And Just Like That: How I Found Myself
/One day last week, a thought moved through my mind. Because I observed it in the moment and lingered with it, the thought translated into a feeling in my body, warming me from head to toe. Here was the thought: “I’m happy.” The feeling of happiness moved throughout my body like liquid gold, starting at my heart center. I understood what happiness feels like for me. Because I stayed present, the thought was no longer just a thought – it morphed into a physical sensation.
A challenge arose: I wanted to cling to the feeling of languid happiness and experience it forever. Forever. I willed my mind to wrap itself around the “thought of happiness” and hang onto it. And just like that, my mind moved on to other thoughts, almost as if in rebellion. I might have reacted with feelings of anger, disappointment, or failure at my inability to control my mind, to demand that it obey.
I didn’t, though. Instead, I smiled at my mind, thanked it for a healthy thought I could translate into a feeling in my embodied self, and centered on that. Rather than trying to tightly control my mind, I expanded the space around it so that it could stay close and have some freedom simultaneously. When my mind realized I was in spacious relationship with it, it no longer needed to push so hard against me and came in closer again.
For many years, I believed I could “control” my mind. Images of lassoing a wild horse or an errant cow on the run (either a Wild West fantasy or an extension of many years of checking to make sure our own cattle hadn’t been rustled), building imaginary walls around my mind, or wrestling my mind into submission failed to control it. Criticizing, punishing, threatening, or rejecting my mind’s ways only served to separate it further from my body, from my True Self, exhausting me along the way.
Minds are created to wander, ruminate, rove, consider, debate, ponder, evaluate, and replay life’s events and experiences. You cannot argue with creation or alter it. What we seek to do is wrap our energetic and figurative arms around our minds to ease wild fluctuations so that living life becomes a practice of revealing the True Self – that which is whole and complete even in a world of constantly changing conditions and circumstances.
I began to study the relationship between my body and mind more than 20 years ago. One morning, seemingly out of the blue, I stepped into my warm shower in early dawn and felt extreme physical and mental fatigue. Why? Because I realized that for more mornings than not for many years, I had pondered, dissected, and puzzled the same problem over and over and over. For the first time, I observed my mind doing its thing and recognized it as such. How, I wondered, could I break the cycle of this repetitive thought that so depleted me? What would it feel like to not be at war with my mind or trapped in a vicious cycle of trying – and failing – to control it?
These following actions ever so slowly created peace between my mind and my True Self, that essence within each of us that is whole, complete, and healed. I discovered that the solution to the dilemma came not in “controlling” my mind – it evolved because I embraced my mind and its thoughts like guests arriving for tea. I share these actions, grounded in the intention that they will support you:
Develop Practices to Focus the Mind:
My practices focus on three areas – a physical practice (I move among yoga asana classes, longer-distance biking, and hiking), a meditation practice (my preferred ones are mindfulness, or vipassana, and Yoga Nidra), and a breath practice - to call my mind home when it begins to wander wherever I am, whatever I’m doing. The more my mind focuses, the more I can observe it without reacting. Instead, I open to feeling thoughts and emotions in my body, what is referred to as the embodied experience. When the thought or emotion becomes embodied as a feeling, soon we understand that they really are like clouds floating in the sky. They come, and they go. This breaks the debilitating cycle of repetitive thinking that often causes us to react blindly, wildly, or thoughtlessly. In this way, we conserve our energy and expand the quality of our lives. Remember, these practices can be simple. Enter them into your calendar, though, so that they can become just that – practices.
Your physical practice doesn’t have to be daily – three times a week will change your body, four times will change your mind. Even weekly, though, creates change, just at a slower pace.
Your meditation practice doesn’t have to be an hour long. Meditation is a moment-by-moment practice. Even five minutes a day creates seismic shifts over time.
Your breath practice doesn’t have to be complicated. Understanding the breath just as it is breathing you is the first step. Then, you can layer on different breath practices like three-part breath or 2:1 breath that stresses the long exhale and calms the central nervous system.
Become Acquainted with the Innate Observer:
Each of us possesses an internal observer, an entity that stands slightly apart and yet is connected to our True Self. The observer steps forward, at our invitation, when watching our minds becomes overwhelming, painful, or fatiguing. The True Self then can step back and rest while the observer steps forward to watch the mind so that it doesn’t feel abandoned and huffs off in hurt or to seek revenge. The observer reports back to the True Self, which then can choose to act or not. Either way, the resulting action or inaction likely will be kinder, more compassionate, and more supportive of wellness and well-being.
The observer is your friend. It never is the critical voice most of us humans hear all too frequently.
Open to Your Heart’s Deepest Longing:
The heart wants to be held, understood, heard. It speaks frequently, sometimes faintly and others full-throated. Listen for and to your heart. When you hear the heart’s deepest longing and acknowledge it, the trajectory of your life changes in subtle and profound ways. Here is a practice I created to support my heart and its deepest longing. I set an intention that it will support yours.
STEP ONE: Our culture speaks of the heart. It uses the word 'love', often casually and descriptively, as in 'I love French food". Yet we rarely hold our own hearts. Acknowledge this cultural conditioning.
STEP TWO: Just now, sit for a moment. Place your right hand over your heart and your left hand over your right. Hold your heart in your hands. Feel it leap for joy and beat a little faster at your attention to it. Holding your heart in your hands makes its stronger, healthier.
STEP THREE: Hearts are like trees: They talk to each other. When you attend class, hold your heart in your hands following the step above. Then, keeping the right hand on the heart, open your left hand, palm up, toward another person so that all the hearts begin to communicate with each other, just as the trees in the forest do.
When hearts speak to each other, the world is a better place.
