1. Reconnect with your favorite spiritual/religious practice. Showing up at temple, church, or mosque can be especially rewarding if you have not been for a while. A unique perspective on your purpose in life is available there, as are connections to a neighborhood community.
2. Take a free, mini-vacation and disappear for a few hours. A visit to a park, the beach, or a nearby open space offers an opportunity to breathe deeply and reconnect with nature, to sense a timeless world that stands apart from the frenzies we create and the foibles we commit.
3. Take a mental inventory of those family members and friends who provide your personal emotional support system and then reach out to them. Don’t worry so much about how they can help you; focus instead on you can help them. The act of giving creates chemicals in your brain that will help calm you down and make you feel better.
4. Get some vigorous aerobic exercise. There’s nothing better for the blues than a good dose of endorphins, and nothing calms anxiety and tames fear faster than getting out there for a walk, a jog, a swim, or a visit to the gym. Push it hard enough to pant a bit, but if you’ve not exercised in a while go easy. Be sure and stretch your body before and after to avoid injury.
5. Start a mind/body program. Meditation helps you learn to watch yourself in a most helpful way, and yoga helps work the stress out of your muscles and joints. Best of all is tai chi, which does both.
6. Check a good novel out of the library, turn off the phone and curl up with it. There’s nothing wrong with disappearing into fiction for a while. Stay with fiction, though. Choosing one more book about global warming, terrorism, or financial crises is just going to worry you more.
7. Start a creative project. Anything that uses your creativity, imagination and passion can help you transcend your world and put problems into perspective. Writing, painting, sculpting, woodworking, even graphic arts on the computer are all good choices.
8. Revisit a place from your past or check in with a friend from school. Perhaps there’s someone you’ve been meaning to call, or a restaurant you’ve wanted to visit because you remember a good meal you had there years ago. Seeing how things both change and remain the same can broaden your perspective in invaluable ways and help turn today’s mountains into molehills.
9. Drink more water and watch what you eat. When we are preoccupied we are more likely to consume caffeine and sugar, which increase our swings of mood. We also often forget to drink lots of water. It is hard to think clearly when you are dehydrated, as both memory and logic elude you.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Thursday, September 25, 2008
The Dao of the Dow
The September 15th issue of the New York Times featured an article exploring our sometimes visceral reactions to awkward social situations. A Cold Stare Can Make You Crave Some Heat by Benedict Carey http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/16/health/research/16cold.html?_r=1&nl=8hlth&emc=hltha2&oref=slogin cited a new study that shows that when people receive a frosty reception at a cocktail party, they crave a hot drink. You read that right. Being frozen out of a social group—rejected, insulted, ignored—creates the desire to be “warmed up.” According to the article, the language of metaphor can activate a physical sensation, and vice versa. This may explain why we use the terms we do to describe people and situations, and it may also explain why we feel the way we do about events in the external world.
If an unsuccessful attempt to crack the clique at a party leaves us needing to be warmed up, what can we expect from the turmoil in the financial markets, and how can we use the power of mind to overcome a visceral, and possibly irrational, response? Many people have real work to do in the face of Wall Street developments. They may be best off buying, selling, diversifying, deferring payments, making bigger payments, shifting assets, seeking counsel and more. But for the average, long-term Main Street investor the best advice seems to be to sit tight and weather the cycle, and, the best prescription for stomach butterflies may be to sip the equivalent of that cup of hot tea.
The fascinating aspect of the financial debacle is that it is, in part, a reflection of our interior urges—greed, intemperance, laxity, haste, impatience, manipulation, and more. The markets, after all, are merely the external manifestation of the things people do. Industrial averages express the aggregate energy and intention of the people behind them. In reacting to them, we are often reacting, belatedly, to things we ourselves have done or felt, or to the inner upheavals of others. Understanding this means understanding that in the same way we ourselves have good days and bad days, successes and failures, triumphs and tribulations, the markets have them too. The way we respond to our own cycles is a good predictor of the way we will respond to larger-scale cycles that seem incomprehensible and feel uncontrollable.
Simply recognizing that the both internal and external events have cycles helps us gain perspective. Discerning our own reaction to external events requires a bit more mindfulness. It’s easy to see what’s going on outside; sometimes it’s harder to face things inside. Learning to notice the tell-tale signs of our own anxiety—troubled sleep, irritability, sadness, inability to concentrate or focus—as soon as they appear is the best way to nip them in the bud. Think of a saucepan on the burner. We want to catch those negative emotions when they are still little tiny bubbles forming on the bottom of the pan, long before the water explodes into a full boil. If the cold shoulder at a party makes us long for a hot drink, then uncertainty and change in the markets may cause us to seek familiarity and stability. Maybe we want the house immaculately clean. Maybe we want our kid’s room to look like as Spartan and organized as an empty jail cell. Maybe we want all our pencils lined up or we have the sudden need to detail our car—anything to create order inside when chaos reigns outside. These behaviors serve a purpose in helping us restore a sense of control but to make all our little tactics as calming and restorative as possible we must try to notice them. Watching ourselves, we see the little games we play, and seeing them we free ourselves from the hold they have over us. Becoming conscious in this way also helps us with perspective too, and a realistic appraisal of how much we really need for a safe and healthy life versus how much advertising and cultural messages teach us to want.
If an unsuccessful attempt to crack the clique at a party leaves us needing to be warmed up, what can we expect from the turmoil in the financial markets, and how can we use the power of mind to overcome a visceral, and possibly irrational, response? Many people have real work to do in the face of Wall Street developments. They may be best off buying, selling, diversifying, deferring payments, making bigger payments, shifting assets, seeking counsel and more. But for the average, long-term Main Street investor the best advice seems to be to sit tight and weather the cycle, and, the best prescription for stomach butterflies may be to sip the equivalent of that cup of hot tea.
The fascinating aspect of the financial debacle is that it is, in part, a reflection of our interior urges—greed, intemperance, laxity, haste, impatience, manipulation, and more. The markets, after all, are merely the external manifestation of the things people do. Industrial averages express the aggregate energy and intention of the people behind them. In reacting to them, we are often reacting, belatedly, to things we ourselves have done or felt, or to the inner upheavals of others. Understanding this means understanding that in the same way we ourselves have good days and bad days, successes and failures, triumphs and tribulations, the markets have them too. The way we respond to our own cycles is a good predictor of the way we will respond to larger-scale cycles that seem incomprehensible and feel uncontrollable.
Simply recognizing that the both internal and external events have cycles helps us gain perspective. Discerning our own reaction to external events requires a bit more mindfulness. It’s easy to see what’s going on outside; sometimes it’s harder to face things inside. Learning to notice the tell-tale signs of our own anxiety—troubled sleep, irritability, sadness, inability to concentrate or focus—as soon as they appear is the best way to nip them in the bud. Think of a saucepan on the burner. We want to catch those negative emotions when they are still little tiny bubbles forming on the bottom of the pan, long before the water explodes into a full boil. If the cold shoulder at a party makes us long for a hot drink, then uncertainty and change in the markets may cause us to seek familiarity and stability. Maybe we want the house immaculately clean. Maybe we want our kid’s room to look like as Spartan and organized as an empty jail cell. Maybe we want all our pencils lined up or we have the sudden need to detail our car—anything to create order inside when chaos reigns outside. These behaviors serve a purpose in helping us restore a sense of control but to make all our little tactics as calming and restorative as possible we must try to notice them. Watching ourselves, we see the little games we play, and seeing them we free ourselves from the hold they have over us. Becoming conscious in this way also helps us with perspective too, and a realistic appraisal of how much we really need for a safe and healthy life versus how much advertising and cultural messages teach us to want.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Mindfulness and Wellness
A number of my students have lately wondered how it is that they still get sick even though they practice their tai chi assiduously. Some may have in mind, I suppose, that mind/body practice is such a powerful pill that it banishes all pathogens and enhances the immune system to beyond mortal levels. These folks are in good company. The history of martial arts is littered with great masters who thought they were invincible because of their art, and abused themselves with drugs, alcohol, promiscuity or other excesses only to die young and surprised.
The truth is the practice of tai chi or any other mind/body exercise is only one piece of the large picture of how we live our life. The mind part of the equation presupposes that we learn the lessons of the art and seek balance and peace and harmony in all things, not just the few hours per week that we practice. We’re supposed to be learning not to meet force with force, to go with the flow, and to relax as deeply as possible. That translates to everyday action, not just to class time. Seeing the practice this way blurs the distinction between tai chi the philosophy and tai chi ch’uan (ch’uan means fist) the martial art. After all, if we are practicing the principles all the time, where does one leave off and the other begin?
Sports icon Jim Fixx, took up running when he was 35, overweight, and a two-pack-a-day smoker. He discovered the joy of running, lost 60 pounds and stopped smoking. His books and media appearances were a source of inspiration to many folks who got out on the road, addressed their sedentary lifestyles, and changed their lives for the better. When he suffered a massive heart attack at 52, some people said Fixx’s premature end proved that running was a bad thing. What those critics failed to recognize was that Fixx had a family history of cardiovascular disease. His father suffered a heart attack at 35 and died of one at 42. Were Fixx’s ten extra years worth the effort? I bet he would say yes.
We all go through cycles of sickness and health. These cycles represent our body coping with assaults from the outside, and dealing with our stress at life’s challenges. If we always felt perfectly well, our body’s defense mechanisms would have no practice dealing with adversaries. We’d do great until boom, one day we just dropped dead from a mosquito bite. The up and down of our every day energy level is normal. The goal is to narrow the amplitude of the cycle so that we never feel really badly, and the big afflictions do not strike us.
If we want to achieve that goal, if we want to feel tip-top most of the time and avoid serious illness, we have to put our practice into our life on an hourly basis, from the way we bend and move to what we do when we face the refrigerator door at 11PM, to letting go of anger and frustration and judgment—self-judgment most of all. Mindfulness is the key. The practice has shown us what to do, but if we don’t do it and only pay lip service to the path, we can’t expect miracles. It is hard to be fully conscious all the time, but if we try, it gets easier, and the results are so worth it!
The truth is the practice of tai chi or any other mind/body exercise is only one piece of the large picture of how we live our life. The mind part of the equation presupposes that we learn the lessons of the art and seek balance and peace and harmony in all things, not just the few hours per week that we practice. We’re supposed to be learning not to meet force with force, to go with the flow, and to relax as deeply as possible. That translates to everyday action, not just to class time. Seeing the practice this way blurs the distinction between tai chi the philosophy and tai chi ch’uan (ch’uan means fist) the martial art. After all, if we are practicing the principles all the time, where does one leave off and the other begin?
Sports icon Jim Fixx, took up running when he was 35, overweight, and a two-pack-a-day smoker. He discovered the joy of running, lost 60 pounds and stopped smoking. His books and media appearances were a source of inspiration to many folks who got out on the road, addressed their sedentary lifestyles, and changed their lives for the better. When he suffered a massive heart attack at 52, some people said Fixx’s premature end proved that running was a bad thing. What those critics failed to recognize was that Fixx had a family history of cardiovascular disease. His father suffered a heart attack at 35 and died of one at 42. Were Fixx’s ten extra years worth the effort? I bet he would say yes.
We all go through cycles of sickness and health. These cycles represent our body coping with assaults from the outside, and dealing with our stress at life’s challenges. If we always felt perfectly well, our body’s defense mechanisms would have no practice dealing with adversaries. We’d do great until boom, one day we just dropped dead from a mosquito bite. The up and down of our every day energy level is normal. The goal is to narrow the amplitude of the cycle so that we never feel really badly, and the big afflictions do not strike us.
If we want to achieve that goal, if we want to feel tip-top most of the time and avoid serious illness, we have to put our practice into our life on an hourly basis, from the way we bend and move to what we do when we face the refrigerator door at 11PM, to letting go of anger and frustration and judgment—self-judgment most of all. Mindfulness is the key. The practice has shown us what to do, but if we don’t do it and only pay lip service to the path, we can’t expect miracles. It is hard to be fully conscious all the time, but if we try, it gets easier, and the results are so worth it!
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Changing Government from the Bottom up
Earlier this week, a friend of mine became a naturalized American citizen. At her swearing-in ceremony she received a packet of documents briefing her on different aspects of citizenship, including laws and responsibilities. Inside the packet was a letter on White House stationary, signed by President Bush. I read the document carefully, and while I am pretty certain the president did not write it, I hope he knows what it says because it is a powerful piece of work.
The second paragraph of four reads as follows:
“Americans are united across the generations by grand enduring ideals. The grandest of these ideals is an unfolding promise that everyone belongs, that everyone deserves a chance, and that no insignificant person was ever born. Our country has never been united by blood or birth or soil. We are bound by principles that move us beyond our backgrounds, lift us above our interests, and teach us what it means to be citizens. Every citizen must uphold these principles. And every new citizen, by embracing these ideals, makes our country more, not less, American.”
I like this letter a great deal, especially the part about ideals and principles. It reminds me of my great-uncle Herbert Lehman, four-term governor of New York, senator, and Director General of UNRRA, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. My great-uncle really believed in the precepts expressed in President Bush’s letter. As a child I was privileged to overhear conversations about the responsibilities of leadership and the strong and uncompromising principles required of public servants. That’s what this scion of the Democratic Party said about himself back then, that he was a public servant. There was no false humility, no working the angles, and no posturing either. His words weren’t rhetoric¬–they were spoken for the benefit of his family. A man of great compassion, I remember being with him the day JFK was assassinated, and I remember seeing a man in such anguish his heart might as well have been caught in a bear trap. He died a few days later, but my parents continued to repeat and emphasize his lessons for decades to follow.
I’ve been thinking of my great-uncle’s values in the context of my friend’s achievement, and of what it actually means to be a citizen. Our nation represents the sum total of what each of us does to become a better person, to subscribe to the ideals of the founding fathers, to participate together in perpetuating our grand experiment that in the not-so-distant past was the envy of the world. Seeing the whole as an expression of the sum of the parts, perhaps even more than the sum, fits perfectly with the ancient Eastern philosophy I teach and study professionally. That discipline emphasizes self-cultivation and learning the twin skills of going with the flow and keeping one’s equilibrium so as to produce harmony, and encourage peace.
Watching the conventions I couldn’t help but think that we would do better getting back to these core concepts rather than grandstanding and breast-beating and calling each other names. There’s great opportunity here to bring to fruition the magnificent ideals of the president's letter. How are we elevated by focusing on what we think is wrong with each other? Can we recognize that the sound byte and the clever quip are no substitute for thoughtful, substantive and respectful intercourse? Perhaps our culture has provided us too many weapons of "mass distraction." If immediate gratification, cynicism, consumption, celebrity worship, and politician-as-entertainer are not to be our cultural legacy, then let's be careful in our own lives to nurture better attributes such as kindness, compassion, and creativity. Turning our country around can really only happen from the bottom up, not the top down. It is a mind/body thing—to drive your actions with healthy, uplifting ideas. That’s what the ancient sages would recommend, and its what my great-uncle would do.
The second paragraph of four reads as follows:
“Americans are united across the generations by grand enduring ideals. The grandest of these ideals is an unfolding promise that everyone belongs, that everyone deserves a chance, and that no insignificant person was ever born. Our country has never been united by blood or birth or soil. We are bound by principles that move us beyond our backgrounds, lift us above our interests, and teach us what it means to be citizens. Every citizen must uphold these principles. And every new citizen, by embracing these ideals, makes our country more, not less, American.”
I like this letter a great deal, especially the part about ideals and principles. It reminds me of my great-uncle Herbert Lehman, four-term governor of New York, senator, and Director General of UNRRA, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. My great-uncle really believed in the precepts expressed in President Bush’s letter. As a child I was privileged to overhear conversations about the responsibilities of leadership and the strong and uncompromising principles required of public servants. That’s what this scion of the Democratic Party said about himself back then, that he was a public servant. There was no false humility, no working the angles, and no posturing either. His words weren’t rhetoric¬–they were spoken for the benefit of his family. A man of great compassion, I remember being with him the day JFK was assassinated, and I remember seeing a man in such anguish his heart might as well have been caught in a bear trap. He died a few days later, but my parents continued to repeat and emphasize his lessons for decades to follow.
I’ve been thinking of my great-uncle’s values in the context of my friend’s achievement, and of what it actually means to be a citizen. Our nation represents the sum total of what each of us does to become a better person, to subscribe to the ideals of the founding fathers, to participate together in perpetuating our grand experiment that in the not-so-distant past was the envy of the world. Seeing the whole as an expression of the sum of the parts, perhaps even more than the sum, fits perfectly with the ancient Eastern philosophy I teach and study professionally. That discipline emphasizes self-cultivation and learning the twin skills of going with the flow and keeping one’s equilibrium so as to produce harmony, and encourage peace.
Watching the conventions I couldn’t help but think that we would do better getting back to these core concepts rather than grandstanding and breast-beating and calling each other names. There’s great opportunity here to bring to fruition the magnificent ideals of the president's letter. How are we elevated by focusing on what we think is wrong with each other? Can we recognize that the sound byte and the clever quip are no substitute for thoughtful, substantive and respectful intercourse? Perhaps our culture has provided us too many weapons of "mass distraction." If immediate gratification, cynicism, consumption, celebrity worship, and politician-as-entertainer are not to be our cultural legacy, then let's be careful in our own lives to nurture better attributes such as kindness, compassion, and creativity. Turning our country around can really only happen from the bottom up, not the top down. It is a mind/body thing—to drive your actions with healthy, uplifting ideas. That’s what the ancient sages would recommend, and its what my great-uncle would do.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Stopping and Starting
Recently I've noticed that many of my tai chi students are lacking a bit of "flow" in their movements. When enduring painful low stances to develop strong legs and having focused breathing to relax the torso, we often forget that the sequence of movements we call "form practice" is intended to be done continuously and without even the slightest pause. I spent this past week thinking about the importance of this uninterrupted flow, and decided it has three primary highlights: body, energy and mind.
The body must move without interruption in any martial encounter, therefore we cannot simply practice one isolated movement well and disconnect to see what happens; an opponent will seize that opportunity to attack us. From an energetic point of view, our life force, or qi, flows through our body like an army obeying the commands of a general called yi, our intention. When that intention changes from movement to a pause, the energy flowing through our body stops too. It is rather like having the general yelling for the army to charge, and then a moment later crying "HALT!" The soldiers were about to conquer a critical hill or push through an obstruction in our energetic system--alleviate a headache, say, or bring much-needed circulation to an inflamed joint, but with the confusing command the maneuver fails, the energy recedes, and the benefit is lost.
It is in the training of the mind, however, that constant movement does the most good. Moving without stopping requires the mind to remain present and on task. Developing this ability deepens our ability with any task that requires focus and concentration, and certainly makes us better meditators. This dimension of tai chi is so important that it is definitional; when your mind wanders you are not doing tai chi. The practice returns when your attention resumes.
What about outside of tai chi? Staying focused without interruption is ever more difficult in our speed-and-greed world, ever more challenging when we are inundated by stimuli ranging from odors and noise and media bombardment to the unnatural pace of everyday life in the high-tech age. There are cycles to all things--times to stop and times to start, times to persist and times to leave off. Still, learning to beat back all comers and remove yourself from the fray can be a fine and powerful therapy for everything from high blood pressure to anxiety to digestive disorders and more.
The body must move without interruption in any martial encounter, therefore we cannot simply practice one isolated movement well and disconnect to see what happens; an opponent will seize that opportunity to attack us. From an energetic point of view, our life force, or qi, flows through our body like an army obeying the commands of a general called yi, our intention. When that intention changes from movement to a pause, the energy flowing through our body stops too. It is rather like having the general yelling for the army to charge, and then a moment later crying "HALT!" The soldiers were about to conquer a critical hill or push through an obstruction in our energetic system--alleviate a headache, say, or bring much-needed circulation to an inflamed joint, but with the confusing command the maneuver fails, the energy recedes, and the benefit is lost.
It is in the training of the mind, however, that constant movement does the most good. Moving without stopping requires the mind to remain present and on task. Developing this ability deepens our ability with any task that requires focus and concentration, and certainly makes us better meditators. This dimension of tai chi is so important that it is definitional; when your mind wanders you are not doing tai chi. The practice returns when your attention resumes.
What about outside of tai chi? Staying focused without interruption is ever more difficult in our speed-and-greed world, ever more challenging when we are inundated by stimuli ranging from odors and noise and media bombardment to the unnatural pace of everyday life in the high-tech age. There are cycles to all things--times to stop and times to start, times to persist and times to leave off. Still, learning to beat back all comers and remove yourself from the fray can be a fine and powerful therapy for everything from high blood pressure to anxiety to digestive disorders and more.
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