Tag: awareness

Flying in awareness

While flying back home after a recent trip and looking out the window of the airplane, I saw these gorgeous clouds floating over the image of the earth below, and felt this interesting separation. Up here in the sky, I felt a quiet stillness, protected by that thin lacelike layer of clouds, from the busy bustle of the earth below. Not that I couldn’t see the surface of the earth, with its little towns and highways, and all of the usual activity going on there. But it felt like those delicate and loosely dispersed clouds provided a subtle but real separation. And that got me thinking it was an interesting representation of the buffer that meditation provides us from the busyness of our thinking minds. I often use the image of sinking below the surface of the ocean, dropping below the choppy waves to find the stillness beneath. This is just kindof the opposite imagery; rising above the clouds to escape the busyness below. In either analogy, you get the idea. We can learn to be the calm, still, peaceful awareness behind the activity. And learning to inhabit that place can help us feel so much better when the big storms of life arise.

Mindfulness is the key to learning to take this step back, to shift our awareness, and to be able to calmly observe our thoughts and emotions rather than being swept away by them. And mindfulness comes in so many flavors; from mindful movement to breath or body awareness, from sitting meditation to walking meditation, and from formal to informal mindfulness practices, there is surely something that can work for everybody.

It has been said that “meditation isn’t about trying to change what is; it is about changing our relationship to what is”. And I think this fits perfectly with these images of either rising above or dropping below the fluctuations of the mind. There’s no need to stop the flow of thoughts or emotions, or try to control the world around us, if we can just, instead, shift the way we perceive those things in a way that brings us more presence, more peace, and more contentment.

By practicing focused non-judgemental awareness, even if it is just for a few minutes every day, we train our minds to be able to do this. We train our minds to be able to drop below the surface of the waves…. or to rise above the surface of the clouds, to find that place of stillness and clarity. That panoramic perspective, or that bird’s eye view, so to speak. So each time you spend 5 or 10 minutes practicing gently bringing your awareness back to your breath, or you practice really being mindful of your body’s movements in yoga, or you practice focusing on loving kindness, you strengthen that ability. So give it a try! And if you are a person (like me) who says “I can’t do sitting meditation, I’m just too restless or impatient”, then start with moving meditation. Begin to learn to focus on your breath and your body in moving meditation, and over some time, the restlessness will settle and sitting meditation will become more approachable. And remember, there is no right or wrong way to practice. Just practice!

Why not start now? Set your timer for 5 minutes, close your eyes, and just focus on the sensation of your breath moving in and out. You can focus on the belly or the chest rising and falling, or the air moving in and out at your nostrils, wherever the sensation of the breath is most vivid for you. Each time your mind wanders (and it will), gently bring it back to the breath. Even if you have to bring it back 5,000 times, just keep at it, gently and patiently coming back to the breath, without making it a problem or condemning yourself in some way for the lapse in attention. Just keep practicing noticing what is happening, and being gentle and loving with yourself. Each time you come back, you’ve strengthened your mind a little more. When the timer dings, you are done. Simple as that! Before you know it, not only will you find the meditation gets easier for you, but you may find that you start to crave the little respite, the quiet restful stillness. And then eventually you’ll find yourself flying free, calm, and unaffected by whatever storms or madness might be going on below.

Namaste

Happy Pinktober?

Well today is the first day of Pinktober, or breast cancer awareness month. And it can have many breast cancer survivors feeling a little mixed up. On the one hand, we all agree that awareness is important and if all the pink helps remind or encourage just one woman to get a mammogram that finds an early stage breast cancer and saves her life, then that is awesome! And I think that it probably does that. We appreciate the increased awareness and the plug for more research and improvement in outcomes for this too-common disease, which despite vast improvements still causes a lot of suffering and too many lost lives. On the other hand, it can feel a little over-commercialized (what doesn’t these days, really?), and like a bit of a marketing scheme to sell pink-colored everything. I do kindof love it when all the NFL guys are in their pink-accented uniforms though, I have to admit, ;). I know many women, too, suspect that much of the money that is supposed to go toward breast cancer research or to help real actual breast cancer patients might not make it to its intended recipients. (If you really want to dig into where the money goes, you can look up many of these non-profits on a website called Guidestar. It is pretty interesting). And for some of us, every pink food label and pink tv commercial just forces us to think about a really traumatic time in our lives that we’d rather not think about all day and night. I totally understand all of the different sides of this complicated quagmire.

I guess my main thought on the subject is that it is ok, whatever it is that you feel in response to this coming sea of pink. If you love it, and you feel seen and supported, that is great. Pink it up! If you dislike it and it kindof makes you sick, that is totally ok too. We all respond to the ups and downs of this crazy cancer journey differently, and no one response is right or wrong. I invite you just to be aware of how you feel (every month, but especially this one), and be loving and kind with yourself and others. Most people have good intentions, even if they are ill-informed or aren’t in line with our own feelings on the subject. Just being aware of it when we are feeling a little triggered or overwhelmed by the pink-washing is the beginning of learning not to let it get to us. We have enough to worry about, right? Why let this add to the list? Consider it another opportunity to practice our mindfulness and our equanimity. An opportunity to practice stopping, noticing whatever reaction we are having, taking a few deep breaths, and letting it go or letting it be, as you wish.

Big big love to you all, this month and every month!

Namaste

Where will you choose to focus your energy today to help you feel your best in cancer recovery?

Don’t you love the new-ish ability of our cell phone cameras to shift their point of focus through the picture? So you can decide which part of the image you want to be in focus, and which part will be sortof out of focus? Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could learn to do the same?! To consciously shift our focus. To choose where we want to place our awareness, to be able to direct our attention at will. This would allow us to shift our focus off of things that we deem less than ideal, less helpful for our well-being; things like fear, anger, regrets about the past or worries about the future? And we could then consciously shift our awareness instead onto things that are better for us, that help us be present, joyful, grateful, connected? Things like gratitude practice, compassion (for self and others), time with loved ones, slowing down to appreciate the beauty around us…. and on and on. What would YOU choose to focus on? Take a minute to think about it.

Wanna know the good news? We CAN! We CAN learn to do this. It just takes practice. And this is one of the main benefits of practices like mindfulness and meditation (and of course yoga as a moving mindfulness practice). These practices train us to:

1. First become aware of where and what our focus and awareness are doing at any given point. Most of the time, unfortunately, we are totally unaware, while our minds and emotions are off galavanting about, jerking us around, dragging us through complicated gyrations and whirlwinds, without any real conscious approval from us. Because, let’s face it, if we COULD choose, we would never choose some of the places our minds go, right? But our untrained minds develop these habits (remember negativity bias) in an attempt to try to protect us, not realizing that the actual result is usually more suffering.

2. Next, once we begin to notice these fluctuations of our awareness, we can begin to understand how each one makes us feel, how it deeply affects the quality of our everyday experience. For example, when you find your mind running off to crazy fears, how does that make you feel, physically or emotionally? Muscle tension, stomach upset, heart palpitating, breath shallow, irritability, impatience? Not ways we would CHOOSE to feel, right? How about when you are exercising, or working in the garden, praying, meditating, laughing with your best friend, or petting your cat? Do you feel relaxed, peaceful, heart full and open, grateful, hopeful, confident? These are things we WOULD choose if we could, right?

3. And then, through practice, we learn to consciously direct our focus, our awareness, to the places of our choosing, to the places that we know will help us feel our best. We begin to recognize more quickly when we are falling into a less favorable place, and we consciously move our awareness to a better option. For example, when I notice my mind falling into a pit of fear or judgement (which of course are totally normal, but just aren’t my favorite places to stay), I’ll usually take a few deep breaths, and then choose how I’m going to pull myself out of it. Make a gratitude list, repeat a prayer/mantra/song that relaxes or soothes me, set positive intentions for a loved one or for myself, a few minutes of square breathing or stretching, or a quick change of scenery like going for a walk, taking a hot shower, or checking on my plants. By practicing mindfulness, meditation, yoga, or other mind-body exercises, we learn which tools work best for us, and then we get good at quickly putting them into action when needed.

What is most interesting about all of this is that it is really a pretty simple thing to learn to do. It just takes practice. And our minds are sooooo amazingly powerful once we just learn to use them for our benefit, rather than being drug around unwittingly by those wild and untrained thoughts. Swami Vivekananda said “The powers of the mind are like the rays of the sun; when they are concentrated, they illumine”. By learning focused awareness, we can direct that power like a laser beam, to illumine and develop our strengths. And while this skill would be helpful to anyone, it can be particularly helpful for us as cancer survivors, as we navigate through all of the extra ups and downs that having cancer brings.

So keep practicing, learn to consciously bring things into or out of your awareness at will. Focus on the things you choose to focus on, shine the light onto your best and highest self, and see the overall quality of your experience grow and blossom.

Namaste

Heal and transform through yoga’s light of awareness

This quote really grabbed me last week when a friend of mine shared it on her FB page. How eloquent and accurate it is! Most of us wander through life with a lot of dark corners in our bodies, basically paying them little to no attention. We don’t even think about whether our back is sore from sitting at a desk all day long, or whether our neck is tense, our mind is scattered, or our gut is in knots. Perhaps, even, we specifically block out the parts of our bodies that are uncomfortable or suffering, because we either don’t have time to deal with them, we don’t know what to do about it, or we just don’t want to face whatever it is. Whether we do this consciously or subconsciously doesn’t really matter. Then throw cancer and cancer treatment into the mix. I don’t particularly like to think about the scarring in my chest or the nerve damage under my shoulder from treatment. So one way to deal with it would be to just ignore it completely. Just make a dark, black, corner there and hope it goes away. Obviously you can sense the sarcasm, and realize that this “head in the sand” strategy isn’t probably the most effective way to deal with anything.

One of the many amazing and beautiful things about yoga is that is forces us to become exquisitely aware of all of the parts of our bodies, including the ones that we would otherwise ignore. In doing so, yoga practice brings us in touch with all of the parts of ourselves, shining the light of awareness into all of our dark corners, and setting the stage for healing and transformation. Because let’s face it, we can’t heal something if we don’t even know it is an issue. Many people come to yoga, and are so surprised to find out that one side of their body is much more flexible or much stronger than the other side, that one hip is very tight and the other isn’t, or that they have very flexible hamstrings, but very tight low back muscles, for example. We just don’t notice things like this in the course of our daily lives. Similarly, after cancer treatment, many of us just think it is normal and expected to have tightness, pain, limited motion, or weakness in our chest wall, neck, upper back, or shoulders. And these are, in fact, common side effects of treatment. But if we just ignore them and push them into the dark, how are we to heal, to see how much we can actually recover, if we just know what is going on and where we need to put our attention. There may be some things that cannot be cured, like permanent nerve damage or significant scarring. But even in these scenarios, shining the light of awareness into these dark corners will help us to fully understand how these things affect our daily lives, and perhaps how we might adapt and engage or strengthen other nearby body parts to help compensate for the weak ones. Or what daily activities we might do to help keep the tightness and discomfort from the scarring to a minimum. Once we are aware of all of our dark corners, we naturally begin to transform. But it is only with this awareness that we can truly be in tune with our bodies, working in harmony and balance, healing what we can, and adapting to anything we can’t, so that we can feel our best every day.

So whether it is in your yoga practice, or in your other daily activities, learn to shine that light of awareness into your dark corners. Learn to take the time to notice what your body feels, and how different movements and activities influence that. Really tune in and connect to yourself. It may be uncomfortable at first, but with a little time and effort, you will be transformed, and your body will thank you for it.

Namaste