an openhearted, kind awareness of the present moment

            Almost two months ago I started the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course at Duke Integrative Medicine.  Over the past year, I have worked with many wonderful health practitioners who have led me to a deeper my understanding of my own inner-workings.  As I gained insight into the connections between emotion, stress, trauma, psychological pain, and bodily pain, my therapist suggested I look into the mindfulness class.  At first, I wasn’t ready to commit to such an exploration, but after a few months went by, I took the plunge.  Mindfulness can be difficult because it goes against everything we have been taught or conditioned to believe.  Instead of pushing ourselves into a bigger and better future, mindfulness cultivates an openhearted, kind awareness of the present moment. 

            Duke’s MBSR class is based on a program created by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.  In 1972, he began conducting research on the mind-body interaction in healing, on clinical applications of mindfulness meditation practice for patience with chronic pain or stress-related disorders, and on the effects of MBSR on the brain and immune system. 

            Stress, especially prolonged periods of stress, can have devastating effects on the body such as elevated levels of glucose and insulin, a weakened immune system, increased blood pressure, and digestive disturbances.  Chronic stress depletes endorphins, the body’s natural painkillers, which can result in more headaches, backaches, and arthritis pain.  If stress goes unmanaged, it is associated with increased illness and mortality.  However, through cultivating the “relaxation response,” as opposed to the flight or fight response, a person allows the body to discharge tension that has built up due to constant stress. 

            Scientific research continues to illuminate the benefits of mindfulness.  Studies have shown that mindfulness can affect the structure and neural patterns of the brain by increasing activity in the left prefrontal cortical region of the brain, where greater activity is associated with increased well being.  Also, mindfulness meditation has the potential to improve immune function and levels of cortisol in breast and prostate cancer outpatients. The eight-week MBSR course has been shown to halve the incidence of relapse in depression in those recovering from a depressive episode.  In addition, the class potentially may increase self-compassion and reduced stress in participating individuals.  Increasingly, mindfulness practices are being integrated into patient health plans.

            Before beginning any mindfulness practice, the “seven essential attitudes” must be understood.  First is non-judging, by which one is an impartial witness to the constant stream of judging and reacting to both inner and outer experiences.  The habits of judging and reacting separate us from directly experiencing each moment of our lives.  When judging arises, don’t judge the judging; just acknowledge that it is present.  Next is patience, allowing things to unfold on their own schedule.  Patience leads us to maintain a stronger connection with each moment as it unfolds.  Third is beginner’s mind—thinking that we understand the present moment keeps us from experiencing its beauty and richness.  To practice beginner’s mind is to experience each moment as if we are experiencing the world for the first time, like a child feeling her first drop of rain.

            Also, as you become more aware of your life, you must learn to trust yourself and your feelings in order to understand what it means to be yourself.  Next, it is important to cultivate a non-striving attitude, to pay attention to whatever happens without striving to change things.  If there is a sense of striving, then notice that it is there, without judging.  In order to achieve your meditative goals, you must paradoxically back away and focus on accepting things as they are.  Next, one must cultivate this acceptance, this willingness to see things exactly as they are in the present moment.  The last “essential attitude” is letting go, or letting be.  Often, we cling to beliefs about ourselves, others, and situations, which obscure the true essence of each moment.  Through mindfulness, we learn to stop focusing on these ideas and just let our experience be what it is.  By becoming aware of the attitudes of non-judging, patience, beginner’s mind, trust, non-striving, acceptance, and letting go, you may already find relief from daily stress.

            Living in such a fast-paced, egocentric society, I think everyone could benefit from Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction—if not to gain insight into their own being, then to reduce their stress and improve their health.  I believe that if everyone practiced mindfulness, the world would be a better, more tolerant and caring, place to be.

a whole bunch of other emotions

            Two-thousand-and-five was not a great year.  In my opinion, this is an understatement.  It’s like saying that Albert Einstein was kind of smart.

            I graduated from high school on a warm, clear summer day in June, accepting my diploma on the football field with my 185 classmates.  The world was my oyster, its fresh buttered flesh almost melting in my mouth.  I was free of high school and the small sheltered town where I grew up.  College was my next move and the possibilities after that were endless.  I was smart, I was driven; I could do anything I put my mind to.

            Shortly after graduation, my family relocated from northeastern Ohio to Mississippi’s Gulf Coast.  My dad was offered a great job and quite frankly, we all needed a change.  But I wasn’t quite ready for that change just yet.  I felt more like an adult after I finished high school and I wanted to have some fun with my friends.  So I stayed behind for a month.  My friends and I didn’t do anything in particular, but it was one last hoorah, no matter how small it was.

            In August, my sister, older by four years, left for Panama “to make real differences in the lives of real people” with the Peace Corps.  To me, she had always seemed so sure of herself, independent and driven.  I admired her and wanted to follow her example.  I even joined the high school swim team for one stressful season because she had swam on the team when she was in high school.   She had gone to the University of Toronto for college, so I turned in an application, too.  We all wished her the best of luck with as much love as we could give her and drove home from the airport with tears in our eyes.

            Shortly after my sister left, my parents and I piled into the car and headed back north.  I was headed to the University of Pittsburgh.  I was excited and nervous and a whole bunch of other emotions that I didn’t know how to identify.  I remember the total chaos around the dorms—where to get your key, your ID card, information packets, and all.  People were wandering around like a bunch of hungry cats herded by some incompetent wrangler.  Then we stood in line, hot and sweaty with countless other hot, sweaty families, waiting for the elevators to take us up to my floor.

            I wandered into my room, small, cramped, pie-shaped.  My roommate was already getting settled in.  She was a year younger, having graduated high school early, and clearly thought a lot of herself.  Great.  This will be a blast.  But we smiled and chatted and made the best of the situation.  What else could we do?  We were all a bunch of kids being squeezed into dorms about to start what were the so-called, “best years of our lives.”

            A few days later, Hurricane Katrina slammed the Gulf Coast of Mississippi and Louisiana.  I had no real friends at college; I had just started to meet everyone.  I mean, I had just gotten to college.  Any calls I placed to my parents couldn’t get through.  I didn’t know where they were, if they were okay, if they were alive.  News footage of the disaster bombarded me from every side—it was the only thing on the televisions around campus.  And my sister was in Panama.  I felt completely helpless.  Powerless.  Alone. 

one unsteady foot in front of the other

            Sometimes I can’t help but feel completely unsettled.  It feels as if I am missing some key piece of information that would clearly illuminate things.  Then, I would have the answers to the questions that I have been asking all along.  I would no longer feel as if the ground upon which I am walking is shifting beneath my feet, about to open up and swallow me whole.  I tread lightly on these unsettled days, tiptoeing around, so as not to disturb the forces in this world that are balanced just so delicately that I am left to place one unsteady foot in front of the other.

            I lie in bed, morning light washing over the sheets and blankets, keeping my arms and legs and body warm and safe, in a cocoon.  My heartbeat grows stronger and faster, with the engrained memories of my past.  I take deep breaths to calm my rising anxieties and remind myself that this is another day.  This could be the day when things change—when the pain melts away and my strength and energy return and life is sweet and full of humor and possibility….  I roll over onto my side and push myself up.  I commit myself to the day by touching my feet to the floor and accepting the weight of my small but heavy body.  Every day starts the same.

            I have hopes for which I am afraid to hope.  I hope for the ability to go back to school to explore the intricacies and insights of taught knowledge.  I hope for a meaningful career, something that makes sense to me where order can be made, so that I may support myself.  I hope to have money and energy left over so that I may socialize with friends and create art.  I hope for a family of my own—for a loving, supportive, and understanding husband, and bright, happy, optimistic children.  I hope that I can bear those children and raise them to be safe in their own bodies and minds.  I hope for a house with lots of windows through which I can see butterflies, birds, honeybees, and dragonflies, flitting about my flower garden.  I hope for a piece of land to grow fruit and vegetables and to have chickens, enough to live from, with trails leading through a forest by a stream.

            But I am afraid to hope for these hopes.  My body feels drained of energy and strength.  Some days I can walk three miles, while others I can barely walk to the end of the street.  Two years ago I hiked rim-to-rim of the Grand Canyon.  It was a stunningly beautiful and physically draining hike.  But I did it.  Then I hiked fifteen miles through Snake Gulch before beginning a 4,000 mile solo road trip, driving and hiking nearly every day over the course of two weeks.

            Last year I started working and living on a family-owned organic farm.  Up at the crack of dawn, planting, weeding, cultivating, through the height of the day, and falling into bed at the end.  I did that for three months.  Then one night I started burning up and couldn’t sleep and my pain and stress overwhelmed me.  I could hardly get out of bed for two weeks.

            It’s been almost a year since that episode.  I worked a bit at a local coffee shop, but I could hardly do anything else.  My energy waxed and waned and finally I couldn’t serve coffee drinks any more.  I realized that the only thing I could do, which is perhaps the hardest thing for me to do, was to devote my time to understanding why pain and fatigue had taken over my body so that, maybe, one day, I could hope my hopes once more.