40 minutes of standing yoga was a welcome respite for the 18 students who were in attendance in class this afternoon. There were some smiling, self-conscious trees out there when we came to Tree Pose, and others were reluctant to rise (Lazarus-like?) from Corpse Pose at the end. Coming, as it does, a few days after a big anatomy exam, it was my sense that the students were looking forward to some relaxing self care of their OWN anatomy!
But it wasn’t all relaxation. As we talked about mindfulness as a practice rather than a tool or coping skill, someone articulated the question on several minds: “What’s wrong with using this to deal with a difficult situation?” I noticed an almost visible tensing in my core as felt the pushback implied in his honest and heartfelt question/challenge. I could see the sincerity in his eyes as I talked a bit about the potential for deploying the mindfulness skills or practices in the face of specific difficulty, but also the much more salutary effects of having it as a “baseline stance” that allows us to deal differently with challenge or difficulty.
Whew! I think I handled that OK, and then someone noted that she brought attention to a difficult experience this week (as part of the Unpleasant Events Calendar assignment) and she felt it made her feelings worse and she admitted, this raised some skepticism for her. I smiled to myself because when I hear skepticism, I recognize engagement. As I pointed out “Don’t take my word for any of this. Let your own experience be your guide!” I shared that I was pleased that she had been willing to move in to difficulty and to observe her experience and encouraged her to continue to watch and see what might come of meeting it in this way, without attaching too much significance to one particular experience.”
It’s all in the service of meeting experience, pleasant or unpleasant, in new ways that promote presence, attention, patience, kindness and compassion. In other words, the heart of healing. In Full Catastrophe Living, Jon Kabat-Zinn defines healing as relating differently to illness, disability and even death, by meeting it with the “eyes of wholeness.” Powerful as this might be for patients alone, imagine your physician meeting you with those eyes. These doctors-to-be can. They have and they talked about it today. Cool.
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This week we were asked to fill out an “unpleasant events” calendar, following last weeks assignment of a “pleasant events” calendar. I found myself resisting. The week before, I had looked forward to each daily entry and enjoyed writing down and reliving something pleasant from my day. It always re-invoked the warm sensations of happiness. This week, I didn’t really want to go back and experience something unpleasant for the second time…that didn’t appeal to me at all. I found myself frequently thinking about how I was resisting the assignment, which meant that I spent a great deal more time thinking about the unpleasant event than I otherwise might have, had I just written it down and gone ahead with what I was supposed to do for class.
I put it off for three or four days, all the while still mulling over my unpleasant events, my resentment rising, my irritation accumulating…Then I finally went ahead and wrote down my few days worth of unpleasant events. The columns of the calendar ask you to consider the event, consider if you felt unpleasant feelings during the event, how your body felt, what moods or feelings or thoughts accompanied the event and then what thoughts came up while recording the event. I found that my last column, of thoughts arising in the present moment as I recorded the events, were all positive. I was able to process each unpleasant event, with a little bit of distance and perspective and I was able to recognize it, allow it to exist, explore why it was unpleasant, and then allow it to dissolve. From those reflections, I was able to diffuse each event and release it. I then reflected on all of the suffering I had created for myself over the past few days – resisting the exercise, thinking about it, resenting it, stewing in my unpleasant events. I thought about the irony…and then I laughed to myself, forgave myself and allowed those thoughts to dissolve away as well.
For me, this is a small example of something that I feel is often misunderstood in terms of mindfulness and meditation and alternative approaches. The point is NOT to always focus on the positive. While it can be tremendously healing and constructive to search for the positives in life and to turn negative circumstances into something more useful by doing so, that doesn’t mean that you can’t allow the negative to exist. Its just the opposite in fact. By recognizing the bad, the hurt, the anger, ect. only then are you able to release it and move forward.
There is a quote from one of our readings that, in paraphrase, encourages the mindful individual to keep one’s eyes on the wound, for that is where the most profound healing can occur. This is what I was missing.
During this week’s class, we started off with standing yoga. Moving from one pose to another, balancing myself, and focusing my intentions were not as difficult as they had been during previous sessions. I felt more comfortable and content after the activity. Even the lying on the hard floor for the body scan was more relaxing than usual. No pressure or pain felt in my lower back, the back of my head, or the soles of my feet. Perhaps, my body has gotten used to the attention I was giving it and the extra time I spent to listen to it. I wonder if that is the case. After the body scan, we started to discuss the use of mindfulness, which has put me in a bit of a confusion. I have been using it as a stress-coping skill, but it was revealed to me that that was not what it was meant for. Mindfulness, from what I understand, helps us formulate a viewpoint or an attitude of the situations we are in. This is what healing is partly based on – a change in point of view about our surroundings. With a better understanding of our practices, we went on to discuss the unpleasant event calendar assignment. My classmate’s experience was clearly an unpleasant one. It was, however, very different from the most recent event I experienced. Mine was more of a feeling of emptiness. I attended a party that I expected to be fun and uplifting. I made conversations with friends, had a drink, and ate some food. After I came back from it; however, I just felt empty and unsatisfied. None of the conversations were sour. All the foods and drinks were great. But again, I just felt like something was missing but I couldn’t quite place a finger on it. This made me wonder whether emptiness should be on the unpleasant or the pleasant event calendar. Do I always have to feel fulfilled and happy in order for the event to be a pleasant one? Or is that feeling of emptiness is merely to describe an event that is neither pleasant nor unpleasant. I am not quite sure myself. Being more mindful, hopefully, will help me better understand myself physically, mentally, and emotionally.
I am intrigued by Dr. Hickman’s opposition to the idea of using mindfulness as a “tool” to be deployed in difficult situations. I realize that he is trying to prompt us to strive for the far greater benefits that can come from deeply integrating mindfulness into our lives, creating a new baseline rather than just an occasional flirtation with the practice. However, I’m not sure that naming this approach to existence as a “tool” is at odds with the “new baseline” concept. Perhaps mindfulness is like a pair of glasses, without which I cannot see clearly, and which I wear pretty much whenever I’m awake. I may be able to make do without them when the stakes are low and clarity is not required, but I couldn’t imagine driving on the freeway – or any other stressful, high stakes scenario – without them. The tool remains a tool despite the fact that I have integrated its use into my baseline existence. Its contribution to my quality of life remains consistently valuable despite the fact that my gratitude particularly increases when it comes to my aid in a time of trouble. Importantly, being able to periodically take the glasses off can provides much needed perspective as to how valuable their contribution to my life truly is. Perhaps one can be mindful without being grateful for the utility of mindfulness – and perhaps I should not care about the utility of the practice. But the fact is, utility is what motivates my commitment to most of my choices in life.
Last week’s assignment had us making a journal of unpleasant events, which I found to be helpful because it made me more aware of those events. Typically, I stew over unpleasant events for a short while before I just push it back and bottle it up. I’ve been told that it’s bad for me because usually somewhere down the line (maybe days, weeks, months, etc) the really unpleasant things that recur kind of add up and I have a terrible fit of temper toward someone or something that is completely undeserving of my anger (for example my mother). However, I felt like this week by documenting my unpleasant events it made me want to talk about it to my friends or my mom and help sort it out earlier rather than have it stress me out at a later time. For example, I have been having recurrent problems with my old research professor who is a bit of a difficult person to work with and I requested a recommendation letter from him. I had been having difficulty understanding his behavior toward my team and me and had just been storing the displeasure away because thinking about it made me stressed. However, when I wrote out an unpleasant event related to him, I realized that it was a major unpleasant event since it kept recurring in my recent life and so I decided to talk to people about it and try to resolve the issue. In any case, I found the exercise to be helpful.
Yoga in class was also very good, I liked this better than the body scan because it was more actively relaxing me rather than passively making me go to sleep. I still have not been able to keep my mind focused in the mindful body scan, perhaps I need to work on getting more sleep…
Until next time!