Noticing the Weather Patterns in Ourselves: And the Ruins and Beauties of the Past Remaining in the Present

I feel⎼ my feelings are so complex right now. I feel myself sitting in this chair, warm in my midsection, with a hint of coldness in my hands. Outside, the sun shines brightly on the white snow that covers the ground. There is such beauty in the first snows of the season, in the contrast between the utter white of the snow and the brown gray of tree trunks, the tan wood supports of the carport, the blue jays and cardinals on the ground, people walking on the wet street.

The world seems so clear, fresh, and alive. Yet, behind my eyes, a tension threatens to impose itself on or obliterate what I see.

How do I face this tension? This looming sense of threat? Do I focus on thoughts that arise, question them, or follow them back like an archaeologist exposing the ruins of the past that remain in the present?

Or do I focus on the specific details of a perception? The call of the blue jay? The snow resting on the bare branch of an apple tree? Or do I let my eyes rest on the entire scene?

Or do I feel the air entering, refreshing my body? Passing over my upper lip and moving inside, down to my chest, belly, and even feet. Each in-breath with a beginning, middle, and end. And then a pause. Everything quiets. And then my belly and diaphragm push up. An exhalation begins.

Or as I inhale, the area expands and the tension in my forehead, temples, or jaw is diffused. And as I exhale, I let go.

The scene outside might seem so permanent, almost. Sometimes. It is so easy to think that nothing will ever change. That the threats of today will continue. And it is true there will always be threats. But there will also always be beauty and love.

This scene only exists because it is constantly changing. The earth itself, which can seem immobile, frozen in place, is moving through space while spinning on its axis, so we have day and night, and seasons. It moves in relation to other planetary bodies, like the moon, so we have tides. It moves internally, which is why we have earthquakes, the migration of continents, volcanoes, weather patterns⎼ and wind, rain, and snow. And we know how dangerous as well as beautiful many of these changes can be.

Outside the window, two crows glide into the scene crying raucously.

We, our body, and our emotions, can also seem so set, permanent. Yet, we are alive because of the constant movement of breathing. We see because of the constant movement of and in our eyes. We hear because of the changes taking place every second in our ears and brain. We are sad, then happy. We are 6 years old, then 60. We know this⎼ yet we don’t. It’s obvious everything changes. What’s not so obvious, borrowing from Buddhist teacher Albert Low, is that everything is change….

**To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

Overcoming A Fear of Awareness

In these times, how much awareness can you allow yourself? Too much awareness can feel alarming.

Recently, a friend told me mindfulness does not work for him. He has asthma and the last thing he wants to do is focus on his breath. Asthma can be so frightening and painful. But focusing on the breath is only one possible point of focus for mindfulness practice. There is a whole universe to focus on.

You can focus on something that is easy or enjoyable for you to think about, like the feel of your hands resting in your lap, or your butt touching the chair as you sit in it, or your feet resting on the floor. Or noticing whatever sensation is arising in your body or thought in your mind. You can focus on an image of your favorite tree or what it means to have a favorite or to be favored. You can focus on an image of a clear and open sky or what it feels like to have an open mind. You can focus on what arises in you when you think of a particular person, or what happens inside you when you are in love.

Instead of focusing on awareness of the breath, for example, you might examine your response to simply being aware in that particular moment. What is the quality of your awareness now? Is it jittery or calm, tired or deep? When you have painful memories, you not only fear the object remembered—you fear the feeling that accompanies the memory. You fear fear. Whatever it is that has caused pain in the past is not the primary cause of your suffering. The response to the memory is the primary cause. So make your response your focal point.

Fear is both an emotion that can save your life or turn you away from it. It can shake you, but a shaken being either opens its eyes wider or closes them, depending on how vigorous the vibration and how you interpret it.

When anything is too frightening or difficult to focus on, you can shift your focus to analyzing the components of the emotion. You then shift your mind from being fearful to being analytical. Notice where in your body you feel what you feel. Notice if any sensations or thoughts arise. Notice how the feelings come and go. Certain thoughts might increase the fear, while others, or the absence of thought, might quiet the fear.

When you think you can’t do something, and fear or self-doubt is doing the thinking instead of more rational appraisal, practice how to shift from “I can’t,” or “I am not open to this,” to being open. Bring up in your mind the sense of “I can,” and the sense of open observation. Ask yourself: Was there ever a time that I felt I could overcome any obstacle? Was there ever a time that I openly examined some object, person, or idea? What did it feel like to openly observe or think about something? Or: What does it mean, and what does it feel like, to be courageous and able to face whatever arises in your life?

Mindfulness means clear observation, or moment-by-moment awareness of whatever arises for you. It is about letting things be whatever they are so you can know whatever is there. It is to treat your own thoughts, perceptions and feelings as valuable sources of learning. Thus, to say mindfulness does not work for you is to say observation does not work for you, or knowing your own mind or world does not work for you.

A Mindfulness Practice:

Sit up in a chair in a comfortable and stable position, in a place that feels safe for you. Close your eyes now or in a minute or so, or let your eyes rest on the floor a few feet in front of you. Place your attention on your feet resting on the floor. Feel how heavy or light your feet feel, how hot or cold. You might sense your feet gently expanding, and then contracting, pressing against your shoes or socks, then letting go, relaxing, just resting where they are.

And then let come to mind an image or memory of a courageous action, maybe one of your own, or one you witnessed or read about. What was the courageous act? Who did it? What made it courageous?

Think about what courage means to you. Does courage have to be dramatic, like in some movies? Or can it be something simple, like sticking up for someone, speaking out, or doing something you never did before?

What does it feel like to be courageous? Imagine feeling courageous. Imagine feeling that you could face whatever it is that arises in your life. Just sit for a moment with the feeling of courage.

You can practice this exercise on your own or with others. You can record yourself slowly reading the above as a script and then play it back for yourself. If you’re a teacher or a parent, after researching and practicing this and other mindfulness techniques on an ongoing basis, you can lead your students or children in the practice.

This exercise is a simple form of mindfulness combined with inquiry. It can help you be more aware of your thoughts and feelings, of how your mind works, and how to more deeply engage with and enjoy the world. I hope it works for you.

How To Better Understand Your Emotions

Last week, I talked about why understanding emotion is important in thinking critically and clearly. It is not just understanding emotion, however, that is important but being mindfully aware and able to monitor, and let them go. This week, I will discuss one perspective on what exactly an emotion is. This approach combines Western psychology and neuroscience with Buddhism. One practice I discussed last week is to use analysis or deconstruction. Analysis itself can be turned into a way to intervene in and let go of an emotion. To analyze or deconstruct an emotion, first understand the triggers and evolutionary uses of emotion and then go to the components of emotional experience. An intellectual understanding of the physiology and psychology of emotion combined with mindfulness can be extremely helpful to us in terms of thinking more clearly or calming our body. Let’s use anxiety as an example.

Triggers: what can trigger anxiety in you or your students? Take a moment to think of times you were anxious. What set it off? Can you find any characteristics these triggers share?

Use: What use can anxiety have? When students understand that each emotion has a purpose or use, they can also come to understand when the emotion goes beyond the use. For example, students want to hold onto anger and don’t see why it might serve them better to let it go. When you prolong the emotions, they go awry. Anxiety and worry can help you prepare for something. It can energize you. To do something you care about, you need to be energized. The energy of anxiety, stress, is the energy of waking up to prepare. It is useful.

One of the things many emotions do is orient us in time. How does anxiety orient us in time? Usually, it orients you to the future. You think of how things might go wrong. But the “future” is an idea, right? Anxiety can orient us out of the present experience to an idea of another experience.

Components: A Buddhist teacher named Shinzen Young has a great description of the components of emotion that influenced (but is not exactly the same as) my own approach. What are the components of emotional experience? I will discuss feelings, sensations, thoughts and images, and motivated actions.

Feelings can be defined as the sensation of touch, or as the initial orienting energy, or awakening of attention. This energy later develops into taking something as good, bad, or neutral, pleasant or unpleasant, to like or dislike; then a state of mind, or emotion, and holding on, pushing away, or being indifferent.

Sensations are the experience of your physiological responses or changes. When you learn the sensations of an emotion, you can learn to spot or feel them and can more easily let them go before they become overwhelming. It is also important, and can be tremendous fun, to ask students what an emotion looks like in someone else. For example, what does an anxious person look like? A moment-by-moment awareness of your own experience can help you better observe and understand what someone else might be experiencing. Emotion is not just felt but communicated. What are the sensations of anxiety?

1. Where are the sensations in your body? A technique I learned from a fellow teacher is to ask students to draw a human figure and circle places where they feel anxiety.

2. How– Describe the sensations of anxiety. For example, are they like pins and needles, tight or loose, cold or warm?

3. How much-How intense are the sensations?

What goes on physiologically with anxiety? The fight-flight-freeze response, our body system that deals with threats, becomes active. You treat your own sensations as a threat. The sensations are uncomfortable and you flee the discomfort. You don’t just feel uncomfortable—you fear the discomfort and what it might mean.

Thoughts: What thoughts or images arise when you’re anxious? We humans have a powerful ability to plan for the future, think, imagine. Language increases the power of these abilities. But that power can be helpful, or go awry. It is the power of thought and imagination and language that helps us develop an idea of our self and others. How does it go awry with anxiety?

When anxious, you think you are unable to face what you think is coming. You imagine others have a negative image of you. You leave behind your present experience. You think of yourself as a house of cards, easily broken, or as a fake, because you have lost contact with yourself. When you fear yourself and your sensations and thoughts, how does the world appear to you? When you flee discomfort, you live the sense of fleeing, of running away. And what happens to thoughts that go against the emotion? Do you hear them? See them?

Actions: What actions does the emotion motivate you to take?

Interventions: How do you intervene in, let go of, anxiety? Since anxiety can be feeling and imagining you can’t handle a future state or event, you flee from your awareness. Your imagination can create distressing images of your future, or wonderful ones. It can undermine or increase your strength depending on how you use it.

When you can safely take action directed at increasing your self-awareness in the present, and better understand whatever is the trigger for anxiety, you can reduce anxiety. When you honor your own sense of what is comfortable and what is not, utilize mindfulness, compassion for yourself as well as others, and imagination practices, and you treat whatever arises as something to learn from. You learn how to inquire into a question, face a challenge and better understand your thinking process.

Mindfulness/Inquiry Practice: What happens to your thinking if you feel you can face any idea, anything that arises? Let’s explore that.

Just sit back and take it easy. If it feels right, close your eyes now or in a minute or so, and take a few slow, calm breaths. Or look at a blank surface before you. Maybe focus on your hands resting in your lap, or your feet on the floor. Or notice how it feels to breathe in—and breathe out. Focus on your face, around your mouth. How do the muscles around your mouth respond as you breathe? As you breathe out? Do you notice any tension, heat, or joy? As you breathe in, can you feel your body expand a little bit? As you breathe out, can you feel your body let go, relax, and settle down? Then focus on your shoulders. Notice what sensations you feel as you breathe in, and breathe out. As you breathe in, do you feel your body expand a little bit? As you breathe out, can you feel your body let go, relax, and settle down? Maybe go to your belly next and simply notice how your belly breathes in—and out. If any thoughts come up, just calmly notice them and appreciate the noticing, and let them go as you return attention to the sensations of breathing.

And now engage your imagination. Let come to your mind an image or memory of a courageous action of your own, or one you witnessed or read about. What was the courageous act? Who did it? What made it courageous? What does courage mean to you? Does it have to be dramatic, like in some movies? Or can it be something simple, like sticking up for someone or speaking out? Or doing something you never did before but was frightening? Or putting yourself at some risk? What does it feel like to be courageous? Imagine feeling courageous. Imagine feeling that you could face whatever came up in your life and just sit for a moment with that feeling.

If you’re doing this with students, practice beforehand. And always give them choices. After a guided practice, have them process the experience, maybe write down the thoughts or images that came up for them or what it felt like to feel they could face whatever arises. Then let them share their thoughts, if they feel comfortable and safe doing so, with you or in a small group.

Can you imagine doing something like this with your students?

**For a fuller development of the components of emotion and the role of emotion in thinking, see my soon to be released book, Compassionate Critical Thinking: How Mindfulness, Creativity, Empathy and Socratic Questioning Can Transform Teaching.

**Here is a link to Mindful Schools, to see a video on using mindfulness to help MS children deal with anxiety.