Embody the Mind - A Tool for Orlando

As I sit to write this month’s newsletter, all I can hear is my heart crying “Orlando”.

How can I write about anything else? This colossal tragedy, loaded with misunderstanding, hate, violence, and murder, creates ripples that unsettle and affect all of us.  When I first read the news my body was flooded with hot anger, then frozen with fear, followed by a core-deep feeling of grief. Each emotion occupied and saturated different parts of my body. All of this happened quickly and over the course of only a few seconds. Then, I clicked to another post/page and, almost immediately and without much thought, I was reading something completely different.

As you can see, my most immediate stress response is “flight” vs. fight. I noticed myself fleeing the pain of this terrible event through distraction. But I didn’t actually need to run-away to survive these feelings. I wasn’t in danger from any immediate threat in my environment. I could choose to FEEL. So I did. And this is how I did it …

Many years ago, I came upon a practice that Ajahn Amaro Bhikkhu calls Embodying the Mind. This is a meditation that helps us shift away from the psychological trap of an emotion that we are feeling, to experiencing it viscerally. This practice can help us process emotions and experiences. Here we resource our body’s ability to digest, our body’s innate ability to absorb what’s useful and release what’s not. This somatic tool is really helpful when an emotion gets stuck, or when we’re stuck in rumination. I use this practice both with the initial onset of intense emotions, and afterwards, the latter because I don’t always have the immediate time or space to fully process an experience when it is happening.

1. Begin by relaxing the body as much as possible. Get yourself comfy by propping your hips up on a blanket or block, by lying down on your back, or by taking crocodile pose (lying on your belly with your hands stacked and your forehead resting on them). Take the first few minutes or more to breathe deeply into your abdomen (it may be easiest for the body to breathe this when way in crocodile pose). Then, once you feel settled, let your breath return to its natural rhythm.

2. If you're not experiencing immediate upset, deliberately recollect the charged memory or thought, a repetitive anxiety about a future event, or whatever is troubling you. As soon as you have created an emotional reaction to that memory, thought, or worry, notice where you feel it in your body and remain connected to that feeling. At this point we stop thinking about the experience, thought or anxiety. This is a challenging part of the process, but it is an essential one. We transition from thinking about the narrative, and instead, practice being with the sensations in the body.

3. As you notice the sensations, ask yourself the following questions:

• Where is the feeling in my body?
• How big is it?
• Does it have a shape?
• Does it have a temperature?
• Does it have a texture?
• Does it have a color?

4. Be interested in the sensation. What you’ll come to realize, is that while the feeling in the body isn't comfortable, it's also not intolerable. The visceral sensation of fear, anger, desire or craving, greed, envy, etc. isn't actually the part of the experience that seems so unbearable to us. Suffering comes when we start telling ourselves the story of who we are, who other people are, why we’re feeling this way, what we want, what we don't want, and what might occur in the future.

5. This practice uses our body to help us process our emotions and experiences. It’s not necessary to dive deep into the story of an experience, to process or digest it. We can resource this body-centered approach to help us be with challenging emotions and experiences.

6. After 5-10 minutes or more of noticing the sensations, finish the meditation with the release process:

Breathe spaciousness into the area of your body where you felt the emotion, the sensations, allowing your breath to wash over your tissues. Then, sigh through your mouth with long exhales and invite that area to release, to let go, to soften. Soon, you'll start to feel your body let go. This phase might take longer than the previous, but be patient and continue as long as needed to clear any trace of the somatic sensation. Once you feel the sensation has dissolved, rest for a couple more minutes.

Hopefully, this has given you a basic understanding of this practice, so that you can begin to use it.  I find it very effective. 

I’ll conclude with another example of how I’ve used it …A few years ago, on a silent retreat with Michael Stone, I had my first teacher–student interview. In the Buddhist tradition, this is a meeting where the student can ask the teacher questions and request guidance. At the time, I was struggling a lot with feelings of shame because my father was dying of cancer and I wasn’t taking care of him in Wisconsin. I was in Portland, living, while he was dying. I felt like a bad person and a horrible daughter because I chose not to be in Wisconsin with him.I asked Michael what to do. At the time I already knew about and practiced the technique I just described, but sometimes we need to be reminded of our tools, as he did in this meeting. He told me that the next time shame arose I should stop telling myself the story about how I am a wretched person for not being with my father, and instead, focus on feeling the shame in my body.

The shift was immediate and powerful. I still remember the first time I practiced this when shame surfaced in relation to my father. When I stopped the storytelling and felt the feeling in my body, it moved through my tissues and dissolved. It’s not that the initial practice freed me from all shame … I wish that were the case! It did, however, create a sense of leadership over my emotional experience. That’s what I want for all of us … I want us all to have the tools, the community, and the agency to manage our most painful emotions.

May we have the courage to feel deeply AND remain steady in our center.

Love,
Emily