Shambhala Sun | September 2012

REAL PEACE IN TIMES OF STRESS / BODY

Deep Relaxation

Soften the shoulders, rest the eyes, feel the breath—SISTER CHAN KHONG on how to release the stress in our bodies.

Body and spirit support each other; we cannot be relaxed and happy when our bodies are tense. Mindful awareness is like a ray of light that scans our body and brings relaxation to each part. If you have thirty minutes, you can use it to scan your whole body in deep relaxation. But if you only have five or ten minutes, you can still experience release.

In the sutra called Mindfulness Immersed in the Body, the Buddha advises us to visit every part of our body, bringing mindful awareness to it. To begin, find a place to lie down. If you don’t have room to lie down, sit and lean against the wall, stretching out your legs. It’s fine if you fall asleep. When you resume your daily activities, you will do so with more energy and freshness.

With your arms alongside your body, close your eyes. Be aware of the air as it goes in and out of your lungs. Dwell peacefully in your in-breath and out-breath. Bring your attention to your abdomen, about two inches below your navel. As you breathe in gently, your abdomen rises. As you breathe out gently, your abdomen falls. Put your hand on your belly and feel it rise and fall.

Breathing in, send love and care to your head and brain. Breathing out, release the tension in your head and brain. Breathing in, calm the tension in your neck and shoulders. Breathing out, release the tension in your neck and shoulders. Shoulders carry so many responsibilities. Let the tension in them flow into the earth, leaving your shoulders light. Breathing in, calm your legs from your hips to the tips of your toes. Breathing out, release the tension in your legs. Your legs and feet carry you around the planet. Thank them for being there. Breathing in, calm every cell in your heart. Breathing out, smile to your heart. Your heart works day and night. When we are stressed, our heart suffers. Support your heart by letting go of strong emotions.

Send love to your liver. Breathing in, calm every cell of your liver. Breathing out, smile to your liver. Our liver works silently day and night, but we rarely pay attention to it. To better support your liver, commit to being aware of what you eat and drink. Send love to your lungs. Smile to your lungs. It’s so wonderful to be able to breathe in fully. Send love to your kidneys. They work so hard and silently for your well-being. Send love to your eyes. How wonderful that they allow you to see forms and colors, your loved ones, and the beauty of the seasons!

Send love and thanks to any other part of your body that feels achy, tight, tired, or neglected. Then take a moment with your hands on your abdomen. Breathe in, feeling your breath through your whole body. Breathe out, feeling your whole body relax. Body and mind are completely at ease. Slowly, open your eyes and sit up gently.


Sister Chan Khong’s forthcoming book is Deep Relaxation: Practices for Coming Home to Your Body, which will be released in November.

From the September 2012 Shambhala Sun magazine. Click here to see what else is in this issue.

See also: Andrea Miller's profile of Sister Chan Khong, "Path of Peace"

Shambhala Sun | September 2012

REAL PEACE IN TIMES OF STRESS / PARENTING

Let it Slide

Tens of times a day, DIANA WINSTON’s two-year-old daughter helps her practice letting go.

At the park, my daughter is climbing the ladder to the top of the slide. I think this is a great idea. I love slides; I’ve always loved slides. But my two year old isn’t really a slider. She’s more of a hanger. She loves to swing from monkey bars, which sometimes makes me nervous. “Go for the slide!” I shout. She gets to the top, pauses dramatically, and says, “The slide is hot. I want a snack.” My heart sinks. Slides are great. What’s her problem?

Then my practice kicks in. Diana, this is not about you. This is about her. Take a breath, feel your body, notice the hot feeling of disappointment over this truly tiny moment arising in your chest. Breathe and let it go. It’s just a slide. Let her be who she is. Don’t resist.

This is the practice of non-contention—surrendering to things exactly as they are. I do it tens of times a day with my daughter because it helps me meet each moment with clarity and let go when the moment isn’t what I want or expect it to be. I’ve been astounded how many expectations I carry about my child—who she should be (a slider not a hanger), what she should wear (not that blue elephant t-shirt for the fifth day in a row), what she should or shouldn’t be doing at any given moment (not hanging on my leg), and especially, what she should be feeling (shouldn’t she be cheerful most of the time?).

If I don’t practice non-contention, I suffer, fret, struggle, complain, and basically ruin my day. If I do do it, I grieve briefly but my mind is at peace. I let go of what are merely ideas about the way things should be and open to the truth of things as they are.

Parenting is difficult, especially when dealing with a child’s strong emotions. I discovered in her infancy the challenge of tolerating my daughter’s anger. I’d do anything rather than feel the pain of her pain. After a while of my husband pointing out to me how quickly I was trying to distract her or give in to her, I now use my daughter’s wildly uncensored anger as a practice moment. What’s happening inside me? Can I not react out of fear and aversion? Can I let her be exactly as she is?

This practice isn’t about being a doormat. It doesn’t mean that if your child is doing something hurtful to herself or another person, or something against your rules or philosophy, that you say, “Ah, yes, I will be with this moment exactly as it is.” The wise discrimination that comes through mindfulness is needed here. You have to discern on the spot whether to let go or act. However, I’ve discovered that when I act with a mind of noncontention, it’s usually far more effective than the automatic responses that come from anxiety or anger.

Today my daughter grabbed the blue elephant shirt again. “How about a different shirt today?” I pleaded.

“Noooo.”

“But you have so many other cute shirts.”

“Noooo, I want my elephant shirt.” So after a minute or two of stress, struggle, and thinking things needed to be different, I breathed and let go into things as they were. Yup, this is it. This is life.

Diana Winston is the director of mindfulness education at UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center and co-author of Fully Present: The Science, Art, and Practice of Mindfulness.

From the September 2012 Shambhala Sun magazine. Click here to see what else is in this issue.

Shambhala Sun | September 2012

Stress Relief for the Constantly Connected

Life vs. screens: who’s really in control? LORI DESCHENE on how to make sure you’re the one in charge.
 
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed in our internet-enabled, always-on world. From friends and family to colleagues and acquaintances, there’s always someone emailing, tweeting, or texting—and everything can seem so urgent. If you feel stressed by the pressure to keep up with the stream, you may find it helpful to set some communication boundaries, for yourself and others. These tips may help.


Set Boundaries

There was a time when we collectively understood that reaching an answering machine meant no one was home. We also accepted that we would receive a call back at some unknown time, when that person returned.

While most of us anticipate far speedier replies these days, it’s up to each of us to set expectations for when and how we’ll respond. That might mean setting up an email auto-responder explaining that you only check your account at specific times each week. Or it might entail writing in your social media profiles that you don’t check messages on those sites. You may also want to request that your friends and coworkers compile their requests to send all at once, instead of sending many short emails throughout the day.

If you set boundaries for how you receive communication— and expectations for when you’ll respond—it will be easier to relax when you disconnect.


Take Digital Breaks

This year on March 23, millions of people did a collective digital detox. It was the third annual National Day of Unplugging, created by an organization called the Sabbath Manifesto. A digital detox is just what it sounds like—a complete break from everything related to technology. Those who took part reported feeling more present and focused in their surroundings.

But you don’t need to wait for a scheduled day to unplug and recharge your mind; at any time you choose you can enjoy the benefits of powering down your gadgets. During those days when you must stay connected, prioritize maintaining a connection with yourself so that you stay in touch with your needs. You may require regular breaks to stretch your legs and ground yourself in the moment, or you may need to close everything down once in awhile and take a few slow, mindful breaths.

When you schedule and take regular digital breaks, it’s much easier to maintain a sense of balance, mentally and physically.


Harness the Power of Pausing

When we feel technology-related stress, it’s often because we’ve consciously chosen to distract and overwhelm ourselves. Sometimes we pull out our phones to avoid uncomfortable moments or sign on to social media sites to feel acknowledged, connected, or validated. When you feel compelled to check your email, post a status update, or otherwise engage online, take a moment and check in with your true intentions and needs.

This same concept also applies to work correspondence. You might be tempted to monitor your email remotely in order to stay ahead, but this puts you in a persistent state of high alert. In a recent study, British psychologist and researcher Richard Balding found that obsessively checking smartphones for email can lead to higher stress levels. The most stressed participants regularly checked their phones, anticipating new messages that weren’t actually there—what Balding termed “phantom alerts.”

You can dramatically increase your overall well-being by planning to stay disconnected when you’re able, and pausing to check in with your true intentions when you feel the need to go online.

If you take the time to set and honor healthy boundaries for technology, you’ll inevitably feel much more relaxed, focused, and balanced—and consequently, less stressed.


Lori Deschene is the author of Tiny Buddha and founder of the popular website tinybuddha.com.

From the September 2012 Shambhala Sun magazine. Click here to browse the entire issue online.

Shambhala Sun | September 2012

Going Outside

When life gets too busy, KATHLEEN DEAN MOORE remembers the childhood joy of nature.

For many years, my life has been impossibly over-scheduled. I finally resorted to computerized, categorized, color-coded to-do lists. I so single-mindedly finished and deleted tasks from the list that the consonants wore off the delete key on my laptop, leaving only e e e, and then the whole delete button fell off the keyboard and bounced under the radiator. My colleagues can gauge my stress levels by the pitch of my voice; I live at a screeching e, an octave above middle c.

So I assumed I understood stress. But just to be sure, I looked it up. Stress is a noun meaning “adversity, pressure,” from estrece, “narrowness,” from the Latin strictus, “compressed,” from stringere, “draw tight.” But stress is also a verb—“to place greater importance on.” The etymology surprised me and made me wonder. Does stress come from compressing too much into too narrow a life and then placing outsize importance on all those assignments? Or put it this way: Is stress what happens when a person fills her life too full of her self-important self?

Well, yes and no. The millions of people who are grieving, who are thirsty, who are unable to feed their children—they have not chosen their challenges. My situation is different. What I experience is the ironic stress of the privileged, which is stress nonetheless. And here’s the thing: Once I figured out what stress might be for me, I realized what I could do to reduce it.

I should have known all along. When I fretted as a child, gnawing my fingernails, my parents always sent me outside, giving me a gentle nudge out the door as if I were a bad and beloved dog. I resented it, of course. But what happened beyond the walls?

Under the branches of a willow tree, I lay on the grass and breathed the willows’ smell, like dusty lemons. Dusky air, chirring with cicadas and sweet with a breeze across peonies, warmed me like a blanket. Maybe time itself paused to rest unget der the willow, or maybe I mistook its motion for the sway of leafy branches, but I remember being surprised when the wild, orange, Midwestern sunset descended. Fireflies floated over the lawn. A star sank through the last purple stripes of the day, and a dog barked far, far away in a night so dense with the scent of the peonies that I might have been underwater. Sometime after, the porch light flashed on—my mother, come to fetch me. “Can I stay here?” I asked. She returned to the house and brought out a blanket. When she turned off the porch light, the night flooded back in, warm and sweet and endless.

How could I have forgotten this?

How could I have forgotten that the wild, damp world is an answer to stress? The expanse of the natural world, the infinity of the night sky, and the long reach of the winds dwarf human concerns. Here is where our minds can unclench, our hearts can break open, and we can step outside our narrowed lives into a world that is without limits in time or space or beauty. The universe itself breathes in and out—the trees inhaling, exhaling in the rhythm of day and night, and the Earth slowly rotating into and out of the light, the green leaves shining.

Stress, n. antonym gratitude.


Kathleen Dean Moore , author of Wild Comfort: The Solace of Nature and Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril, is a distinguished professor of philosophy at Oregon State University.

From the September 2012 Shambhala Sun magazine. Click here to see what else is in this issue.