This interesting situation of the breathing mechanism allows it to bridge the gap between the voluntary and involuntary nervous systems… and in other words to bridge the gap from conscious to unconscious. This explains how Yogis (to use the term broadly) and meditators have demonstrated incredible control of the autonomic “involuntary” processes in the body. Able to change heart rate, blood flow, peristalsis, and even emotional valence at will, these remarkable individuals have used their breath to ride across the chasm separating conscious from unconscious.

This is certainly the case even when one practices Hatha Yoga or does emotional work. In the most gross example, someone may learn how to rotate their pelvis, a movement that in its subtlety is quite often “forgotten.” Or perhaps someone overwhelmed with anger or fear, taking a conscious breath, may gain the perspective to control their emotional response.

This leads to an interesting observation: the breath swings both ways. If one brings more consciousness to the breath, awareness expands. However, if the breath is repeatedly “forgotten,” then more and more “voluntary” processes may become unconscious and involuntary.

In the case of the musculo-skeletal system, all of our muscles and joints fall under the somatic or “voluntary” nervous system and should in theory respond to our commands. However, we all know that when stress congests our muscles, we very often loose the ability to relax them. (If you are not aware of this phenomenon, simply tell a person with a chronically stressed condition to “just relax” and get ready to duck!) Why can we loose control of the muscles of our supposedly voluntary nervous system? Because they are no longer voluntary — the avoidance of processing stress (which occurs through breathing) has in effect made one more unconscious.

This also applies to emotional response. When one persistently allows emotion to overwhelm and control one’s actions, this process becomes automatic. We have all known people who simply cannot control their emotions or who have uncontrollable tics. On the other hand, if consciousness and breath are repeatedly brought to emotion, that emotion can still be active but one is not controlled by it. “Difficult” emotions are simply ones that challenge us to be conscious of them. With sustained practice, positive emotional states can be cultivated and entered at will (there have been extensive studies on Buddhist meditators who have changed their brains by cultivating compassion).

When you do things robotically, you become a robot. But anything done with awareness of breathing becomes more conscious. This applies to not just our bodies, but to our emotions and our minds. The boundary between what can be known mastered and what is involuntary or unconscious is not so clear anymore.

As Zen master Shunryu Suzuki says on breathing, “What we call ‘I’ is just a swinging door that moves when we inhale and when we exhale.”

In a certain sense, all of my efforts to transform were motivated by discomfort. I didn’t like the way I felt, I needed to “do something” about it. This created an inevitable conflict. Reality said one thing: “hey Ben, your hips are kinda tight and your chest hurts!” and Ben said, “No.” But you don’t argue with reality.

It took me ten days of silence to begin to see this. At a meditation retreat where I was instructed to give up all effort, to not control the breath, to not attempt to change my state of being, to give up “making it better.” Only to observe. To observe the body and the mind and not intercede.

I discovered that when I let go of my efforts and routines I was confronted with reality pure and simple. And it HURT. And not even in some metaphorical sense. The most intense physical pain I had ever experienced, uninterrupted for hours. As it wound its way through my entire body my job was simply to observe. All of my motivation to change, to transform, to heal was right in front of me– it was not some calling to evolve, to become super human. It fucking hurt, and I wanted OUT.

So eventually, faced with reality, I began to soften. To be where I was, even if it was painful. And then it moved. When I stopped resisting, it started to transform. It took different paths through my body, through my arms and legs and torso. And as it did so, my body began to heal. To do the very things I was trying so hard to accomplish.

I did not transform reality. It transformed me. As it still is. But this doesn’t mean turning into a glassy eyed catatonic yogi. I can still do everything I did before. But now I can do my yoga and my qi gong with a little less desire, with a little less neediness and a little more acceptance. A little more presence. A little more love.

Relax into the dance,

Ben

In Hatha Yoga one has an upward relationship to the ground. From the soles of the feet up through the body, one is taught to use one’s musculature in a way that is supportive and buoyant, engaging the muscles “in and up” and creating a sense of lightness in the body. The sternum is lifted and the spine is elongated upwards. One is taught to use the bandhas, or internal muscular coordinations that create an energetic, upward lift. This expression can be easily seen in the form of tadasana, “mountain pose,” one of the most essential templates of yoga posture:

The alignment commonly found in Tai Chi and Qi-Gong is virtually opposite. Instead of lifting away from the floor and away from gravity, the practitioner almost entirely gives himself into gravity. He positions his body in such a way as to maximally align with and distribute the force of gravity down the legs and out through the feet, into the earth. Knees are bent, the sacrum is relaxed downwards, the front of the body takes on a relaxed sinking rather than an upward lifting. Movements are intended never to break this balance with the earth.

Typical Taoist alignment - "Embrace Tree" posture

OK, SO?

So…The interesting part is that these two archetypes of posture represent two different currents of energy in the human body. Hatha Yoga alignment reinforces an upward flow, Taoist systems a downward flow. It should be noted at this point that each system incorporates both upward and downward flows, but each also focuses on one more than the other. Let us start with yoga.

Now if you trace a line from the pelvic floor up the front of the body to the crown of the head, in what ways will you be able to see this line expressed in bodily processes? Setting aside the esoteric sexual practices that draw energy up from the genitals, we will find that as we go up the front of the body we will find the processes of regurgitation and belching, coughing, laughing, and sobbing, sound production, exhalation, sneezing, and crying. All of these processes represent an upward movement of force along that line from the pelvic floor to the crown. These processes are both regulatory–dispelling waste in the digestive or respiratory systems–and expressive–releasing emotions and feelings to consciousness and communication. It does not matter if they are physical or emotional, these processes take part in the same “flow.”

Hatha Yoga, in many of its practices, reinforces this upward flow of force. The breath is encouraged to inflate and lift the chest. The deep back-bends practiced by advanced yogis stretch the front channel open. Also the use of internal muscular lifts (bandhas), pranayama techniques, and many of the kriyas (purification practices) of both the physical and subtle bodies emphasize the upward movement of prana or energy.

This goes hand in hand with yoga’s emphasis on heart opening, meditation on the higher chakras, and many of the far-out tales of mystical powers, astral worlds, and kundalini experiences that permeate some of yoga’s literature. To my mind the archetype of yoga mimics the upward flow of energy–a practice devoted to opening, releasing, expressing, and expanding the consciousness to bigger realities.

But what happens when we turn the line around? This time, picture a line from the crown of your head down to the pelvic floor. What do you get? Inhalation, swallowing, fluid secretion, digestion, metabolism, excretion, ejaculation. This is the downward flow of energy in the body. These processes, like the alignment of the Tai Chi practitioner, relate more to grounding, storing energy, and harmonizing with the earth.

If you find yourself practicing Taoist internal arts, you will probably at some point be instructed to “let the Qi sink” down into your Dan Tien (the area below the navel) as you practice. This is akin to letting your body surrender to the support of the floor and the breath becoming deep and relaxed. One’s breathing and one’s center of gravity lowers into the Dan Tien, which becomes a major reservoir of vitality.

From my understanding Taoist Philosophy, like its physical practices, emphasizes rooting and balancing one’s energy with the earth, harmonizing with the seasons, and acquiring a store of vitality deep within the body that fuels the whole being.

So, which way should you flow?

As I said before, both of these practices utilize upward and downward patterns of energy movement. Many yogis will bring energy down after meditation on the higher chakras, re-rooting it into the body. Savasana–considered by many yoga’s most important pose–is also entirely about surrendering to gravity, albeit while lying down.

The Taoists also have practices for raising energy and consciousness, although these are only advised once one has sufficient rooting. They do have their share of mystical tales of adventure, too.

And what it more, Yoga and Taoism are only two of numerous ways to find expressions of these archetypes. Ever wonder why singers and actors are so emotional, or why colon cleansing fanatics are so gung-ho?

I think it is important to know both sides of the energy equation. My upbringing made it quite easy for me to raise my energy and express my higher faculties, which is what drew me to yoga. However, in my lightness of being there was always an undercurrent of physical tension and unease, which my recent exploration of Daoism is leading me to uncover as I let my energy ground.

Everyone will have their own unique patterns of expression and thus may benefit more from one flow or the other, the only way to find out is to try! Its not always what you think.

Lunchtime Yoga, All Levels

Where:  Dardo Galletto Studios 151 w 46th st, 11th Floor.

When: Wednesdays, Beginning Feb 3, 12pm- 1pm.

Hope to see you there!

Compared to the vast infinity of the universe, our range of experience is minute. Our ears can perceive a tiny band of the sound spectrum, our eyes the small band of visual light (ROYGBIV). The same can be said for the sensitivities of all our senses and faculties. As the sound AUM emerges out of the silence, our human expereince is but a tiny fragment of an infinite expanse. The success of our experience as humans, both as individuals and as a species, depends on the ability to harmonize with the pulse of life in all its colors.

In the body, this harmony involves a continuous process of exchange between the organism and its environment. Among these processes are not only respiration and metabolism but also the expression of impulses, emotions, and feelings. Our “true nature” so to speak is perhaps the ability to allow this process to be the fullest and most vibrant it can be. To fully embody our range of experience. However, this ability is quickly covered over by the collective unconscious conditioning we receive at birth from our fellow humans. Feelings that become too dangerous to be felt. Behaviors, expressions, and impulses that are denied, suppressed, or punished. We quickly learn, in the flesh and bone of our being, what is “right” and what is “wrong.” We begin to shut out certain facets of our experience.

The problem with this is that the impulses and emotions we habitually ignore or repress travel through the same body that sustains life. The nerves, tissue, and organs which enact our impulses are the same ones that keep us alive. When our conditioning begins to shut out the unwanted feelings, it also dismantles our ability to take part in the life process. Depending on how pervasive and strong this conditioning is, disease and disharmony will ultimately follow.

Each part of the body has its own ability to take in stimuli and energy and to release a response. The eyes both watch and cry, the nose smells, runs, and sneezes. The mouth eats but also speaks, the throat swallows but also sings. The chest breathes and also laughs and sobs and loves. The belly may digest, regurgitate, burp, or chuckle. The genitals both generate life and release waste. The anus releases but also retains. The ingestion and digestion of these organs sends pulses through our beings, shaking us into vibrancy.

Unfortunately, this is not the average human of the twenty first century. In our world, we wear suits of armor, neural and neuronal networks of inhibition that, most of the time, are not even conscious. It is a deep fear of what feelings lie buried underneath. These impulses were never carried to completion, they remain memories trapped in physicality, fog on the clear mirror of our perception.

The easiest place to see this armor is in the breath, for it is the surface separating the conscious from the unconscious, the link between mind and body. In a fully present individual (I’ll be writing by extrapolation) the breath is a continuous circular flow that travels the whole length of out being. The physical movement is for the most part restricted to the torso, but on a cellular level (a level accessible to your perception) extends into every extremity. It flows up and down the length of our spine, enlivening every nerve. Yet when the charge in our nerves becomes static out of fear, areas of breathing shut down as well. The diaphragms in the body (of which there are three: pelvis, torso, and skull), responsible for the the complete exchange of breathing, begin to be restricted unconsciously. A well of untapped feeling fills our bodies as intake and exchange grinds to a halt.

Some of the organs of exchange mentioned above are “corked” while others are opened up as energy is redirected. The primary impulse that was unprocessed may stagnate and turn to disease or be redirected to another outlet compensate: anything from allergies, headache, nausea or constipation to compulsive eating or sex may arise to either relieve the internal pressure or to fill a void. Consumption disorders, addictive behavior, or any other “psychosomatic” phenomena, so many of the things that ail us humans have their root in the disequilibrium between mind and body.

So the process of staying vibrant and attuned to life–the evolution of modern man–requires the conscious breath by breath balancing of our entire being with the world around us. To unplug the corks and confront the true depth and breadth of ourselves so that we may be filled by that glorious humming.

Why is the Buddha frequently depicted with a massive belly laughing his head off? In my opinion, its because he doesn’t care whether hes got six pack abs.

Our culture’s insatiable drive for fitness and the “perfect body” is sadly one of the forces that is alienating people from themselves. While there are surely many well intentioned fitness junkies out there, the images we recieve through pop culture and the media promote creating a good looking body at the expense of functionality and freedom. The energy of the popular drive for fitness comes from the desire to create a more appealing self image, rather than a fuller experience of the self moment by moment.

Perhaps the epitome of this drive can be seen in the craze for “six packs” in men and “washboard abs” in women. This is the kind of muscle that is created when the abdominals are repeatedly contracted until they remain in a state of perpetual tension, which our culture labels as attractive. While core strengtheining is extremely important, the tightness that exists in an overdeveloped abdomen actually restricts the movment of the diaphragm, inhibiting breathing and energy flow.

From a metaphysical standpoiont, the abdomen composes the third chakra, which on an emotional level mediates one’s self identity. Consequently, having a very tight abdomen effectively hardens one’s self image. There is no freedom or breathe-ability, just a rock hard chunk of muscle that serves as personality armor!

As far as energy goes, the abdomen connects the heart with the pelvis, love with sexuality. In an open, integrated individual there is a softness in the belly that allows for the possibilty of making love– the free flow of energy between the heart and the sexual center. However, in our image crazed culture the self image (and the belly) becomes so hardened that this is no longer possible and making love degrades into meaningless sex. And there we have the “ideal” man of the 21st century- a hunk of muscle that gets a lot of women but tragically can’t feel connected to any of them.

So, what should we do? Go for the Buddha Belly!

Core strengthening, like I metioned, is extremely important– but it needs to be balanced with flexibility and with functionality. Particularly, it is the transverse abdominal muscle, which lies beneath the “six pack” rectus abdominals, which needs to be developed. The transverse abdominal is responsible for maintaining posture and thus for preserving the integrity of the spinal cord, yet it does not create the blockage of energy that is characteristic of strong rectus abdominals. As such it is perhaps the most important place to strengthen for physical integration.

The best exercises for the deep core are ones that synergize the entire body through the core muscles. For example, plank pose (the top position of a pushup) is a wonderful pose that requires the use of the whole body, particularly the legs and the core. Any exercise that incorporates the whole body simultaneously is great for this purpose. To engage the tansverse abdominals, make sure to pull in the lower belly rather than crunch the abdomen–you should feel the support coming from below the navel, not above. However, care must be taken to breathe smoothly throughout the exercise (no holding or groaning!) and to balance strengthening poses with ones that stretch the same areas, so that strength and openness may exist simultaneously.

When your deep core is strong, then you can let your belly breathe free! Your body can be both strong and open, and so can your identity!  No longer a slave to your six pack, you too will let out that big, Buddha belly laugh!

The problem is that many people are not taught how to access this dimension of yoga. Many “advanced” students and even some teachers remain focused on the exercise, on perfecting the poses and learning how to stand on your pinky finger. Ironically, this kind of approach is all mental– the intent is based on one’s images and ideals, the fantasy of being strong and flexible and looking like a yogi. Initially, this gives us the motivation to get on the mat, but in order to reach the subtler levels of yoga the mind eventually has to let go if its desire to be the leader.

An advanced asana practice will focus more on feeling, listening, and exploring the body and breath rather than on physical accomplishment. This is not to say an advanced practitioner will not practice challenging poses, they will just practice from a more intuitive and aware position. Below are various techniques and ideas to keep in mind to help your practice reach a new depth.

The pathways of the subtle body

“Your breath is your truth serum” – a brilliant snippet of wisdom from my first teacher, Jackie. Your breath is a moment by moment expression of how you are relating to yoga (and to life). Whether its a simple standing pose, a deep stretch, or an acrobatic arm balance, strive to keep your breath relaxed and natural. Never hold the breath (as it congests energy flow) and let the transition between inhale and exhale be as smooth as possible. Watch for times that you are holding, straining, wheezing, or making a raspy sound with your breath- these are indications that you are overdoing it. If you practice Ujayi breath, make sure that it is smooth and does not end up blocking off your throat. Also watch for overexertion in the act of breathing itself– balance the desire to expand the breath with allowing for its spontaneous expression.

Vinyasa – Meaning the joining together of breath and movement, vinyasa is one of the best tools for becoming aware of your energetic body. As you begin to link breath with movement with attention, breathing transforms into an energetic force of awareness. To get a feel for this, start simple. Inhale lift your arms overhead, exhale lower them to your sides. Repeat this action, smoothing out the breath and the movement and staying focused on the intermingling of the two sensations. Try doing it with your eyes closed. Eventually you can move on to to exploring vinyasa in more challenging poses and sequences, but simplicity is often most effective.

Effort and Ease – Ideally, in every asana there should be a delicate balance between effort and ease. Doing and not doing. It is quite easy, especially as a beginning student, to overexert oneself. It takes some time to get used to the poses, but eventually one must find the balance between striving and surrendering. Even in the physically demanding poses, just enough effort is put forth to maintain the position, the rest of one’s attention is committed to relaxing and allowing the breath to permeate the pose. Try mentally “taking a step back” to asses how you are relating to the pose. Where are you gripping, straining… can you soften into it? Or, conversely, can you put forth a little more effort? Often it is only the mind that limits us by saying “I can’t.”

Muscular Integration- the key to proper alignment and strength in yoga is muscular integration. This is a method of isometrically contracting muscle groups in equal opposition to opposing groups, eventually allowing the whole body to perform as a single unit. An easy way to think about this is by seeing hatha yoga as non-duality in the body; for every action, there is an equal and opposite counter action. For instance, in downward dog, the upper arms are externally rotating as the forearms are internally rotating; the hands press into the floor as the shoulders plug into their sockets; the chest reaches forward as the hips are pulled back. In a standing pose, the whole leg–inner, outer, front and back–is working, not just the quadriceps. This is happening all over the body, in every active pose. Sometimes it is referred to as “the muscles hugging the bone.” This is a difficult concept to teach much less express verbally, but is extremely powerful. Through using muscles in this fashion, one finds that strength in a pose is more about building and maintaining awareness (the mind body connection) than about muscular power. To get a feel for it, watch yourself the next time you spontaneously stretch in the morning:  the feeling of natural stretching and muscular integration is almost identical– your body already knows how to do it– all you have to do is remember.

Stretching – Whereas strengthening integrates and connects the entire body–allowing for more energy potential– stretching opens the body to the free flow of that energy. Stretching should always be performed in a way that does not compromise breathing, for the breath is the current on which energy flows. If the breath is restricted in favor of a “deeper” stretch  then the whole purpose of energetic opening is lost. Balance the intensity of the stretch with an ability to breathe naturally and relax. Listen to what your body needs, rather than what you think you need. Scan your body and allow all muscles that are not needed to soften. When in a deep stretch, try to separate your reaction to the feeling (“ow, it hurts!”) from the pure sensation of it. As you sink deeper into the pose, imagine your breath as a force moving into and releasing the tightness.

Resting/Sensing- In addition to the final relaxation pose, savasana, resting in the middle of an asana practice is of great value. After you have generated some heat  and are in the swing of your practice, try resting in child’s pose or tadasana. Take your attention to the sensations within the body: the heat, the blood pumping, the breath, the magnetic glow of your own energy. Let your mind rest there and absorb those sensations into your consciousness. Let your whole asana practice be a means of cultivating that internal awareness. Can you find it even in the midst of movement? A little softness goes a long way.

Visualization and Memory - As you become more accustomed to your body you will eventually no longer need to be stretching or strengthening to actually feel it. This is the point at which a yoga practice moves deeper into energetic territory. This is most easily felt at the end of an asana practice when the neural impressions of physical activity are still fresh (although it can be done any time). Suddenly you are aware of a subtle body of feeling which permeates the physical body, a body that responds to breath and attention rather than gross physical movement. What is going on here? Simply, you are remembering your physical embodiment, rediscovering the neural connections in your brain which link mind to body. Most of the time, these connections need sensory stimuli to fire–but through yoga one learns to feel and eventually to inhabit them on one’s own. Kriya and Tanra yoga, practices which exercise these levels of the being, often use imagination and visualization to help one connect with the subtle body. Imagining different colors, lights, or situations prefigure the actual experience of feeling energy. The different visualizations and imagery appeal to one’s memory of the body, eventually helping one recall sensation on one’s own. The image one uses is of little importance so long as it helps one recall the feeling. The next time you’re in savasana attempting to relax a tense area, try visualizing that muscle: see it filled with light, imagine that you are touching it, or remember a pose in which you used that muscle– with practice the feeling will become natural and you will no longer need the imagination.

Explore! – Finally, never stop exploring yourself! Yoga is above all an adventure in exploration, a discovery of the brilliance inherent in the body and in life. When you’re practicing asana, wiggle a little! Explore the pose, move around! The poses are great templates for the body, but its up to you to make them yours, to enliven them. Slow down and feel yourself. Never assume that you’ve “got it” —there’s always more to learn!

Thanks to the psycho-spiritual cartography of Ken Wilber, who has organized a spectrum of consciousness, these and other differing systems of self-growth can harmonize once seen in a larger framework of self identity. The key is that many differing forms of therapy are targeted to different levels of our consciousness, different levels at which we draw the boundary between “self” and “other.” This self-created and self-defining line ranges from the mystic’s identification with the entire universe to the fragmented personality of the mentally imbalanced. Our original and ultimate sense of identity is a unity with all experience (which admittedly I can’t tell you much about) but due to conditioning, trauma, and stress we learn to progressively limit our  sense of self.

From the unity of unbound consciousness we narrow ourselves to an exclusive identity with our own organism, our individual body-mind. Seems reasonable, but it doesn’t stop there. Many of us continue to limit our identity, forsaking the felt oneness with our bodies and relegating them to mere instruments (like the miniature alien who sits in a skull from Men in Black). The identity is confined to the ego, a purely mental image of the self that has no substance outside the imagination. Our bodies are alienated, objectified, no longer “me” but “mine.” One may continue to confine one’s identity to the persona, a fragment of the personality that will define itself only as the positive aspects of the ego while denying (and projecting onto others) its less desirable qualities, often referred to as the “shadow.”

The more limited our identity becomes, the further we move away from the present, away from reality. The sense of self moves from the felt experience of being to a mental construct that can only exist in memories of the past or fantasies of the future–an illusion. So, the various forms of therapy can be seen as addressing the varying levels of self identity that one can abide in.

Psychoanalysis, for example, focuses on integrating the persona and the shadow, creating a healthy sense of self–the ego. The therapist will direct the client to free associate, allowing all thoughts to bubble up to the surface. Eventually the client may experience resistance to a particular thought, which seems foreign and unwanted. This indicates an aspect of the client’s shadow which, through analysis, eventually comes to be accepted. The client arrives at a healthy sense of self that includes all aspects of the personality, not just the pretty ones.

Techniques like bio-energetics and hatha yoga aim at integrating the mind with the body, expanding the self to rediscover its felt oneness with the body. The process of these techniques will call for attention not to thought processes, but to felt sensations in the body, moment by moment. Eventually the practitioner will discover certain areas of the feeling body (aka the subtle body) which are tight, unresponsive, or numb. These are evidence of past emotional traumas which at one time caused the mind to dissociate from the body. These blocks are healed through a combination of physical movement, emotional release, and talk therapy. Once the mind and body are reintegrated the self is no longer confined to an idea or to thoughts, but now rests in a moment by moment experience of being.

In almost all meditative techniques as well as some transpersonal therapy, the practitioner’s attention will be called to his own “I AMness,” the witness of all experiences– all thinking, feeling and perceiving–that is forever constant. While one’s appearance changes, one’s thoughts change, one’s feelings change, this center of the self is the unchanging Seer of it all. Pure awareness itself, which is ultimately found to transcend individual existence to merge with all that is. There is no more duality, no more split between the self and the world.

So, there is no need to see conflicts amongst varying approaches to growth, simply different focuses (see chart below). While it is of course true that with each successive level of consciousness there exists greater freedom and interconnection, the process of growth is not exactly linear. You do not “finish” with one stage to move onto the next. There have been plenty of accounts of Zen Masters advocating bloodshed and Gurus who take advantage of disciples– clearly their spiritual accomplishments were overshadowed by unresolved conflicts in the ego. It is important to know the whole territory. To know both your masks and your shadows, the oneness of mind and body, and the transcendent awareness that extends beyond your individual self.

So, take a peek at your shadow! If you know your ego inside out, try diving into your body! Discover a self, beyond yourself. Go explore!

Ken Wilber's Spectrum of Consciousness: different levels of consciousness paired with the therapies associated with those levels. The diagonal line represents the boundary between "self" and "not self" which expands with each level, ultimately disintegrating into a union of inside and outside.

For more on this topic, check out Ken WIlber’s book, No Boundary

All the focus is turned outside for solutions– “maybe if I had this job, or made more money, or had a great relationship, did this or that, then I’d be happy”– but really its the inside, our own perception and means of relating to life, that needs a tune up. Its like trying to fix a broken television by changing the channel–nothing is happening!

What am I really talking about? I’m talking about a split between the mind and the body, the original fall (à la Genesis) from unity and wholeness into fragmentation. No god, no gardens, but a disconnect from ourselves that really is like loosing paradise. What happened?

As infants we were all totally open beings, joyful and spontaneous. When something nice happened we were happy, when something unpleasant happened, we got upset and cried! We were totally identified with pure experience, flowing from one state to the next without any resistance. Don’t get me wrong, newborns are not enlightened–they are totally dependent and unaware of the dangers of living–but given a nurturing environment they are free to experience whatever life brings.

As we age we start to form an individual identity, we develop likes and dislikes; we start to prefer certain experiences and dislike others. Its at this point that certain unpleasant or difficult feelings can be suppressed. A separation develops between our feelings and our expressions, between the mind and the body. Now this is not all bad–a discerning mind that can suppress action helps protect the self from harm–but a problem arises when it becomes our habitual means of operating.

From an early age subtle and not so subtle queues tell the child that expressing certain feelings, particularly powerful ones like grief, rage, or fear, is unacceptable. By the nature of living in civilization we have inherited many of these models of repression as a means to keep society functioning. But now we are being suffocated by our own way of life!

We learn to hold these less comfortable feelings inside us, first as a thought “This feeling is not OK, not me” then as a repressed emotion, and finally they are crystallized into physical form, effecting our nervous system and through it all other systems of the body as physical disease. Our bodies are telling us so much, and we’re trying our hardest not to listen.

And so for many of us our means of life come to perpetuate our avoidance of these feelings and their psycho-physical manifestations. Tired? How about some coffee? Sad? How about some ice cream? or some Prozac? Can’t sleep? take a pill. Can’t focus? Adderrall.  Don’t want to hear yourself think? Put on your i-pod. Don’t like who you are? Build another identity on the internet!

We’re running away from anything unpleasant and in the process we are loosing ourselves. We are deadening ourselves to a life full of beauty and growth. Life contains all opposites –close yourself down to pain and you close yourself down to pleasure. To be fully alive we must have the courage to experience all that life brings, the perseverance to heal the Split inside and return to the our authentic self.

There are many ways to quiet your mind, but they all have one thing in common: grounding your awareness in the present moment.

A very simple way to do this is by shifting your attention to any one of your senses. Walking down the street? Notice your surroundings, the breeze on your face, your footfalls on the ground, the smell of the air, the sounds around you. Look, listen, and feel without labeling or judging what you experience–just pure sensation–your senses can be a way to ‘drop in’ on the moment wherever you are.

Another way is with your breath. If you are particularly anxious, lie down on your back. Place one hand on your lower abdomen and tune into the rise and fall of your belly as you breathe. Abdominal breathing, more than chest breathing, helps to calm the nerves and the mind. If you can’t lie down, sit with your spine straight and your feet firmly on the floor. Cross your arms at your chest, taking your hands under opposite armpits. Focus on the expansion and contraction of your ribcage by breathing into your hands.

If you find that focused breathing feels counter productive (like it is frustrating to sit still) try some movement. Asana is great for this. Do any pose or sequence of poses that you like, with emphasis on smooth movements and full, relaxed breathing. Any pose that asks you to use your legs is also quite grounding. A short sequence could be a standing forward bend followed by tree pose on each side.

These are just a few simple ideas, feel free to post more if you have some of your own. Remember that any activity that calmly brings your awareness to the here and now will help.