it. Every time I lift weights it’s an act of supreme concentration, and during my pace-holding runs I’m learning how to put all my concentration into holding proper running form and pace. I’m learning by doing. I don’t need to enhance my calm or de-stress, because neither of those things are issues for me. I already engage in plenty of meditation; I just happen to be lifting heavy things while doing it.

– Originally published on SixPackAbs.com

Jules Shuzen Harris, Sensei - Holding Anger

Anger is - unfortunately - still mostly a male issue. Women are trained as they grow to feel almost anything but anger, while men grow up being taught that any emotion other than anger is girlie. But we - generally - have an uneasy relationship with anger.

For many men, anger is equivalent to aggression or even violence. But these are separate responses. Anger is a natural response to feeling wronged. Aggression and violence are how we turn anger against others (or sometimes ourselves).

Anger is most often experienced as a product of someone or something else, but certainly not us. We project its cause outside of ourselves. Yet we have a choice as whether or not we get angry, and if so, how we use that energy.

Unfortunately, in my opinion, Buddhism sees anger as one of the "three poisons," something to be transmuted  or overcome in some way. I believe anger is a very useful fuel for creating change, in our own lives or in the external world.

Holding Anger

We must develop a measure of psychological insight along with our meditation practice.

Jules Shuzen Harris, Sensei
Tricycle Wisdom Collection

Anger hinders our liberation from suffering. It takes its toll on our spirit and our health. Stress levels are on the rise. The Harris Poll in 2002 recorded that tension levels in almost half of Americans had worsened over the preceding year. According to the American Institute of Stress, 75 to 90 percent of doctors’ visits are for stress-related ailments. Psychological distress such as anger, anxiety, and depression seems to be a good predictor of high blood pressure, heart attacks, and sudden death. But what is missing from this research is the “first cause,” the damaged self—a belief that manifests as anger projected for the most part onto others. On one level, this projected anger is a defense against one’s “bad self.” On a deeper level, it represents our feelings of vulnerability.

Over 2,500 years ago the Buddha identified anger as one of the three poisons that hinder our progress toward liberation from suffering. In the Anumana Sutta, a teaching on self-observation, the venerable Mahamoggallana, one of the Buddha’s closest disciples, counsels bhikhus against angry thoughts that lead to disparaging others. The bhikhus are instructed to refrain from unruly behavior such as hypocrisy, mercilessness, jealousy, and selfishness, to name a few examples. In the Lekha Sutta the Buddha asserts that there are three types of individuals in the world and three ways they manifest anger. First, he refers to the individual who is like an inscription on a rock. His anger stays with him for a long time. It is not effaced by wind or water. Next, the Buddha compares an individual who is often angered, but whose anger does not stay with him for a long time, to an inscription in soil that is effaced by wind or water. Lastly, the Buddha describes a person who is like water. When this individual is spoken to roughly or harshly, he or she remains congenial, companionable, and courteous, just as an inscription in water disappears immediately.

After more than 30 years of working first as a therapist and later a practitioner of Zen, the poison that stands out the most to me is anger. And while I believe that meditation has some transformative power, as a former psychotherapist I believe that teachers and spiritual guides need to address the role that small mind plays with regard to anger. Meditation enables us to see the transparency of our anger, and this is a good start, but we can still remain blinded to the mechanics of our anger. The Buddhist teacher and psychologist John Welwood asserts that “most of us live caught up in prereflective identification most of the time.” In working with dharma students, teachers must address the deeper wounds from which anger has sprung. We must enable students to see the anger they project onto others as a defense against old story lines, such as “I’m damaged, I’m unlovable,” and so on.

Anger is “habit energy,” to use Thich Nhat Hanh’s term; karmic in its origin, it is deeply engrained and deeply rooted. As Welwood says, we imagine that our thoughts and feelings are an accurate portrayal of reality and therefore justified. If we are to be effective in transmuting our anger into prajna (wisdom), then we must develop an additional measure of psychological insight along with our meditation practice that focuses on the cyclical relationship between thoughts and our body.

I saw chronic episodes of anger manifest when I trained former criminal offenders in counseling techniques that they could use to redirect youth caught up in the criminal justice system. The anger the ex-offenders projected onto their clients was cloaked in their judgmental attitude toward them. They were hypercritical of behaviors they themselves once engaged in. This behavior points to an aspect of anger that we don’t usually think of. We typically attribute the source of our anger to someone or something outside of ourselves: “I am experiencing great displeasure because it is the ‘other’ who is at fault.” The ex-offenders didn’t see their shadow beliefs and resisted addressing them. Their anger toward clients was a defense—it allowed them to distance themselves from their “bad selves.”

In order to work on anger, we need to employ an approach that incorporates psychosocial strategies in the service of spiritual development. This approach embraces the transpersonal, personal, and interpersonal. Mindfully held anger is a step in the right direction. This approach requires that we contain our anger—that we meditatively attend to our anger with an emphasis on neither suppressing it nor acting it out. Being present with our anger enables us to witness the process of it, which includes all three levels of awareness. On the personal level, we witness the felt sense of our anger, along with its cognitive and perceptual dimensions. On a social level, we witness the effect our shadow beliefs have on our interaction with others. On the transpersonal level, we witness the “I,” or who it is who is angry.

Another approach to dealing with anger on the psycho-social-spiritual level is mind-body bridging. This technique enables us to see the impact that thoughts have on us viscerally. The prime mover behind the impact thoughts have on the body are our requirements: how we should be, how other people should be, and how the world should be in order for us to feel acceptable. This approach begs the question of how to bring compassion to our anger. It is not easy to refrain from repressing or indulging our anger. Our challenge is to embrace it with mindfulness and genuine caring.

We must become intimate with anger to clear the way to our connectiveness, to our vulnerability and an aliveness to everything. In the end, our anger is transmuted to wisdom, which in turn gives rise to compassion.


~ Jules Shuzen Harris Sensei is a Zen teacher in the Soto lineage and the founder of Soji Zen Center in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania.

In the following audio teaching, Jules Shuzen Harris Sensei walks us through the Mind-Body Bridging technique. Samples of the four Mind-Maps (in the order that you will create them) can be found by clicking on the links below. Throughout the week, Harris will be available to answer questions about Mind-Body Bridging. Post a comment and he will get back to you.

• Trouble Map
• Requirement Map
• Depressor Map
• Fixer Map

Michael Taylor - What Are The Benefits Of Meditation For Men?

Last Friday's conversation on A New Conversation with Men, hosted by Coach Michael Taylor, featured Peter Vroom talking about his "The Resolute Mind" meditation technique and "how it can support men in dealing with the multiplicity of challenges men deal with on a daily basis."

Listen to internet radio with Coach Michael Taylor on Blog Talk Radio

What Are The Benefits Of Meditation For Men?

by Coach Michael Taylor

Fri, March 23, 2012

Men are faced with unprecedented stresses and challenges today. Unfortunately, too many men turn to alcohol, drugs and sex to try to deal with this stress.

Join Coach Michael Taylor as he speaks with Peter Vroom about The Resolute Mind meditation technique and how it can support men in dealing with the multiplicity of challenges men deal with on a daily basis.

Peter Vroom has been studying Vedic Meditation since 2002 and was an assistant teacher with Limor Babai for many years. He ran many advanced knowledge courses and assisted many students to a greater understanding of the technique. After finishing his training with Thom Knoles in India and the US, Peter now runs his own centres in LA, Sydney and New York. 

Find him here: www.theresolutemind.com

Meditation is good - no matter what it's called or what lineage it's from. At the very least, just sit with good posture, breathe naturally with your belly, notice the breath move in and out, and repeat. Do this until you have been sitting for 5, 10, or 15 minutes. Evey time your mind wanders from the breath, notice "thinking" or "drifting," and gently bring attention back to the breath.


For a more in-depth instruction, see this article by Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Basic Breath Meditation Instructions.

Buddhist Geeks 249: Strengthening the Body-Mind w/ Rob McNamara

I've been a fan of Rob McNamara's work for a few years now - a couple of the earliest posts on this blog were quotes from him.  I was very pleased to see that he finally has a book out, Strength To Awaken, An Integral Guide to Strength Training, Performance and Spiritual Practice for Men and Women. In this episode of the Buddhist Geeks podcast, Rob talks about his new book and explains how inner strength and outer strength are interconnected so that working with weights can inform our affect regulation and our meditative practice.

BG 249: Strengthening the Body-Mind

by Rob McNamara

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Episode Description

Rob McNamara is a psychology professor, zen practitioner, and strength trainer who works at the intersection of strength training and contemplative practice. In this episode McNamara explains how his experiences in the gym helped him understand the purpose of meditation, and how both inner and outer strength are deeply intertwined. He describes how strength training can stretch both the upper and lower boundaries of the ego, helping us learn how to not check out when things get uncomfortable, nor space out when we have an opportunity to relax deeply and let go.

Episode Links:

• Rob McNamara
• Strength to Awaken

Transcript:

Transcript coming soon…

Here is a little more background on Rob:

Rob McNamara is Author of Strength to Awaken, a skilled Psychotherapist, leading Performance Coach, Psychology Professor at Naropa University and an Integral Zen Practitioner. He runs his private practice in Boulder Colorado serving a broad range of executives and professionals, undergraduate and graduate students and athletes ranging from high school to Olympic and professional world champions. Rob has been lecturing on Integral Psychology and Human Development at Naropa University for nearly a decade for both graduate and undergraduate students in a number of academic and professional programs including the MA Transpersonal and Contemplative Psychology programs and BA Contemplative Psychology program. Currently Rob co-teaches Therapeutic Applications of Human Development and teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on Transpersonal Psychology and undergraduate courses on Integral and Developmental Psychology. He also serves as the faculty advisor for Integral Naropa. Rob has contributed to the Integral movement over the past decade as a leading integral practitioner. While working with Ken Wilber and the Integral Institute he served as one of the core faculty for the Integral Life Practice seminar series. Rob has contributed to Integral Life, taught at Boulder Integral and is currently a faculty member of the Integral Spiritual Experience. Rob’s expertise includes the intersection of integral practice, human performance and integral strength training. Contributions in the business sector include the Stagen Leadership Institute where Rob developed and deployed integrally informed executive curriculum for senior executives and launched corporate wellness initiatives. Rob also served as the Senior Integral Consultant and Human Performance Specialist for Phillips Performance Nutrition. Rob McNamara received his Masters in Transpersonal Counseling Psychology from Naropa University and his Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Susquehanna University.

Will Johnson - Full Body, Empty Mind

 

 
This is a very cool article from the Tricycle Wisdom Collection. Johnson advocates that we learn how to feel into our bodies through our meditation practice as a way to deepen it. He now teaches embodiment training, which he defines as “a path of awakening that views the body as the doorway, not the obstacle, to personal growth and spiritual transformation.”

A lot of men (and women as well) are raised to experience their bodies as a tool, especially if one grows up playing sports and/or lifting weights. We do not learn to be embodied, to relax our muscles and joints, to feel the tension and tightness loosen and the contractions give way to softness and tenderness. We seldom if ever experience this deep relaxation, so with all that tension and tightness in our bodies, we remain numb to our feelings, armored against being vulnerable (as Wilhelm Reich would have taught).

Johnson's approach is based in deep experiential bodywork, Sufi teachings, and his Buddhist practice. This is good stuff - there is a lot to learn in simply reading this article/interview.

Full Body, Empty Mind

Will Johnson explains that by turning our awareness to the full range of physical sensations, the body becomes a doorway to awakening.

In many Buddhist groups, the body is addressed only in basic instructions on posture for meditation, sometimes lasting no more than a few minutes. Many practitioners are drawn to body-based practices such as yoga, martial arts, or the Alexander technique to complement or even enable their sitting practice, but they are often on their own when it comes to integrating these traditions with their larger spiritual path. What is being lost in this gap? One of the most convincing voices for the importance of the body in meditation belongs to Will Johnson, author of several books on the topic, including The Posture of Meditation; Aligned, Relaxed, and Resilient; and Yoga of the Mahamudra.

Johnson, the director of the Institute for Embodiment Training in British Columbia, Canada, began his Buddhist practice in 1972 and was certified in the deep bodywork system of Rolfing in 1976. Drawing on his experience in these traditions, Sufism, and others, he now teaches embodiment training, what he calls “a path of awakening that views the body as the doorway, not the obstacle, to personal growth and spiritual transformation.” I exchanged emails with Johnson to discuss how meditators can explore the body and what they might gain from the practice.

—Andrew Merz

You’ve said that in order to experience emptiness of mind, one must first experience fullness of body. While this intuitively resonates with many meditators, clear explanations of why that is true and how it can be integrated into a Buddhist meditation practice are hard to find. How do we start to understand this view in a Buddhist context, and how do we address it without feeling as though we are detracting from our usual sitting practice? 

This focus on awareness of the body is what, for me, the teachings always kept leading to. The part of the Four Noble Truths that attracted me the most, for example, was the explanation about why we suffer. The Buddha’s observation that we create upset for ourselves when we’re in reaction, and that we manage to do this to ourselves through the twinned actions of desire and aversion, just rang true.

The teachings tell us that actions disturb our peace of mind, but what I’m suggesting is that we can’t just look to what we conventionally call our mind to sort this out. Reaction, clinging, and aversion are physical actions that the body performs and that, no matter how subtle, create muscular tension through the repeated motions of either “pulling toward” (desire) or “pushing away” (aversion). Repeat anything often enough, and you create holding patterns in the body that predispose you to continue doing that action. Sitting practices that focus on relaxing the underlying tensions and holdings you feel in your body, as well as restrictions to the breath, help you mitigate the legacy and habit patterns of reacting, clinging, and aversion.

As the eleventh-century Mahamudra teacher Tilopa said, “Do nothing with the body but relax.” When we start to relax, we start feeling the body. Tensions and contractions in the body serve as a numbing blanket that keeps the tiny physical sensations that exist on every part of the body from being felt. Learning how to relax while remaining upright in the sitting posture allows the body’s full range of sensations to come out of hiding and make their existence felt. It’s always struck me as peculiar: If I know that sensations can be felt to exist everywhere in the body, then why don’t I feel them? And what effect does blocking out awareness of feeling have on me? And finally, if the mind that is “lost in thought” is somehow dependent on my not feeling the sensations of the body, what happens to the mind if I let myself feel the entire body, head to toe, as an unbroken field of sensations? The sitting posture itself can be a kind of crucible for burning off the tensions and restrictions to body and breath that all too often keep us lost in thought and unaware of feeling presence.

A good place to start is examining what happens to the body when you’re lost in thought. This, of course, is tricky to do, because when the mind is off wandering in involuntary thought, you’re not very aware of the body at all. But if you can include an observation of the body while you’re off in a thought, you’ll find that the condition “lost in thought” is directly accompanied somewhere in the body by muscular contraction and tensing, stillness and rigidity, and a subtle contraction or holding quality to the breath. In other words, when you’re lost in thought, you’re tense in body. It follows, then, that if you can consciously work with the body during your sitting practice to soften and relax the tensions and allow more resilient and natural movement to accompany the passage of the breath, the chatter of the mind can be reduced, and your practice can start going really deep.

Read the whole interview.

Michael Stone - Awake in the World: Integrating Yoga and Buddhist Practice for Living an Engaged Life

This is a cool 3-part series of podcasts based on Michael Stone's retreat at Upaya Zen Center. Combining Zen meditation with yoga and breathing practices is a great mind-body approach to health and wellness.

A lot of the men I know and see in counseling have a disconnect between mind and body. Getting them to identify emotions other than anger is challenging because there is very little body awareness and/or consciousness.

This is one way to bridge that gap - and it's not the only way. Any solid combination of body practices (yoga, Tai Chi, Qi Gong, mindful weight training, etc) and mind practices (meditation, mindfulness, Centering Prayer, etc) is a good foundation for integrating thought and emotion - add some breath-work (such as pranayama, belly breathing, or something else) and it makes that process much easier.

Michael Stone: 10-14-11: Awake in the World: Integrating Yoga and Buddhist Practice for Living an Engaged Life (Part 1 of 3)

Speaker: Michael Stone
Recorded: Friday Oct 14, 2011


This unique retreat will integrate yoga postures, pranayama (breathing practices), zazen (meditation) and the thoughtful study of traditional yoga texts. We will look at internal alignment principles that make yoga postures meditative while also looking at subtle techniques that can wake up the intelligence of our meditation form. We will also turn to traditional yoga and Buddhist texts to explore the role of the mind, body, and community in the process of waking up. If you are interested in the integration of Yoga and Buddhism, practice and study, mind and body, this retreat is for you. Students of all backgrounds and levels of experience are welcome.


Yoga is often described as a body practice and Zen a mind practice. This is far too simplistic. We will explore the psychology, physiology and ethics that support both Yoga and Zen Buddhism.


Michael Stone is a psychotherapist, yoga teacher and Buddhist teacher. He travels internationally teaching about the intersection of Yoga, Buddhism and Mental Health. He leads Centre of Gravity Sangha in Toronto, a thriving community of people interested in the intersection of spirituality and social action. He has written four books with Shambhala Publications on Yoga, Buddhism and ethics and his forthcoming book, Awake in the World, is due this coming Spring.


Michael’s background is in psychology, philosophy, and religion and what motivates his work is how to help people wake up using body and mind, in order to live a meaningful life using traditional practices but adapting them for this culture at this time. His website is www.centreofgravity.org and he can be found teaching regularly in Toronto and internationally.

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Part Two of Three

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Part Three of Three

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