How come I feel the same? I thought this would change everything!

In the July 09 issue of Shamb­hala Sun, there’s an arti­cle called, “Tak­ing Mind­ful­ness to the Mat†(pg.43) The issue, btw, is about yoga and med­i­ta­tion. The author, Frank Jude Boc­cio, men­tions the Buddha’s four foun­da­tions of mind­ful­ness — body, mind, feel­ings, and dharma (teachings.)

I thought of the arti­cle hav­ing just worked with a client who was new both to me and to body­work. I real­ized that I tend to assume that peo­ple “get†what I do, prior to my explain­ing it, espe­cially if they found me on my web­site. This week, with 3 new clients, I dis­cov­ered that the inter­con­nec­tion between body, mind, feel­ings, and “teach­ings†is not so clear to them.

Let me talk briefly, then, about these four foundations

Body

Why am I the way I am?

In the West, there is a dis­con­nect between the body and the mind, and one way this is described is ‘horse and rider.’ The mind is assumed to be the impor­tant part (the rider,) and the body is the con­veyance for get­ting about (the horse.)

I dis­agree.

There is no clear dis­tinc­tion between ‘parts,’ and what we think of as mind is actu­ally our child­ish egos, spin­ning sto­ries. (Ego dif­fers from mind, as we shall see.) We are quite clearly Body­Minds. The “sys­tems†exist simul­ta­ne­ously, and inform each other. Divid­ing our­selves up is sim­ply a con­ve­nience, and not a par­tic­u­larly help­ful one.

The body, in a sense (he says with a smirk) speaks its own lan­guage. Aches, pains, tight­ness, ill­ness, dis­ease — this is the pro­gres­sion of bod­ily com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

The body, how­ever, is not at war with the mind or with the self.

Because of our ten­dency to go into our heads and tell sto­ries, our bod­ies get the short shrift. There is infor­ma­tion to be gath­ered, and our body wants to be heard, but we scare our­selves with all that “roil­ing, messy stuff†below our necks.

Many are the clients who do the fol­low­ing: they sense bod­ily ten­sion and pain, notice a feel­ing of anx­i­ety (actu­ally a vibra­tion) and rather than explore what might be hid­den beneath the pain and feel­ing, they “go for a run.†They do some­thing to dis­tract them­selves. Some overeat, some do drugs, some drink to excess, some lift weights, some work end­less hours, and almost all of them blame some­one else for the way they are.

The body is simple.

There is a tight­ness and a stres­sor, and the body wants to get it out by express­ing it. In body­work, we press on the stuck places, and often out comes the emotion.

Now, of course, noth­ing ‘gets out’ with­out permission.

One of my clients (a run­ner!) was tight at the heart level. Push­ing on the ster­num and the upper back cre­ated an open­ing for his tears, which flowed freely. When I pushed on his legs, how­ever, old con­di­tion­ing kicked in (so to speak…) He said, “I was really angry, and wanted to pound some­thing.†He, how­ever, pounded noth­ing. He just sucked up the pain, and re-buried the anger.

No per­mis­sion, no expression.

The body is telling you all sorts of things. If you are won­der­ing about spe­cific aches and pains, check out the body­work sec­tion of our web­site. You’ll quickly dis­cover what the zones of the body are all about. You can also e-mail me with questions.

Mind

So… are you mak­ing up stories??

I’ve lately been telling clients, “Be mind­ful of mind.†When I say this, I am encour­ag­ing clients to watch the oper­a­tion of their minds.

Many peo­ple think that med­i­ta­tion is about ‘not think­ing.’ This is not so. Med­i­ta­tion, or mind­ful­ness, is about not attach­ing, or cling­ing, as you think. Per­haps the Buddha’s great­est insight is this “suf­fer­ing is caused by cling­ing.†No cling­ing, no suffering.

We think, all the time. Look around the room, and name stuff: pic­ture, phone, toaster, what­ever. Now, focus on one thing you really like, and think, “Mine!†Notice what happens.

You likely go into a story about the thing—where it came from, what it means to you.

Now, imag­ine the thing bro­ken or stolen. Notice how quickly the sim­ple act of observ­ing (pic­ture, phone, toaster, what­ever) turns into clinging.

This is where mind goes off the rails.

Ego cre­ates cling­ing, and the main thing ego clings to is “my story.†I think it kind of funny that the past is often called one’s ‘his­tory.’ Which clearly reads, his–STORY. Ego picks and chooses how you describe you—what to leave in, what to take out, what you like, what you hate, and emphat­i­cally, who is to blame.

Ego, then, is a difficulty.

We’re stuck with it, how­ever, so the goal here is to loosen our grip suf­fi­ciently to “get†that the ego is sim­ply a men­tal device that likes to tell stories.

This is being mind­ful of mind.

In my clients’ case, my goal is to help them move past their ego sto­ries. Part of this hap­pens in body­work, as they give them­selves per­mis­sion to express their emo­tions, and deal directly (with­out story) with their bod­ies. Mostly, it’s about let­ting the body do what it needs to—shake, cry, rage, go ecsta­tic, whatever.

What­ever you repress (cling to) you become. So, doing the dif­fi­cult thing is often the best thing for get­ting past blockages.

Feel­ings

As we do body­work, my clients observe their process: “What arises? Are they thoughts, feel­ings, or judgements?â€

It’s really a chicken-egg ques­tion — which comes first, the thought or the feel­ing? Rather than cling to look­ing for an answer, let’s just say that feel­ings arise.

Feel­ings are both the bod­ily sen­sa­tion and the emo­tion beneath it. Feel­ings are not the judge­ments!

So, pain at the ster­num is a feel­ing, as is the sad­ness or grief “beneath†it. As with mind, the work we do is to help clients to be with their feel­ings with­out judg­ing or labelling them.

Labelling is nor­mal, and we learned it from mom and dad.

Par­ents teach us which emotions/feeling are accept­able (the happy ones) and which are to be repressed (the angry ones.) The repres­sion is either direct (“Don’t do that!â€) or indi­rect (“You have noth­ing to be sad about!â€) We learn from the cra­dle to have judge­ments about most of our felt-experience.

Our goal in ther­apy, and here with this blog, is to help you to feel your feel­ings, with­out attach­ing judge­ments. Exer­cise: In the Shamb­hala Sun arti­cle, the writer sug­gests you sit in med­i­ta­tion pose, with hands palms down. If you watch your feel­ings, you might expe­ri­ence heav­i­ness or ground­ed­ness. Revers­ing your hands, palm up, you might notice, open­ness, light­ness, respon­sive­ness. Those are feelings.

“I HAVE to be open!†is where egoic judge­ment comes in.

We sug­gest becom­ing more and more open to the direct feel­ing and expres­sion of… feel­ings. They don’t mean any­thing, and cause untold dam­age if they are held in.

Teach­ings

Teach­ing is the point of this blog. I attempt to help you to look at your self and life in another way, to, in a sense, hold your­self loosely. I present both east­ern and west­ern ideas.

Per­haps the key one, which I just turned into a tee-shirt, is “100% self-responsibility, 0% blame, judge­ment, “knowing.â€

We’ll look at a series of ideas that help with this walk in com­ing weeks.

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