Stinky Buddha

swim practice

 

Off and on through my life, I've experienced panic and anxiety. Before I began meditating, I usually dealt with it by believing the fears, shaming myself, and/or acting out in unwholesome ways.

Meditation and mindfulness practice helps me relate directly to the panic and anxiety in a way that can eliminate much of the optional suffering and distill it into spacious wisdom.

Recently  I've had an upswing in panic and anxiety. But I had kind of a breakthrough the other day and it was partly thanks to swimming laps.

Driving to the gym the other morning, I felt a wave of panic come on. I almost turned the car around. But I'm determined to see through this panic. That is, to be in it, notice it is the body's overreaction to a momentary thought, keep going with my actual life instead of letting fear without reason stop me.

So I got to the gym, jumped in the pool and took one lap at a time. I stopped at almost every lap, asked myself if I could do just one more, then did one more, over and over and over. All the while, the panicky stories whirred through. Dipping into believing the stories, backing up to just noticing them arise, turning attention to the feel of the water on my skin, over and over and over.  

Climbing out of the pool, I had some relief and clarity, happy that I practiced being upright in the panic storm.

But that isn't the best part.

The best part happened on the drive home.

Without willing it, on its own, my heart cracked open wider. I suddenly heard myself talking to myself the way I often talk to my children when they've had a hard moment: Yes, I know. That was so hard. You're ok now. I'm here.  Tears down my cheeks, my whole body sighing, feeling simultaneously like a mother and a child, broken open on the other side of suffering whose vast and endless companion is - if only we stop and notice -- always compassion. 

 

(image Christina Schlesinger)

love on the run

 

On my run on Tuesday, I felt a piercing in my chest, my throat closed, and my eyes welled.

The thought of the 20 children in Connecticut had arisen again, and with it, the grip of grief so intense I almost couldn't breathe.

It hasn't felt quite right since last Friday to go on with the business of my life, across the country from and completely unknown to every one of the dead. I can't put words to the horror and heartbreak, and when grief spikes so acutely like it did during that run, I can get confused about how to respond without shutting down.

Thankfully I remembered the compassion practice of tonglen and the words of Pema Chodron:

We begin the practice by taking on the suffering of a person we know to be hurting and who we wish to help. For instance, if you know of a child who is being hurt, you breathe in the wish to take away all the pain and fear of that child. Then, as you breathe out, you send the child happiness, joy or whatever would relieve their pain.

So I kept running, with every in-breath I pulled deeper into my heart my pain and specifically the pain of the 20 mamas who'd lost their children. With every out-breath, I sent comfort and relief directly to those 20 mamas. I sent them the strength I felt at that moment in my legs, lungs, and heart, because I imagine right now for many of the mamas it's been hard to muster enough strength to get out of bed each morning.

When I lived at Zen Center, after the sitting and chanting of the morning schedule, we would dedicate the merit of our efforts to all beings. It is what I'm trying to do now, every time I feel odd and frankly, guilty, that I am going through my everyday while the families of the 26 are suffering so. It is one way I'm trying to make some sense out of senselessness, just one way to try to add a tiny bit of light in what feels truly like the darkest season.

nowhere to hide and feeling fine

 

 

For years, I put my self-esteem in numbers: pounds, miles, laps, pace. Gradually, I've been shedding that idea: I stopped weighing myself years ago, and last year, I gave up keeping track of my pace.

In fact, recently it has felt as though the pendulum has swung way way to the other side, to where I barely look at my watch and just swim without counting laps. For months, the name of the game has largely been bliss.

But I'm sensing a swing back. I find myself looking at upcoming races (and thus, training plans). Spotting a wet-suited swimmer in a lake the other day, I was surprised by a stab of envy. And with it, a fear that I'll get caught by numbers again.

Yet, here's The Thing: bliss is just an idea, too!

Underneath bliss and numbers is just wanting, just desire. For security and identity. 

So the answer has nothing to do with what I actually do. Race or not race, train or not train, keep track of every single number or throw my watch in the garbage. 

The answer is actually slipperier than that. It's a dancing, ever-changing thing where I do (or not do) and simply notice (with the support of a regular meditation practice). Notice without judgment that habit of clinging to and pushing away, notice how each of these habits arise and fall in the infinite space of awareness, like clouds gliding across an impartial sky.

I get endless fitness tips in my Facebook and Twitter newsfeeds as well as words of wisdom and exhortations to live mindfully. All ideas! I can try to take temporary refuge in any of these ideas but it would be like running for shelter in a paper house. Strangely, I find relief that "no refuge" IS the refuge.

Mindful fitness isn't about the stories I create about the "right" motivation to move this body (bliss from the inside, numbers from the outside).

Mindful fitness cuts through, to seeing clearly underneath the stories, to the abiding presence that is already there with the body/mind in motion. 

 

 

shouldering on

You'd think as someone interested in meditation and fitness that I would have a yoga practice, right?

Wrong.

Actually, not so wrong, anymore. Because this week I went to my first yoga class in more than a decade.

Why so many years between classes?

 Two reasons:

• I am not limber and I never have been. I've had this weird idea that you have to be able to touch your toes in yoga so that disqualified me.
• I tend to let it all "yang" out (sorry) so the ways I've usually chosen to move my body have involved big cardio out in the world (swim/bike/run).

But with this Stinky Buddha endeavor there has been a slowing down, a major slowing down. As I bring mindfulness to my fitness, my racing mojo has unexpectedly gone into hibernation. And though I still crave regular, big cardio, a tiny baby desire for slow is bubbling up.

So I arranged for a friend to watch Little Boy (thanks, Amanda!) and headed to It's All Yoga. The hour before the class, I devised a few stories about why I really couldn't/shouldn't go. But when I got there on time despite traffic and found a parking place in front, I gave in.

My lord, is it ever so good for me to be the newbie! As a mama, I feel like I have to be the expert all the time (and over time, my ego believes it). I actually loved not knowing what was going to happen and not being in charge. Kim, the teacher, was very kind and I felt taken care of immediately.

Initially, the yang in me was ready for BIG. Where's the WARRIOR? When do we JUMP and SWEAT? But it turned out today's focus was simply the shoulders.

Oh. OK.

I discovered, after an hour & 15 of quiet, small movements, that I have shoulders. It was like a reunion.

******

Stinky Buddha was born from a break. I'd thought this blog would simply be about bringing mindfulness to race training.  It has currently come to be about a body slowing down enough to forget old stories and (literally) re-member itself.

 

 

joy, unexpected

 

I didn't have any expectations about today's run and maybe that's part of why it was lovely and fun. No expectations + other things like:

• Noticing the desire to check my watch & not acting on it
• Keeping my chin level, neck and shoulders soft, chest (heart) open
• Hearing the sound of my breath and the early birds' songs
• Elbows swinging straight back, pretending to reach for something in my back pockets (thank you to my old high school track coach!)
• Rocking exactly the right amount of clothing (thank you to Runner's World What To Wear tool online)
• Noticing the pink and orange sunrise
• Letting my body move my feet rather than feet moving body
• Bringing the breath deep into my dantian/hara
• Gently returning attention to breath and (paradoxically) soft legs, over and over
• Taking cues from the body in each moment, playing with form when called for
• Noticing ideas arise of the kind of runner "I" am or what "I" can do (ideas based on the past which is dead) and letting them fall away

  Here. Now. Joy.

eternal run

 

Diane Van Deren (Mark Phillips)

The other day at the gym, I skipped the trashy music and opted for a short RadioLab podcast. It was about a woman named Diane Van Deren who began running to help her deal with her often violent seizures. What astounded me was Van Deren started winning and placing in ultramarathons after the brain surgery to remedy the seizures. Apparently, post-surgery, her experience of time changed permanently. 

She now forgets to show up to appointments. If she meets you one day, she'll likely forget that she did the next.  Van Deren's short term memory is spotty at best and can be infuriating to her family and friends.  But apparently it is a boon to her running.

Each new moment in running is truly experienced as new to her. She doesn't bother with wearing a watch that now makes no sense to her. Without the ideas of past (how long she's run) and future (how much longer she has to go), she just runs...and runs. ..and runs.

This reminds me of a bit in Alan Watts' Myth & Ritual In Christianity that's been bouncing around my head lately:

...we are dead because each man recognizes himself simply and solely as his past. His "I", his continuity and identity, is nothing but an abstraction from his memory, since what I know of myself is always what I was.

And this from Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now:

To be identified with your minds is to be trapped in time: the compulsion to live almost exclusively through memory and anticipation....the past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whatever form. Both are illusions.

I have no desire to run an ultra, but I'm intrigued by the potential each moment holds (for fitness and for compassion) when it is experienced as timeless.

If I can let go of who I think I am and who I hope to be, what happens?

I'm certainly not going to run out and get brain surgery to do this.

But I am going to see what unfolds with a bit of meditation and workouts without a goal or a watch.

 

this body is already broken

 

My son is in a deep LEGO phase.  We've acquired many sets over the past several months. What happens is we get a new one, Mama or Daddy have to sit down and build the model which can take a while, then a couple days later, Little Boy either takes it apart himself or he destroys it in a storm of emotions.

So lately whenever I'm sitting down to a newly opened box with the little instructions booklet spread out in front of me and Little Boy hovering nearby, a Zen saying comes to mind:

The cup is already broken.

Nothing lasts. Even if we handle that cup (or that LEGO X-wing fighter) with the gentlest of hands, eventually sometime down the line, it will chip, crack, or shatter. Or simply disintegrate.

Just like this body.        

In my Facebook and Twitter feeds, I get tons of information about staying healthy, staying fit, mastering my swim stroke, shaving time off my running pace, eating to prevent heart disease and diabetes and cancer, carving out abs, preparing my butt for a bikini etc. etc. etc.

I often feel like the Promise behind it all is: everlasting life and abiding happiness. And I'm so often seduced.

Please don't misunderstand. I absolutely believe in health and fitness and quality of life.

But I also want to keep the truth in mind, that someday, maybe slowly, maybe suddenly, this body will start to fail. I'd rather not be overly mad about it when it happens (though I probably will be).

Neither do I want to trash "this fragile cup" just because it's doomed from the start. I'll still read the tips in my newsfeeds and try some of them out.  

If I someday really do shave minutes off my run pace, I want to simply enjoy the sensation, savor a momentary feeling of accomplishment, and let go of any extra expectation that a faster run will fix what is already broken.

 

 

 

sparkly or dull?

 

In the spring of 2010, upon reading Geneen Roth's book, Women, Food, and God, I quit believing in diets and threw out all my Weight Watchers paraphernalia along with the bathroom scale.  It was a liberating, watershed moment. I then set about to integrate her 7 Eating Principles into my daily life. Though my efforts have waxed and waned in the year + since, the intention to eat mindfully has stayed with me.

I'm not sure how or why, but something kicked in for me about three months ago. Here is how Roth describes it:

Eventually you will stop wanting to do anything that interferes with the increasing brightness you have come to associate with being alive....You find yourself slowly discovering foods you and your body actually want. What foods energize you, awaken you, sustain you.

Whatever seed that was planted in my mind when I first read Roth's book seems to have quietly emerged as a little flower in the form of a simple choice: sparkly or dull?

I find myself asking myself before eating/drinking: will this help me feel sparkly or dull?

What I've discovered so far:

• Eating when I'm not hungry: dull
• Eating a lot of sugar or processed white flour: momentarily sparkly, then really dull
• Drinking alcohol every night &/or more than a small glass: ditto above
• When the amount of veggies I eat > the amount of grains: Sparkle-Town, USA!

None of this is surprising or new to me, but it's been so much easier for me to make healthier choices when the question is so simple.

The bonus is it has even gone beyond what/how much I eat or drink.

A lot of Internet/TV: dull.

Going to bed when I'm tired: sparkly.

Exhausting myself in a workout with a day of parenting ahead: dull.

Allowing anxiety and regret to arise and fall away: sparkly.

You get the picture.

Which is not to say that I've completely stopped making dull choices. It's not always easy to choose sparkly. Practice, practice. And occasionally being reminded of how dull dull feels can be a good thing.

Maybe you'd like to try it but "sparkly/dull" doesn't resonate with you. Experiment with descriptives that do. How about clear/cloudy, awake/sleepy, alive/dead?

 

 

 

 

 



merry bliss-mas!

 

 

A few weeks ago, I decided to practice “working out my bliss.” That is, the only specific I have committed to is 4 to 5 workouts a week. Exactly what I do depends not on what I think I should be working on, but rather on the day’s bliss as well as the state of my body. Knowing that in February I intend to start training in earnest for an Olympic in June, this time feels like a luxurious long weekend.

I’m not sure whether it’s due to this approach or recent acupuncture treatments or the cold, dark days, but I’ve noticed I feel way less Eye of the Tiger and more…content. I think because my workouts have been shorter, less intense, and less result-oriented, I can just relax into the form and simply enjoy the sensations of movement. And even better: I have energy and focus left in the tank for my family who, especially during the holidays, need and deserve loving attention.

I had a mild panic moment the other day that maybe my Eye of the Tiger is gone forever. But coming across this recent post by Leo Babauta of zenhabits reminded me of what is already known in my heart of hearts:

Realize that you are already perfect. You are there. You can breathe a sigh of relief.

And what if that edge really is gone? As Leo says in the same post:

Would we be lazy slobs, or would we instead be happy, and in being happy do things that make us happy rather than make us better? And in being happy, perhaps we would show others how to be happy? And crazy as it might sound, maybe we’d start a little mini-revolution of happiness, so that people wouldn’t feel so inadequate, or need to spend every dime on products, or spend all their time on self-improvement.

A revolution of contentment.

Oh, I like the sound of that.

For today, I’m in.

How about you?

 

breathing into the dead zone

 

I have a friend who told me that before she started her regular yoga practice, she did not really occupy her torso. It was like a dead zone for her.

Recently I realized I have a dead zone, as well. A big one: the left side of my body.

There have been clues over the years, but it was a casual observation about my swim form from another friend that really opened my eyes.  She noticed that my left arm didn’t have the same arc in the stroke as my right. So the next time I swam, I put my mind in my left arm.

It felt strange and wonderful at the same time. Like running into someone I liked a long time ago and not quite remembering their name. It surprised me how sweet and awkward it was to pay attention to each stroke my left arm took, down to the smallest detail.

I don’t know if it made me any faster, but my whole body clearly enjoyed actually being a whole body.

The same odd thing happened on my run this week. My left leg has always been The Troublemaker. Because of my hip alignment, it is “longer” than the other leg, has been prone to shin splints, and it was the left ankle that cracked at the end of my last triathlon. During this last run, I tried mindlessly pounding it out and came close to falling!  Pissed at myself and The Troublemaker, I almost gave up on the run.

Instead, I started off slow, put my mind in my left leg, and *played* with my form. A little more tuck in my pelvis, a little more of a lean forward, bending knees throughout, all the while breathing into my left leg.  I literally imagined sucking  the air down my leg and into my foot.

It was astonishing. It felt better and weird.

The Buddhist teacher Katherine Thanas said,

The deep attending to hard knots of holding is a powerfully compassionate act, a turning toward rejected parts of our being.  As this newly compassionate observing occurs, the object of observation, the body/self is transformed…This is the beginning of metta practice, lovingkindness for the self.

I am becoming reacquainted with half my body.

Paying just a little more attention to parts I’ve avoided and ignored yields immediate results: giving awareness releases love and restores a wholeness I didn’t know I’d lacked.

What would happen if I breathed into other parts of my life that I avoid and ignore?