Mind/Body Foundations Interview

Outline

Introduction 0:00

Life Coaching vs. Psychotherapy. 3:00

The body holds a plethora of wisdom. 4:35

The parable of the neighbor and the farmer. 10:24

Beginner’s Mind 11:48

How to deal with anxiety and stress. 15:00

The kids on the bus & their vulnerability. 19:51

The sacred wound 23:00

Sharing your heart makes you accessible to everyone. 26:05

Clouds and sky metaphor. 31:11

Listening to your inner self. 33:51

How to overcome fear? 37:23

Taking advantage of the gift of life. 44:36

What is the bigger picture here? 47:33

Emotion & Leadership

The old 1950s paradigm that a leader must ignore or suppress her/his emotional urges has been thoroughly discredited over the last 20 years of research. Instead, research shows, time and again, that leaders that are aware of their moods, emotions, and drives, can leverage that competency to drive positive organizational change. While logic and intellect have made our lives easier in many ways—giving us indoor plumbing and high speed internet—they do not motivate people. By placing too high a value on brainpower rather than heart-power, we inadvertently demotivate the teams we lead. Why?

A Leader’s Emotional Field

Because our emotional field acts like an unseen force that either motivates or discourages the teams of people we lead. Our emotions have a profound impact on shaping the perceptions around us. To convey this point, look at the following photo and see if you can answer the question: Which monster is bigger?:

runningmonster

Both monsters are, in fact, of equal size.

runningmonstera

The visual distortions produced by the lines in the background make the monster in the back appear larger. Our emotions are like those background lines. They’re affecting everyone else’s perception of us, but we are unaware of their impact. Maybe we want our team to focus on meeting their numbers; closing a deal; or putting out a fire. The background of emotion we inject into the achievement of tasks and goals acts as a sort of frame that contextualizes our team’s experience.

If, for example, we are scared that our team will not make its quota and unaware of the intensity of our fear, we will inadvertently demotivate. Unless we are aware of the emotional fields we create, we, as leaders, will not be aware of our impact upon those we influence. As a result, we will be powerless to wield these unseen forces and silent messages that shape, not only our teams’ experiences, but, ultimately, the destiny of the organizations we lead.

Emotions are infectious in a way that concepts are not. Unlike like logic or analysis, emotion drives action. Without emotion, we are not inspire. Exhilaration, loyalty, fury, and affection give our work lives vibrancy and purpose. Attraction, desire, and enthusiasm draw us toward people and situations, while fear, shame, guilt, and disgust repel us from others. In all cases, emotions act as an all-pervading guide. Emotion has a way of drawing us into almost immediate alignment in a way that thoughts cannot.

That's why watching movies in the theater can be more powerful than when we watch them at home. We are surrounded by others’ emotional responses. It is also why stampedes form in stadiums when crowds of people are filled with fright or anger. And we all know what it is like to work in environments where emotions like worry, doubt, and cynicism pervade. Emotional fields like these have an incredible capacity to take the wind out of our sails.

Researchers at management the consulting firm, Hay/McBer, have shown that emotional competencies are twice as important in contributing to leadership excellence as are pure intellect and technical expertise . Additionally, the United States Office of Personnel Management oversaw an analysis of the competencies deemed to set superior performers apart from barely adequate ones for virtually every federal job. For lower-level positions, there was a higher premium on technical abilities than on interpersonal ones. As people advanced in their position, interpersonal skills became more important in distinguishing superior from average performance. In other words, it’s more important for leaders to be likeable than it is for them to be smart.

The goods news is that research demonstrates that E.Q. (Emotional Quotient) is learnable. Emotional intelligence is not just something some people are born with and others not, like I.Q. The essential set of skills, the core, in fact, is developed through mindfulness training, which is a simple, age-old, time-tested technique that builds self-awareness and empathy.

What Buddha Understood But Freud Didn't

We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

-Albert Einstein

Wise people across all cultures and from time immemorial have essentially been repeating the same maxim: “Know thyself.” In spite of all the things we do to know ourselves, we remain a mystery to ourselves throughout our lives. We all have multiple natures. If told a secret, one part of us wants to honor the vow by not telling the secret; however, we also experience a little relief by telling someone about the secret we’ve been asked to keep in confidence. We are truly divided: we simultaneously want to grow up and don’t want to grow up; hunger for sexual pleasure, dread sexual pleasure; hate our own resentments but are unwilling or somehow unable to forgive. It is as if we are not one monolithic identity or self but, rather, a myriad of selves with various and opposing drives.

The notion of the unconscious is a term Sigmund Freud used to connote all of the irrational forces that drag us hither and thither, that cause us to act and react in ways that we cannot and do not totally understand, nor can we consciously identify with. The goal of psychotherapy, according to Freud, was to come to an understanding of these subsurface urges through psychoanalysis, which consisted of dream interpretation and talk therapy.

Ultimately, at best, the psychotherapeutic patient, according to Freud, could not be cured of his or her divided self, but, instead, could become reconciled to the fact that he or she was made up of complex and multifarious drives. This simple knowledge would allow the individual to, once again, function as a contributing member of society.

Freud initiated the West’s fascination with the unconscious, but individuals in the Indian subcontinent had been exploring the divided self for thousands of years prior to Freud. People like Siddhartha Gautama, also known as the Buddha, had been experimenting on themselves as far back as the sixth century, B.C.E. in order to overcome life’s uneasy and sometimes even distressing qualities.

Like Freud, these “self-scientists” saw the suffering that resulted from their divided urges, but the goal was different; in fact, it was more thorough. They weren’t trying to fit into society again. Instead, they sought total freedom; not freedom from society per se, but freedom from the divided self. They sought access to resolving this divide. They sought a kind of wholeness. And their approach was quite different.

Je Pense, Donc Je Suis

In 1637, the French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes turned the West’s model of reality inside out when he stated: “Je pense, donc je suis,” or “I think, therefore I am.” What he implied in this statement was that being is conditional upon thinking. This notion that the human was first and foremost a thinking entity set a course for philosophical development in which the mind and body were separated, that the body was of a lower nature because, unlike the mind, it was not rational.

Descartes believed that minds and bodies were distinct kinds of substance. Bodies, he held, were spatially extended substances, incapable of feeling or thought; minds, in contrast, were thinking, feeling substances. Freud’s methodology is a byproduct of this paradigm; only through the use of the rational, logical mind can we come to terms with our divided self.

However, the more complex the thought patterns, the more we become separated from the fundamental problems and conflicts we experience. Thinking, while useful in solving some problems, often begets more problems, more fragmentation, and more complexity.

This is the fundamental difference between Freud and the Buddha: Freud sought to make rational sense of the divided self. The Buddha agreed that the self was divided, fragmented, and, ultimately, a great mystery, but he recognized that the thinking mind could not resolve the mystery. In other words, he couldn’t think his way out of the problem of fragmentation. He needed another methodology, another approach.

At first, the Buddha’s path was pretty extreme. He spent six years attempting to conquer the parts of himself that he didn’t like by trying to overcome the appetite for food, sex, and even comfort. He fasted. He took vows of celibacy. He slept in brambles and exposed himself to extreme heat and cold. In fact, his efforts in self-abnegation through fasting were so fierce that when he found himself near-to-death, he accepted a bowl of rice from a young girl.

Once he had eaten, he had a realization that physical austerities were not the means to overcoming the divided self. Starvation didn’t help. It only reinforced the divide by killing off the physical body. And so, instead of negating the various urges, trying to get away from them, he developed his own methodology of facing them. What he discovered was that when he could observe his body’s frustrations, anxieties, hurts, and longings in a non-reactive way, they lost their hold on him.

The Nervous System

Like Freud, he discovered two minds occurring simultaneously: the conscious mind (the mind of apparent reality) and the unconscious mind (the mind below the surface). While Freud used dream analysis to understand the hidden meaning of one’s unconscious thoughts, drives, and desires, the Buddha made use of an even simpler and more direct tool for making sense and working with the unconscious drive. What he observed was that when he lost contact with a presence of mind, he almost always left his body. If the thoughts were anxious, angry, or stimulating, and he brought his attention into the body, he would also notice his heart racing along with jittery feelings that made it difficult to sit still. If, on the other hand, he touched hopeless/helpless thoughts, thought forms associated with shame or overwhelm, he noticed his heart and breath rates would slow down, that he would feel drowsy, shut down, empty, and cold. He also noticed that whenever these feelings came on, a reflexive patterning of behaviors would ensue, behaviors that would prolong his loss of contact from presence.

Upon discovering this pattern, he devised a path out, a path he called mindfulness. Simply by observing, by staying present, non-reactive and gentle with himself when he fell into various qualities of fight, flight or freeze responses, he could settle his nervous system enough. By doing so, he developed a capacity to settle his nervous system’s reactivity.

Essentially, what the Buddha recognized was that this awareness, this means of knowing that what rests below the surface-the network of nerve cells and fibers that transmit nerve impulses between parts of the body and the brain-always remains inaccessible to us until we slow down and feel. While we have a great deal of training in thinking about the circumstances we find ourselves in thanks to Descartes, Freud, and pop-psychology, we have little to no training in working directly with our nervous systems. When we develop greater awareness and skillfulness when we lose the balance of our minds, we also gain a greater capacity to heal.  

Burnout

Several years ago, I completed burned out in my work. I had started to feel a dimming of interest in a work project I’d been involved in.  I'd been co-running a yoga program in San Francisco with a colleague for five years, and I had stopped feeling that magical feeling.  I kept bumping into a kind of been-there-done-that fatigue along with a nagging sense that there was something else out there, something unclear waiting for me.  I'd had these sort of feelings before. I'd been started yoga programs like the one I’d been co-running for more than fifteen years, so aversion was not new hat.   I thought this one would fade like the previous times, but in this case, my frustration persisted.

Sorting Through the Confusion

It's often hard to detect when feeling associated with burnout are just a passing reaction or when it's a message from the deeper interior that change in needed.  We all have periods of time when our jobs or our relationships are just kind of blah.  That's normal.  The notion that we're always supposed to be happy all the time is b.s.  Even the best of job or relationships can go stale on us or just irritate us to the core.  That's normal as long as it doesn’t last forever.  

When that difficulty is prolonged, however, it can be a message that it's time to slow down and reflect on what we're bumping into.  Sometimes it is a message that it is time for a change.  Deciphering burnout can be difficult, though.  It can be immensely helpful to have wise counsel we can trust enough to help us distinguish the wisdom of our inner callings from the voices that deceive us.

I shared the experience with my coach.  I said, "Okay, I'm feeling burned out. I'm starting to wonder if it’s time for me to let this project go.  I want to name this urge, but I don't want to make a decision just yet. I want to use these next two months to see if, in fact, I am done, or I am just a little fatigued or bored."  

Sure enough, after two months, the feelings had passed.  I felt reinvigorated by some responses I'd had to some blog writing I was doing about the intersections of yoga and life coaching and started to see that the project I was in was a great platform for the expression of this cross-breeding.  

Then a friend contacted me and said, "I'd like to partner with you to do some consulting work in corporations.”  I'd really wanted to explore that possibility, but I was too tired to take on another project.  I just could not muster the energy to begin.  My days were too filled with teaching classes and working with my coaching clients that I couldn't possibly give it the attention it deserved.  Not being able to do this left me completely frustrated.  Once again, I began thinking that it was time for a change, but somehow I wasn't quite ready.

 And then I had this experience that absolutely changed me forever…

Letting Go

After an arduous bike ride to the top of Mt. Tamalpais, I stood on a hillock overlooking the Pacific Ocean, San Francisco Bay, The City of San Francisco, and the East Bay.  As I stood there taking in the scenery, I felt a sense of gratitude for the beauty that surrounded me. I started to do a little, improvised gratitude jig, somewhere between a yoga sun salutation and a dance.  

As I did so, I started to hear a clicking noise behind me that kept the rhythm.  And when I turned around, I saw this raven standing only a few feet from me with a seed of sorts in its beak. The clicking was coming from the raven's beak making contact with the seed, and I had this clear sense that the raven was relating to my movements by keeping the rhythm.  

I continued to dance my gratitude dance around the hillock.  Each movement I made to the left, the raven moved to the right.  Each movement I made to the right, the raven moved to the left.  We were in a dance together, and the raven was keeping the rhythm.  At the same time this dance was taking place, I'd had this intuitive sense that the raven had a message for me.  Who knows whether I was making it up or not, but it was a message that moved me:

"It's time to let go, to stop dancing someone else's dance, to dance you're own steps, and to trust them."

For me this was code. I'd spent the last 20 years being faithful to my yoga teacher and the tradition he taught me.  I'd been his student and I’d taught hundreds of people his method. The crow’s message for me was that it was time to let go, to trust a deeper and more personal wisdom, rather than following someone else’s path.  

Gulp.  I'd been a student of and run these sorts of programs for so many years because they had given me access to deep teachings, the security of a teacher, a community, some sense of authority to back up my own teachings, and an identity.  Now, the raven-teacher was giving me the the sage advice, “Let it go!"

My need for change wasn't so much about leaving the program or about being burnt out.  Rather, it was about making room for something more personally truer to enter.  I realized that I had to make space for that to come about.  And for that brief moment, I felt released.  Released from the burden that by leaving, I was betraying my students, my business partner, or the tradition.  It was a visceral experience, this clear sense that not only was it okay to make a change, but I was being called forth to make it.  And while I'd been preparing for this moment for the nine months of back-and-forth, the inner teacher's message had clearly arrived.

Living with Uncertainty

Within a week of this experience, my partner and I met.  I shared my decision, and we both wrote a public announcement about that decision.  By the way, this doing, this action required little to no effort.  The challenge was living with the uncertainty for almost nine months.  One of my teachers used to call this form of waiting, "holding the tension."  Holding the tension is another way of saying, living with uncertainty.  It's called holding the tension because it feels uncomfortable to live between a question, to live in ambiguity.

Each of us has a propensity to try to get ground underneath our feet by wanting certainty or clarity.  That's why we turn to self-help programs, gurus, yoga traditions, techniques, methods, and philosophies.  But if we're following our inner guidance, the messages come in only when we're really ready.  Sometimes we must undergo a trial by fire before the message is clear.  You can't always coax the interior into a "yes or no decision."

But when the message is announced, it comes in declarative tones from what the Quakers call that still small voice within: "Call her."  "Go to New York." "It's time." "Let go!"  And when we disregard these messages because they're inconvenient, we sometimes find ourselves in the throws of depression.

My doubting voices continued to peep up, even after I had made that decision; in fact, the moment I made it, I started to really enjoy teaching, again.  All of the previous feelings of burn out completely vanished.  In fact, some aspects of my teaching, which previously had been driven by a proving energy, altogether diappeared  I no longer had to prove anything to anyone anymore.  And as that went away, I began enjoying the process again.

But I knew at a much deeper place of my being why I was doing this.  This decision was not whimsy.  I had struggled valiantly with it.  I had endured lots of back and forth while continuing to live with uncertainty.  And since that certainty came, I had to be willing to trust it in spite of the fact that I wanted to second-guess my decision. 

If we want real and substantive change, we have to be willing live for sustained periods with the discomfort of ambiguity and doubt.  In fact, one might say that most of life requires us to get accustomed to uncertainty.  The sooner we get that message, the less we'll fall prey to quick fixes and the more our lives will become aligned with our higher calling.

How to Meditate

Paradox: Discipline v. Freedom

At some point, all of us face the need to evolve.  It's almost an imperative in spiritual practice that if we are to experience the aliveness of life, we must keep growing.  And sometimes that means letting go of what no longer serves us or that we serve whole heartedly.  If we don't let go, we suffer.  And yet doing so can be grueling.  

I wanted to share a teaching from 'The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna' about knowing when to let go.  Ramakrishna was a 19th century, Indian mystic.

When we plant a sapling we put a fence around it so that cattle will not eat it or nobody would accidentally crush it under one's feet. But when the plant starts growing into a large tree, the fence should be removed and taken away. If the fence is not removed in time then it might even hinder in the growth of the tree. The trunk of the tree may even get trapped within the fence. Moreover, after the sapling turns into a big tree neither can cattle eat it up fully nor can people crush it under their feet accidentally. Likewise, the tree will drop fruit that will feed the cattle and the people who once threatened its very existence. (1)

Whenever we begin anything new, especially the discipline of spiritual practice, we need to protect the fragility of our endeavor.  When I first started my meditation practice, it took me a few years, but I had to learn the discipline needed to maintain a daily practice : going to bed early, waking early, eating properly, resting enough, getting enough mental and emotional stimulation, etc.  I needed that discipline in order to grow within my practice.  And I loved it!!!  It fed me deeply.

But, after awhile, I started to feel like the fences I'd created for myself only created more rigidity.  I'd find myself judging non-practitioners as "unconscious."  The fragility I'd once felt around my practice gave way to a quality of spiritual arrogance.  A lack of curiosity is  a sure sign for each of us that either we need a new challenge or we need to find a new way into the practice we're committed to. 

This is where it's critical to remove the fences that once kept our fragility from being devoured.  Distinguishing when it's time to give up or alter the discipline and what exactly to give up is highly individual.  That's where having a good teacher on the journey with us can be extremely helpful.  What is clear, though, is that at some point aspects of the structure stop empowering transformation and, instead, only harden us.

Very few of us have the courage to let go of what no longer serves us, though.  Why?  Because our identities get wrapped up in the external recognition and kudos we receive.  These external boons can be enticing, but they can easily be traps for all of us.

When you're considered 'advanced' in a community and you're identified with your role in it, it can be a sort of identity suicide to let go.   I am not saying that we should completely stop looking to the outside for recognition.  As humans, we long for and need this recognition.  But we're all so starved for it, that we tend to forego our own authentic experience and expression of fulfillment in order to be loved, liked, wanted, admired, needed.  And then we miss the opportunity to live a rich and full life on our own terms.

When we're attuned enough to our inner wisdom, however, we know when we're 'b.s.'-ing ourselves.  But when we're not, it can be extremely helpful to have people in our lives that offer us the space of honest communication. If  we don't have this, it can be helpful to empower our inner witnesses, the neutral part of us that is noticing all the time, noticing what we're saying, doing, and experiencing.  That part of us can notice when we're "should-ing on ourselves."  I love this expression.   When we're "should-ing," we say we do what we do not because we love it but because we "should" do it.  That's a good sign that our heart is no longer in it.

The point of all practice is to bring us to the heart of our innate wisdom.  It is not to end up more disciplined.  Paul Meuller-Ortega aptly said, "Eventually as Seekers, we must become Finders."  Knowing when you've discovered an access to your innate wisdom is not  a form of spiritual arrogance.  It's just something that's not empowered within spiritual traditions.  What is empowered is hierarchy.  

Tapping into our innate wisdom does not necessarily lend one to becoming recognized in the external sense.  That it isn't recognized by a community of seekers is not of significance.  What's important is that we not only recognize our essential nature, but that we share it, that we have the courage to give our gift.  That's the part of Ramakrishna's story in which the tree drops fruit for everyone, even the cows and humans who previously threatened its existence.

The point of all spiritual practice is to attune us to our truth, our innate wisdom, and our joy. The point isn't to win in some hierarchical game that all traditions can't help but maintain.  The point is to find access to our inner strength, our magic, and our gifts and to trust them.  I'll end with the following quote from Joseph Campbell, the mythologist who inspired the Star Wars trilogy and who coined the term, "follow your bliss."  In this quote Campbell helps us to not mistake the trees for the forest:

What is important about a lightbulb is not the filament or the glass but the light which these bulbs are to render; and what is important about each of us is not the body and its nerves but the consciousness that shines through them.  And when one lives for that instead of the protection of the bulb, one is in Buddha consciousness.(2)

Footnotes

(1)  Swami Abhedananda & Joseph Fitzgerald. The Gospel According to Ramakrishna: Based on M’s English Text, Abridged. World Wisdom, Inc. 2011

(2) Campbell, Joseph. Myths to Live By. 2011. The Joseph Campbell Foundation (JCF)

The True Meaning of Faith

Several years ago, I came across this TED Talk by Karen Armstrong, author of comparative religions, that I think is particularly important because it points to the difference between spiritual practice and modern, religious expressions of faith.  

While this talk is about the Golden Rule--'don't do to others what you wouldn't want done to you.'-- what I found of particular interest was her commentary on the etymology of the word, belief.  We have an awkward relationship with the word, belief today.  

Belief, in its original, 17th century sense meant, "an intellectual ascent to a set of propositions; I commit myself, I engage myself."  In other words, trust in God was not something that one simply decided.  It was through committed action that rendered one's relationship to God.  Belief was something that was discovered through practice.  

It wasn't just something you just swallowed down while ignoring common sense.  You engaged in a set of disciplines on a day-in and day-out basis that gave you access to the deeper mysteries that lie at the heart of the teachings.  As Armstrong says, "Religious doctrines are meant to be summons to action. You only understand them when you put them into practice."

The source text of yoga, The Yoga Sutras, which is dated to the first century, around the time of Jesus, describes the results of all spiritual practice--higher powers, subtle states of awareness, and, clarity-- but the bulk of the text is organized around the practical application, "the doing," how we attain these experiences of yoga.   While there is a sort of worldview that The Sutras hinge on, it's never explicitly described, nor does it particularly matter whether the yogi believes in it or not.  Following the practice is enough, not because it leads one to being a good, moral yogi.  Morality--good versus bad--isn't the game of Eastern spiritual practices.  Instead, through commitment to practice, a sort of wisdom or insight is gained, the sort of insight that one can trust.  By the way, that's the same thing as belief as Merrian-Webster describes it, "a state or habit of mind in which trust or confidence is placed in some person or thing."

In a way, I can't help but see that our attraction to the East stems from our modern religions having lost their way.  Instead of providing us with a path, as they used to, many expressions of modern religion ask us to adhere to a comprehensive understanding of the world that divorces us from our common sense.  At one point several years ago, I tried to evoke a debate with an orthodox Jewish friend's interpretation of the Torah.  His response was that we couldn't carry on a discussion because he understood the Torah to be written by God, whereas I understood it to be written by men.  In other words, in order to carry forward a good discussion, I'd have to disbelieve what I knew to be true.  What makes this even more of a bummer is that modern religions sanction this sort of divide.  Some even sanctify wars.

I am not suggesting that all Eastern spiritual practice is perfect or that all religions promote xenophobia.  The problem isn't the religions, it's the people that practice them, the one's that bring a sort of rigidity and orthodoxy to them.   I've seen meditation and yoga teachers who's whole lives are dedicated to adhering to and promoting a severe approach to tradition, even when it creates injury, both to themselves and others.  These people may be adept at contorting their bodies, but they never really grow.  Practice, like religion, has the potential to be a trap, as well.

The role of discipline is to enlighten us, to awaken us to that which isn't obvious.  It's designed not to be an end unto itself but to allow us to comprehend mysteries. A mystery is a religious truth that's hidden.  It's only through practice that it becomes obvious.  Once obvious, we can trust in it.  To get there is a journey.  In a way, each of our lives is a journey that's revealing one great mystery.  And for each of us, that mystery is very individual.  To take a set of propositions on faith is a sort of bypass of that journey.  Blind faith is like claiming to know a subject we never studied before.  

Our job, as I see it, is to be willing to take that journey.  It can help to have signposts of those who have come before us--whether they come from spiritual or religious traditions--to guide us on that journey.  Ultimately, though, that journey is very individual.  But if it is taken, wholeheartedly and with courage, the result is a sort of belief that is different from that of blind faith because it's the sort of thing that you know in your bones, even in those moments when you've lost your way.