My teacher Shinzen Young offers a descriptive term for the qualities of undulatory energy that I talked about in my post entitled ‘Lifeforce Energy.’ He labels that kind of energy ‘Flow.’ Flow is a product of impermanence, in other words it is the process of phenonema moving and breaking up in the body-mind, and our experience of flow is the direct contacting of that constant change. This change is occurring whether or no we are paying attention to it, though our conscious awareness of flow can cause it to deepen and expand, or contract in our experience. The energy may expand and contract at the same time, or suddenly vanish. These movements in all sensory domains, when contacted with our mindful awareness are the heart of creation, the force from which life is infused with energy…Shinzen calls it the Great Unborn, taking those words from his teacher Sasaki Roshi.

Flow is an interesting experience to work with in our practice. I find that flow in the body is easiest to contact, though it can occur in our visual and auditory thought spaces (Image/Talk) and also in our emotional and physical body sensations (Feel/Touch). I’ve talked about these sensory spaces in more depth in other posts.

Flow is impermanence in action. We notice that as we pay attention to a phenomena, say thougths for instance, they do not remain stagnant, but instead change over time, maybe each minute, second, nanosecond…we start off thinking about ice cream and end up circulating through thoughts about how our ex broke up with us at an ice cream shop, and then begin to catalog our terrible memories of that person. A few minutes later we might be ruminating on the pain of being single, or the pain of being in relationship. One things leads to another and as the popular saying goes ‘the only thing we can count on is change.’

Whether it is the flowing energy in our physical body, pulsation of emotional energy in the emotional body, a flow of thoughts or a persistant physical pain all these phenomena have a certain dynamic energy that we can pay attention to and witness….Impermanence doesn’t have to be an abstract concept it is occurring every moment in our experience. If you become of aware of this flow of experience in any of the sensory domains pay deep attention to it an soak your awareness in. Even our experience as a human follows these same laws of impermanence.

One experience flows into the next until we cease to exist. Humans like all other phenomena have a beginning a middle and an end. In light of this awareness of our own impermanence and the impermanence of experience we realize how precious the present is and how unique each moment is. We can strive to experience fully the present moment as deeply and richly as possible.

At its core Mindfulness practice is really about deep engagement. Deep listening to ourselves internally, and externally to our environment. Quieting the body-mind so that we can be completely receptive to what is, rather than manipulating, misperceiving, adding to, or taking away from our present experience. I emphasize contact with the body often in these posts. Experiencing through the body the phenomena of our experience. Our body is what contacts the world and feels. Our mind interprets these experiences and organizes them; filtering them through our concepts and perceptual constructs that have come out of past experiences. If we can move away from our thoughts and actually have a direct experience of what is occurring now a wonderful thing can happen….we are completely present and it is deeply satisfying. It is fresh and real and now.

Often when we release our hold on thoughts, or trying to figure things out and concentrate on our direct experience through the body real wisdom can arise in the mind. Instead of ruminating on an experience genuine insight begins to develop and this often comes as fully formed ideas, or concepts. We know they are true because of a grounded feeling in the body that comes as they arise in the mind. In these times when wisdom and insight arise the body-mind is unified and working as one holistic system.

We can practice deep listening by concentrating on a specific area of the body, that feels like a safe place to inhabit. For some of us with trauma there are specific areas of the body that do not feel ok to be in. Choose a space that feels ok. The hands and the feet are my favorite body spaces to use.

Next, choose a simple activity that doesn’t require a ton of brainpower, such as sweeping the floor, or eating, or knitting, walking, etc. Set your intention to completely soak into the direct experience of that activity through your chosen body part. Listen deeply with the body to that experience. Feel the subtle movements and sensations that occur in your hands/feet/legs etc, whatever body space you have chosen, as you move and engage with that activity. If you feel yourself drawn into thought, fantasy, interpretation, analysis, etc…gently release that and come back to your chosen body space with your full awareness.

We want about 80% of our awareness in our chosen body space and 20% staying in contact with the whole body to facilitate movement and safety while engaging in our activity. Try to devote 10 or 20 minutes to this exercise. Practice this often and notice your experience. There can be a deep satisfaction and wisdom that develops out of this fully engaged embodiment.

Most of us feel anxiety every day of our lives. Anxiety in small doses can be a healthy motivator and part of our daily performance in life. However, for many people anxiety reaches an intensity level around certain experiences and situations that prevents us from making the choices we want and engaging in activities that we wish to. Anxiety falls into the broad category of ‘Fear’ and is generally a constellation of feelings and thoughts around an upcoming situation. It is largely anticipatory, meaning that the fear and the fearful thoughts occur before the actual event/situation/circumstance that we are actual afraid of is taking place. If you have any question about this notice anxiety next time it comes up for you….is a fearful situation actually happening when you feel it or is the negative feeling/thoughts/sensatiosn occurring beforehand….? Please check this out in your experience.

Because anxiety is based on future events Mindfulness can be an antidote to this future-oriented fear. How? We have defined mindfulness practice as using our attention and concentration to be in the present with our moment-to-moment experience. If we are present in our bodies and thoughts then we cannot be anticipating or jumping ahead to future oriented events. Often our minds are conditioned to look towards the future and this disconnect from our present experience has alot to do with the unpleasant feelings in our body that come with anxiety. Our being is split…the mind is in the future and the body is in the present, this conflict brings about a sense of dis-ease.

From my own experiences with anxiety and my work with clients I have found that often the feeling of anxiety is much more accessible than the thoughts that go with the state of being anxious. I am often aware of a tightness in my chest, or a sinking feeling in my stomach, perhaps also a tightness in my throat or jaw. These are my first indications of anxiety….another good indicator is that nothing is happening in the moment to cause this fear. I am safe yet i am having these sensations and feelings that I associate with fear. Next I might go to the thoughts. I notice that I am telling myself a story…’the last time you did this they all laughed at you…’ That is a common story that runs through my mind before I do any kind of public speaking or teaching. There was a single incidence in my past of people laughing at me in 5th grade while i gave a presentation. Yet close to 30 years later the same story that was true one time, and has been untrue many other times still comes up.

Most of us have these stories, or as one of my former therapists called them ‘my tapes.’ Our tapes run almost all of the time and often shape our experiences in ways that we do not want. In this case, my story about performing was creating a feedback loop. First I would have the anxious feeling then the thoughts associated with the upcoming experience and that in turn intensified the feelings and so on…. With anxiety often a feedback loop is created between the thoughts and the feelings and each perpetuates the other; both phenomenon becoming stronger on each cycle. For some this experience escalates into a panic attack.

This feedback loop happens unconsciously for most of us and we do not recognize the thought or feeling component of this anxiety. Instead, because both the thoughts and the sensations are painful, we seek to push them away or banish them from our consciousness. Though the impulse to avoid pain is natural and very human it does not serve us in this circumstance. This avoidance tends to condition this feedback loop in an increasingly compelling pattern into our mental body, physical body, and emotional body. In other words it becomes a habit to feel anxious.

The answer to this is to start to pay attention to our experience of anxiety with as much awareness as possible. We want to approach our anxiety as a good old friend. To get to know its nuances and subtleties to let it know that even though it is unpleasant it is part of us, part of our experience and it is worth getting to know.

As said earlier, often the physical and emotional sensations in the body are the most easily accessible when anxiety is present. I have found that a very good strategy when feeling anxious is to direct our attention to the sensations of the anxiety. We use our awareness to surround the sensation, not penetrating it but finding its form and volume and surrounding it with our awareness allowing it to soak into the feeling. I often experience anxiety in my chest as a tightness, as if there was a clenched fist around my heart center. To encounter this anxiety I would surround the fist with my awareness feeling its details and being willing to know it, if even for a short time. You might even try saying silently to yourself ‘yes’ as you feel the sensations.

This strategy short circuits the feedback loop. First of all we are doing something different by not avoiding the experience. We are turning towards the anxiety rather than away from it. Instead of trying to feel something different or feel better we are just allowing ourselves to feel what is. This attitude of openness and acceptance characterized by the ‘yes’ is an affirmation to ourselves and an acceptance of our present experience.

By turning towards the feelings we are moving out of our future orientation and encountering the present in our bodies. As we become willing to connect to our moment-to-moment experience in our bodies we let go of the thoughts which are pushing us toward a future time or situation. By definition, our feelings occurring in our body are happening in the present. The thoughts of the future situation are about something that is a fantasy…we do not yet know what the future will bring.

The thoughts will keep occurring, but the important thing is to move our attention and concentration away from them and into our somatic experience. This creates mindfulness as we track and open to our sensations/feelings in the somatic body. Our thoughts are often compelling and we may have to move away from the the thoughts again and again.

The feelings may also be unpleasant. However, there is a rule with our feelings. They can only happen for a finite amount of time. They may grow weaker or stronger as we pay attention to them, but eventually they will pass away and we will feel something else. So instead of recreating these feelings in each moment by telling ourselves a fearful and future oriented story we are turning off the circuit by taking away the energy of our awareness and directing it instead to an experience of our bodies and our emotional energy in our bodies. Without being fed by fearful thoughts our energy in our bodies will move and change in response to the present. We will have an authentic experience of being rather than an inauthentic experience created by fearful fantasy.

This takes practice. I suggest you begin to notice if your anxiety works this way…and begin to have the intention of directing your attention and concentration to your bodily experience. Our body’s experience is generally related to our present experience. As we disconnect from the stories we tell our selves our bodies begin to regulate and experience feeling connected to what is going on in the present moment. Even if the present moment is not ideal there is a certain satisfaction and relaxation in connecting to what is rather than reacting to a fantasy. Trust your body to guide you in this.

Each of these sensory spaces (defined in last post) also has a restful state, as well as the active state I have described above. Below I will define each restful state of each sensory space:

Touch Space:

Active state – Touch

Restful state – Relaxed – This restful state is experienced when there is essentially nothing going on in the Touch space. We experience this as stillness in the physical body and there is a sense of relaxation or settling.

Feel Space:

Active State – Feel

Restful State – Peace (or Neutral) – Peace occurs when there is the absence, or very little of physical phenomena with emotional content. We have a sense of peacefulness or stillness in the subtle physical/emotional body.

Image Space

Active State – Image

Restful State – Blank – this is often experienced as a blank screen, and can even be located behind or underneath image phenomena that are occurring.

Talk Space

Active State – Talk

Restful State – Quiet – This denotes the absence of internal talk, but is also relative. May be quiet, in comparison to what is happening in the active state. As awareness increases you may find that some low level noise is always going on in this space at the edge of unconsciousness.

The way these can be used is as follows:

Follow the directions in my previous post.

In addition, we will begin to label our experience in our chosen domain. We will label either the active state or the restful state as they are occurring. Sometimes the active state and the restful state can be occurring at once. In image space this often happens where we can ’see’ the image component of thought, but also can contact the ‘blank’ space behind that. In that case, we can go with whatever state is calling our attention.

When labeling it is important to use a non-judgemental and gentle tone. This promotes equanimity when encountering and making a relationship with our experiences.

The practice might look like this. Say you choose the image space to work with.

You would label every time an image arises in that space, saying quietly and with equanimity to yourself ‘image.’ Once you have labeled the phenomena stay with it, for the next 6-8 seconds. The image may stay or fade away, or morph in some way…whatever happens with it just follow your sensory experience of the image. After the 6-8 seconds is complete, if the image is still there, or if another has presented itself in image space you would label ‘image‘ again. If there is no image, by definition you would be encountering the restful state of image space, so you would label that ‘blank’. Again, staying with the blank, or the restful state for 6-8 seconds. It is important to stay with your experience in your chosen domain, whether restful or active, or a combination of both. This keeping your attention on the chosen domain and the current sensory phenomenon you are experiencing allows you to build concentration. Otherwise, if we flit from experience to experience, labeling and moving on, we are creating more of inattention and weakness in our concentration and awareness (or monkey mind as many practitioners are fond of calling it). Mindfulness is weakened in this case.

I am aware of the difficulties of trying to explain this practice in the medium of a blog…please comment or send me an email message from the about page if you are unclear or unsure about anything I have described here.

Namaste,

David