From A PATH WITH HEART by John Kornfield HEALING THE BODY Meditation practice often begins with techniques for bringing us to an awareness of our bodies. This is especially important in a culture such as ours, which has neglected physical and instinctual life. James Joyce wrote of one character, “Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body.” So many of us do. In meditation, we can slow down and sit quietly, truly staying with whatever arises. With awareness, we can cultivate a willingness to open to physical experiences without struggling against them, to actually live in our bodies. As we do so, we feel more clearly its pleasures and its pains. Because our acculturation teaches us to avoid or run from pain, we do not know much about it. To heal the body we must study pain. When we bring close attention to our physical pains, we will notice several kinds. We see that sometimes pain arises as we adjust to an unaccustomed sitting posture. Other times, pains arise as signals that we’re sick or have a genuine physical problem. These pains call for a direct response and healing action from us. However, most often the kinds of pains we encounter in meditative attention are not indications of physical problems. They are the painful, physical manifestations of our emotional, psychological, and spiritual holdings and contractions. Reich called these pains our muscular armor, the areas of our body that we have tightened over and over in painful situations as a way to protect ourselves from life’s inevitable difficulties. Even a healthy person who sits somewhat comfortably to meditate will probably become aware of pains in his or her body. As we sit still, our shoulders, our backs, our jaws, or our necks may hurt. Accumulated knots in the fabric of our body, previously undetected, begin to reveal themselves as we open. As we become conscious of the pain they have held, we may also notice feelings, memories, or images connected specifically to each area of tension. As we gradually include in our awareness all that we have previously shut out and neglected, our body heals. Learning to work with this opening is part of the art of meditation. We can bring an open and respectful attention to the sensations that make up our bodily experience. In this process, we must work to develop a feeling awareness of what is actually going on in the body. We can direct our attention to notice the patterns of our breathing, our posture, the way we hold our back, our chest, our belly, our pelvis. In all these areas we can carefully sense the free movement of energy or the contraction and holding that prevents it. When you meditate, try to allow whatever arises to move through you as it will. Let your attention be very kind. Layers of tension will gradually release, and energy will begin to move. Places in your body where you have held the patterns of old illness and trauma will open. Then a deeper physical purification and opening of the energy channels will occur as the knots release and dissolve. Sometimes with this opening we will experience a powerful movement of the breath, sometimes a spontaneous vibration and other physical sensations. Let your attention drop beneath the superficial level that just notices “pleasure,” “tension,” or “pain.” Examine the pain and unpleasant sensations you usually block out. With careful mindfulness, you will allow “pain” to show itself to have many layers. As a first step, we can learn to be aware of pain without creating further tension, to experience and observe pain physically as pressure, tightness, pinpricks, needles, throbbing, or burning. Then we can notice all the layers around the “pain.” Inside are the strong elements of fire, vibration, and pressure. Outside is often a layer of physical tightness and contraction. Beyond this may be an emotional layer of aversion, anger, or fear and a layer of thoughts and attitudes such as, “I hope this will go away soon,” or “If I feel pain, I must be doing something wrong,” or “Life is always painful.” To heal, we must become aware of all these layers. Everyone works with physical pain at some time in their spiritual practice. For some people it is a perennial theme. In my own practice, I have had periods of deep physical release that have been organic and very peaceful, and other times have felt like painful and powerful purifications, where my body would shake, my breathing was labored, sensations of heat and fire would move through my body, and strong feelings and images would arise. I would feel as if I were being wrung out. Staying with this process inevitably led to a great opening in my body, often accompanied by tremendous feelings of rapture and well-being. Such physical openings, both gentle and intense, are a common part of prolonged meditation. As you deepen your practice of the body, honor what arises, stay present with an open and loving awareness so that the body itself can unfold in its own way. Other attitudes toward the body can be found in meditation: ascetic practices, warrior training, and inner yogas to conquer the body. Sometimes healers will recommend consciously aggressive meditation for healing certain illnesses. For instance, in one such practice cancer patients picture their white blood cells as little white knights who spear and destroy the cancer. For certain people this has been helpful, but for myself and others such as Stephen Levine, who has worked so extensively with healing meditation, we have found that a deeper kind of healing takes place when instead of sending aversion and aggression to wounds and illness, we bring loving-kindness. Too often we have met our pain and disease, whether a simple backache or a grave illness, by hating it, hating the whole afflicted area of our body. In mindful healing we direct a compassionate and loving attention to touch the innermost part of our wounds, and healing occurs. As Oscar Wilde put it, “It’s not the perfect but the imperfect that is in need of our love.” One woman student came to her first meditation retreat with cancer throughout her body. Although she had been told she would die within weeks, she was determined to heal herself using meditation as a tool. She undertook a regimen of excellent Chinese medicine, acupuncture, and daily healing meditations. Though her belly was hot and distended with the cancer the whole time, she so bolstered her immune system that she lived well for ten more years. She credited her healing attention as a key to keeping her cancer in check. Bringing systematic attention to our body can change our whole relationship to our physical life. We can notice more clearly the rhythms and needs of our bodies. Without mindfully attending to our bodies, we may become so busy in our daily lives that we lose touch with a sense of appropriate diet, movement, and physical enjoyment. Meditation can help us find out in what ways we are neglecting the physical aspects of our lives and what our body asks of us. A mistaken disregard for the body is illustrated in a story of Mullah Nasrudin, the Sufi wise and holy fool. Nasrudin had bought a donkey, but it was costing him a lot to keep it fed, so he hatched a plan. As the weeks went on, he gradually fed the donkey less and less. Finally, he was only feeding it one small cupful of grain throughout the day. The plan seemed to be succeeding, and Nasrudin was saving a lot of money. Then, unfortunately, the donkey died. Nasrudin went to see his friends in the tea shop and told them about his experiment. “It’s such a shame. If that donkey had been around a little longer, maybe I could have gotten him used to eating nothing!” To ignore or abuse the body is mistaken spirituality. When we honor the body with our attention, we begin to reclaim our feelings, our instincts, our life. Out of this developing attention we can then experience a healing of the senses. The eyes, the tongue, the ears, and the sense of touch are rejuvenated. Many people experience this after some period of meditation. Colors are pure, flavors fresh, we can feel our feet on the earth as if we were children again. This cleansing of the senses allows us to experience the joy of being alive and a growing intimacy with life here and now.
Posted on: Wed, 07 Jan 2015 06:46:13 +0000
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