Funny man Ben Aaron, a TV reporter and all-around nice guy at NBC’s LXTV San Diego, shows us a new fitness craze he has developed that he calls DANCE WALKING.

Ben’s Dance Walking concept is taking off.

“Schools are showing the Dance Walk video to their students,” he posted on his Facebook page. “They’re playing music through the loud speakers in the hallways so everyone can dance walk to their next class.”

Doing this kind of exercise, you can’t help but smile.

There’s a new search program at Google, but one without a magic algorithm. This program lets you search inside yourself so you can find, well, yourself. Cleverly titled “Search Inside Yourself,” it’s a free course Google provides employees that is designed to teach emotional intelligence through meditation, a practical real-world meditation you take with you wherever you go.

The program was reported in yesterday’s NY Times and described in Search Inside Yourself: The Unexpected Path to Achieving Success, Happiness (and World Peace) by Chade-Meng Tan who also teaches the course. It’s a rock-solid business-friendly mindfulness course in three acts: train your attention, develop self-knowledge and self-mastery, and create useful mental habits (video aboveGoogle’s Chade-Meng Tan on Mindfulness Search Inside).

That Google takes care of the minds of its employees should not surprise. Companies that fly high are learning to take care of their own, and the perks need to be more than free beverages and foosball tables. This is especially true at Google.

Employees coming from fast-paced fields, already accustomed to demanding bosses and long hours, say Google pushes them to produce at a pace even faster than they could have imagined.

Instruction in mindfulness, in being able to reflect rather react, is a genius perk to provide. The article does a nice job reporting how it helps those Googlers lucky enough not to get stuck on the waiting list; more people want to take it when offered than can be accommodated. With effectiveness and popularity in mind there’s a few more things that need to be said.

All Mindfulness is Good Mindfulness

It doesn’t matter where or how you develop mindfulness. Doesn’t matter why. Doesn’t even matter what you do: meditation, yoga, prayer, therapy, gratitude, science-help practices, hiking, painting, exercise, etc. It’s all good.

Any practice or activity that supports reflection over reactivity, encourages feeling feelings rather than acting on them, and opens awareness to what is really going on is of benefit. Slow down, notice, and savor is a great way to build mental wealth no matter where or how. It just is. All mindfulness really is good mindfulness.

Take a Deep Breath When Your Job Sucks

There’s a huge problem with the Google ”Search Inside Yourself” path to greater mindfulness and emotional intelligence. Huge. Namely, most people don’t work for Google, or companies like Google. In fact, for many people work is a rather unpleasant experience, and if not unpleasant few jobs offer opportunities for transcendence and personal liberation. For many work is just work.

But don’t think mindfulness doesn’t apply. Having a job that kind of sucks, or sucks some of the time, doesn’t mean that mindfulness is not for you. Perhaps the more your job fails to present opportunities for growth and self-expression, the more you need to cultivate mindfulness; perhaps when you’re working 9-to-5 is when you most need the ability to reflect rather than react.

I had an email exchange with Caitlin Kelly who wrote the Times article, as well as Malled: My Unintentional Career in Retail, about mindfulness in mind-numbing jobs. She said,

“You have to detach as much from it as a source of stress as humanly possible while putting in enough effort to stay employed. Just because they’re paying you doesn’t mean you have to put your heart and soul into it.”

Well said Caitlin.

Mindfulness of Other Minds

Practicing mindfulness is always mindfulness of something, including of mind itself. Because of this mindfulness practices are sometimes disparaged as isolated navel-gazing. That is wrong. An important common thread to mindfulness practices is people becoming mindful of other people also having minds.

As you’ll see if you watch the video below, one of the mental habits SIY teaches through instruction and exercise is to think to yourself when engaging someone else that you want them to be happy. The exercises open space for connecting with the fact that other people are having thoughts and feelings and are not just some object generating a reaction in you.

In my exchange with Caitlin Kelly I asked her about her own personal experience with mindfulness practice. She described her experience with an 8-day Buddhist retreat, including something very interesting about mindfulness of other minds:

“Every teaching session, two to three a day, began with 10 to 20 minutes of meditation and chanting — which I had never done before. It was powerful to do this in a large group of about 75 people, men and women of all ages. The communality of it is really important — which is key, I think to the SIY classes. You have tremendous support for this risk you take.”

Or as the SIY book itself states,

“For the benefits of meditation to become widely accessible to humanity, it cannot just be the domain of bald people in funny robes living in mountains, or small groups of New Age folks in San Francisco. Meditation needs to become “real.” It needs to align with the lives and interests of real people.”

–via the Dust Jacket of Search Inside Yourself

No One Likes Change

I know change is hard. And I also know there are many profound, personal, and often seemingly intractable reasons people have trouble implementing changes like those taught in SIY, or in any mindfulness practice. In fact, part of how I make my living is bearing witness to the pain impending change causes. Even the most desired outcome can at times feel like a Sisyphean task. But I’ve learned that change is possible. With patience, understanding, and kindness, even Sisyphus can be helped to leave that damn rock alone and get on to other things.

One way to approach change is to start small, give yourself a success experience. Make it bearable, bite-sized. Go hear a lecture before reading a book before changing your life. So, here’s a video of Meng giving a lecture. It’s very Google-centric, making Google-ish points like making the most of opportunity because you will now have a deep knowledge of self. But its a good place to start, or to continue.

As Jane wrote when she passed on the video to me, ” This video struck me as a good illustration of a nervous system shut down. And the ways that kindness can get us moving again.”

Police officers sometimes get a bad rap, but this video shows that they are very caring not only for humans but for animals as well. This frightened deer will agree that he is a hero – watch what he does

todays blog is from a good friend of mine , MJ Delekta, ho also happens to run a lovely yoga and Qi Gong Studio in Martha’s Vineyard, MA.  If by chance you want some retreat or peaceful time this summer you might want to explore taking one of her yoga classes or workshops. 

What would your life be like if you accepted yourself in this moment just as you are. Letting all the conversations in your head settle down and just “being”. Can you free up energy to resonate with your life as it unfolds in each moment? Hmmm, you ask? How will I pay my bills, do the chores, go to work?

I’m simply suggesting that you bring attention to your life. Step fully into its essence. When you are always trying to change or fix yourself you live in the past or jump over the present to a futuristic imagined fantasy. Consider stepping into this Springtime in celebration of your perfection. Making choices in each moment that clarify and nurture this unity and oneness that is at the core of who you are.

OK, you’re ready? Where do you begin? How about observing the bursting forth of color and life all around you? Or, go for a walk and sing with the breezes and shine with the sun. It’s that simple. Some of us  may need a spiritual practice or a supportive container to explore in. Consider connecting with others and come together weekly to support a deep listening. Or contact someone you trust to facilitate a meditative inquiry around what you don’t need to carry around anymore.  Free up your energy and may you live well this Springtime.

One of the organizations I’m involved in has teamed up with the makers of  BULLY, a brand-new documentary from director Lee Hirsch, to help students tackle bullying at its root.

We want to make sure that 1 million kids see the film, and have the tools they need to make a difference. Will you help?

Through The BULLY Project 1 Million Kids, educators receive free materials and training focused on preventing bullying and promoting empathy. Public school teachers interested in arranging a field trip can sign up for a free screening. They’re collecting signatures from teens and teachers, so visit the site to join the movement.

This is about way more than a film. Together, we’re out to equip young people with the skills they need to stand up, and to discover their own ability to make a difference in the world.

Rather than legislating our way to a solution, or demanding more police officers in classrooms, we’re inviting students to share their ideas to “start empathy”. We’ll help you put that idea into practice, and you’ll have a chance to win a free trip to Washington, DC to share your solution with fellow changemakers from across the country. Check out the stories of other world-changers under the age of 20, and submit your idea today.

Joko Beck, one of the beloved Zen teachers, started her practice in the sixties after raising four children on her own.  She died last year at 94.  Her style still influences us.  It’s practical,  useful in every day life.  I’ve loved her work since I was first exposed to it in 2000. 

As I work with the people in the Becoming Safely Embodied Skills Course that is happening now I was reminded of  Joko’s perspective on thoughts.

I tell people, “You just can’t go looking for these things. You have to let this transformation grow.” And that entails hard, persistent, daily work. I simply wouldn’t let an irritable thought go through my mind without noting, “Oh, that’s interesting. What’s going on here?” I don’t mean analyzing it, but just stopping. There has to be that ability to stand back and say, “Yeah, interesting that I do that.” Right there. I may go back to it if I’m busy talking to you. But it’s been registered. I’m not going to let that one go by; it’s too interesting. It’s not good or bad. It’s just interesting to note that you do that.

 

Printed in Tricycle Magazine online.  Article from Spiritual Bypassing: When Spirituality Disconnects Us from What Really Matters, by Robert Augustus Masters.  Published by North Atlantic Books, copyright © 2010 by Robert Augustus Masters

There isn’t any such thing as a negative emotion. There are negative things that we do with our emotions, but our emotions themselves are neither negative nor positive. They simply are.

Consider anger. When we are angry, we might express it as hostility—emitting unmistakable negativity, bristly and mean-spirited, tight and heartless. Yes, we are angry, but we are filtering—and forcing— it through a darkly twisted lens, so that it is expressed not as clean anger (that is, anger free of aggression, blaming, and shaming) but as hostility.

Does this mean that anger itself is therefore a negative emotion? No. It means we have handled our anger negatively, putting a mean-spirited spin on it. Our choice. Hostility is not a negative emotion but rather a negative framing and expression of anger.

Anger itself can be a positive force: getting angry that you have just lost your job may give you the energy and sheer drive to pursue more fitting work. Likewise, getting angry about the abuse you are suffering in a relationship will help fuel you to form healthy boundaries, providing much of the motivation and strength needed to either improve the relationship or leave it.

Those of us caught up in spiritual bypassing tend to slap the labels of “positive” and “negative” onto emotions as if such qualities were absolute givens. But the more we investigate the reality of our lives, the clearer it becomes that ascribing qualities like “negative” and “positive” to emotions is inevitably a context-bound undertaking.

Adapted from Spiritual Bypassing: When Spirituality Disconnects Us from What Really Matters, by Robert Augustus Masters, published by North Atlantic Books, copyright © 2010 by Robert Augustus Masters.

Wanting to see the natural, native experience of attachment bonding?

This lovely trailer  (I’m anticipating the movie/documentary) that director Alastair Fathergill and DisneyNature did on chimpanzees and three years in the life of little Oscar one of the chimpanzees in the forests of the  Ivory Coast and West Africa.

Here’s a link to hear Jane Goodall and Alastair talk about making the documentary

This morning before I sat I listened to Mingyur Rinpoche to get a little inspiration.  The teaching he offered was about the nature of suffering.  Something we all know a lot about!

He prompted his students to recognize suffering as suffering.

How?  By being aware.  He told us, “Otherwise when we’re one with the suffering we fall into the river of suffering.  We’re carried away by the river of suffering.  By becoming aware of the river you’re already aware of the river.”  He ended by encouraging us to become aware of whatever suffering we’re in.

To see a video of Mingyur Rinpoche talking about how he deal with his panic attacks with meditation click here.

One of the benefits of using the Internal Family Systems model of working with parts is that you can learn to separate your Self from the parts.

This rather simple exercise can become more complicated the more we are identified with the parts that are holding emotional charge.  When the pain or numbness or terror or any number of experiences fills our being it’s hard to remember that we are not that which is flooding our nervous system.  This fall I hope to do a course on how to do this in more detail.  Keep posted for information on that.

Teasing apart these nuances in our bodies and in our psychology is what the Becoming Safely Embodied Skills are all about.  Our first live call was Saturday.  It’s an honor to be able to share skills that help people heal their lives to have the life they want to live.

There are still a few spaces open.  If you’re interested please join us.  Click here for more information.

Is there a Miracle Cure?

Well, at least I haven’t found it yet.  There is, however, the possibility of a miracle. It’s called “neuroplasticity.”

What we practice carves out a path inside us.  

It’s sort of like the Grand Canyon.   Have you ever seen it or any other arroryo/canyon in the southwest? Incredible how a river moving on the surface of the earth will over time carve out these incredibly deep and beautiful canyons right into the earth. (The picture above isn’t of the Grand Canyon but a canyon in western New Mexico)

This came to mind in a different way as I sat next to a premier athlete on a flight one day. Sometimes, on a plane, you get lucky and sit next to someone you want to talk to, where there’s so much interesting territory to explore. Such was the case with this high performance athlete I recently had the good fortune to sit next to.

We had hours sitting there to talk about all sorts of things. I had always been intrigued with peak performance training which is when athletes practice visualizing small, tiny details for every fragment of time as they prepare for an event. This athlete spoke of the training that happens, so much of it more than just physical.

“Much of the preparatory work leading up to an event is what happens in the imagination, in the mind, as you take yourself through moment by moment experience of how the event will play out.”

“What does this have to do with healing?” you murmur as you read this. Well, it actually dovetails with the research being done on neuroplasticity.

Each triggered episode lays down or reinforces a deep groove into a neurological pattern inside us.

The first time something happens to us it lays down an impression which can be repaired, shifted, changed depending on the context, the people, the awareness of everyone involved.

The second time that groove gets cut a bit thicker, pulling in memories, associations, and the charge of previous moments. Again, with sensitivity, kindness, awareness those kinds of moments can be repaired.

Yet the more these grooves get cut into our being the more difficult it is to shift them.

That doesn’t mean it can’t change, though.

If we stay with the analogy of a canyon or arroyo we can build a dam to harness the water, to pool it. Once we have harnessed the water we can re-direct it. The pool of water doesn’t flow in the same direction we now can move the water flow on a new path, carving out a different course.

That’s what’s possible in our nervous system, in our minds, in our hearts.

Nothing is carved in stone inside us.

Richard Davidson wrote a new book with Sharon Begley on The Emotional Life of your Brain: How its Unique Patterns Affect the Way You Think, Feel, and Live – and How You Can Change Them.

In the book they explore how the research behind emotional styles born out of patterns of activity in the brain. They not only suggest, but promote the possibility that rather than being stuck in fear based responses from the amygdala we can learn to retrain our brains to be more resilient, less negative and more hopeful.

Obviously this is important information for anyone who has had a painful history.

It’s why I gently (I hope!) reiterate, over and over again, the need to practice new patterns of interaction. It’s so much easier to do what our bodies, minds, hearts are already programmed to do. We don’t have to think about it, we don’t have to put any effort into what we already know. We can just do it.

Problem is we just keep perpetuating the same old pattern.

Then we bemoan our fate, feel stuck and look for that great and wondrous and elusive “Magical Cure.”  What we can do instead is practice the humility that is utterly necessary on the healing journey.

We can practice surrendering and letting go our patterned way of responding and opening into meeting our true nature which is without question something more magnificent than anything we could have forecast or programmed for ourselves.

When we live in the flow of who we are, we are relaxed, easy, gracious, happier, less defended (and at the same time more protected,) and more content.

I marvel at this process in my own life.  

If I had had my druthers so many years ago I would have planned a much different life for myself. There were so many times when I was upset that I couldn’t make my mind, my life, to work in certain ways. I wanted to be more academic, “smarter”, intellectual, thinner, prettier, thoughtful… you name it. I didn’t respect my own heart and soul and expression.

As I practiced the many different practices that I bring into the ezine and the courses, as I let go and allowed life to guide me, I’ve actually softened and become more of who am. I’ve been able to serve you from a place of love and trust instead of fear.

Probably the best part of my life has been learning to trust each and every moment, allowing life to guide me through the immense caverns that come, to emerge in ways I never thought were possible.

This is what I want for you.  

To know yourself as all you are and be loved as you are.

To be present to the gift of your heart that lurks behind the pain and suffering and traumas that you’ve gone through.

To be able to trust that as you move into and through the pain and joys of your particular life you are being brought into communion with your own heart and soul.

As that happens – and I’ve seen it happen to many people – your defenses will relax, the intrusions of the past will diminish, and your heart will expand to hold all without worry or fear. Out of this peace will bloom and love will shimmer.

This is my prayer for all of us.

I’d love to hear what you have to say, to hear what you’re thinking.  Drop a note below.  Your voice in this conversation is important to all of us.