STABILIZE: Focusing the power


It should be fairly obvious by now that even on our best days mind chatter can be difficult to deal with. And when fear and self-hatred raise their ugly heads, it seems impossible. The harder we try to control the chatter, the more it fills the mind. Try not to think for 15 seconds. Don’t think about not thinking, as this is still thinking. You will quickly find how difficult this is. The mind is a field of intelligent energy in constant motion. Like a crazed monkey jumping around in a tree, the mind hops from one thing to another, often making unexpected and undesirable leaps and turns.
We try all sorts of things to control the mind – positive thinking, sleep, and drugs. Unfortunately, many of the things not only don’t work, they create even bigger problems for us. Our inability to control the chattering monkey mind is exceeded only by the frustration and suffering it creates for us.
There are times though, when the mind behaves perfectly, and seems to be under almost complete control. Remember when you became so focused on your work that even time seemed to disappear? Psychologists call this “task absorption,” or a “flow experience.” It often leads to a “peak experience,” a time of great personal fulfillment and expression.
Now contrast this experience with the time when you had a lot of work to do, but sat around and worried. How did you feel after several hours of working like this? More than likely, you couldn’t concentrate, your mind and body were out of sync, and you feel frazzled, tense and irritable.
Unfortunately, we have far more of these experiences than the peak experiences of task absorption. Work, relationships, and leisure activities don’t always fascinate us to the point that we become completely focused on them. We need something for times when we aren’t completely absorbed in the task before us.
What if you had a simple, effective technique to control your mind chatter, one that could be used anywhere at any time, and was effective the moment you used it? And what if this technique, when refined to a high degree of skill, would provide you with absolute control over your emotional reactions? Would you practice until you become very skilled in its use?
Well, get ready to practice because there is a technique that will provide all of this and more. The more skilled you become, the greater benefits you gain. This technique is called breath awareness and is one of the most powerful self-management tools that you will ever use.
In either case, by remaining in control of yourself, you take control of the situation. Your thoughts remain clear and focused, and you solve the problems presented to you more effectively and efficiently without giving yourself high blood pressure or an ulcer.




BREATH AWARENESS


When you inhale you will feel a slight touch of coolness right at the opening of the nostrils. When you exhale, you will feel a very subtle touch of warmth. You may have a little difficulty feeling warmth, but you will feel the air as it moves through the opening of the nostrils. Now don’t think about the breath, concentrate on feeling it as it enters and leaves the nostrils. Whenever you find your mind wandering off into thought, bring your attention back to the feeling of the breath. At the same time, be aware of how you feel, and what happens in your mind. But keep your attention focused on the coolness of the inhalation and warmth of the exhalation.
What happens to your thoughts? Does your breathing change? Do you feel anything different in your body when you focus your attention on feeling your breath?

Three things happen when you focus on feeling your breath:

The chatter in your mind stops and your mind becomes clear and calm.
Your breathing slows and becomes more stable, creating balance in the autonomic nervous system.
You feel a slight release as your body relaxes because there are no longer any demands being made by your mind chatter. The body’s natural state is one of relaxation. The more focused, calm, and quite your mind, the more relaxed your body.

MIND and MASTERY: Taking on the dragons.


It’s apparent that the real power and control lie within the mind, not the body. It’s time to face the real source of our miseries, the dragons of the mind. If we don’t take control of the creative force we call the sensory mind, all the breathing and relaxation in the world wont keep the dragons from breathing fire and creating unhappiness. We saw in previously how the dragons of fear and self-hatred disturb the co-ordination between mind and body, which leads to stress. The greater cause of stress is fear. It sets off the fight-or-flight alarm response, and we worry ourselves to death. When we identify with all the hurts, mistakes, and disasters of the past, we react with the possum response and suffer from depression and guilt. This is the second greatest cause of stress. Many of us are quite capable of doing both at the same time. Because we are not skilled in using our inner resources, our habits dominate the mind and we become victims of our own misdirected creative forces.
When we use the sensory mind skillfully, we solve problems, create new possibilities, tap our instinctual knowledge, and bring balance and harmony into our lives. But left unmanaged, this creative force is disrupted by emotions, made by rigid habits, and limited through beliefs. Instead of visualizing solutions, we fantasize harm and failure.
We all know someone like Shirley, a middle-aged, very attractive and intelligent woman. She spends a great deal of emotional effort just trying to cope - not with the world, but with her own fears of rejection and thoughts about how stupid and unlovable she is. Sadly, like many others, Shirley had a difficult childhood. Her father was rejecting and cold, and her mother was incapable of providing the love and security every child needs. It’s easy to see how these early patterns of rejection created such strong feelings of fear and self-hatred. Shirley understands this, but this analysis doesn’t change the habits of her mind. She still accepts these early judgments that continue to play in her mind as her identity. Even though she practices relaxation and breathing exercises, she still feels fearful and unloved. Shirley must and can learn to distance herself from these habits locked in to her sensory mind. If she learns to quiet her mind and take control of her inner chatter, she can free herself from these old patterns.

To take command of the sensory mind, we must master four steps:

1. Stabilize our emotional reactions by taking charge of mind chatter. In this way, we cut the circuits to our past emotional reactions and redirect our emotional energies.
2. Carefully choose our language to create the realities we want and not waste time and energy on non-productive thinking and emotional reactions.
3. Develop effective strategies to eliminate fear and self-hatred. With the right techniques and practice, we can overcome our fears, clear mind and even in the face of conflict and attack.
4. Refine our perceptual sensitivity and develop our instincts to provide us with a better sense of timing and the ability to make more effective decisions.

SWEEPING BREATH EXERCISE


Begin by lying in the Relaxation posture. Breathe with the diaphragm, allowing your breath to become very even and smooth.
Now visualize the body as hollow reed. Then breathe in as if inhaling through the toes and filling the body with breath to the crown of the head. Exhale as if you are breathing back down the body and out the toes. Breathe easily and gently, without any effort. Do not try to force your breathing: let your body decide how much air you need.
Focus your concentration on feeling the entire body breathe and imagine every cell and pore in your body breathing in and out. It’s as if you are feeling your entire body expanding in and out. It’s as if you are feeling your entire body expanding on the inhalation and contracting on the exhalation.
After a few moments, visualize the breath as a wave washing upon the shore on the inhalation and receding back into the sea on the exhalation. Maintain this imagery as long as you wish.


SLEEP EXERCISE

All breathing is 2:1. Exhale for twice as long as you inhale.
Use a comfortable count such as 6:3 or 8:4. You are not trying to completely empty or fill the lungs. The 2:1 ratio should be effortless.
Pay close attention to your breath. There should be no stops, pauses or shakiness during either the inhalation or the exhalation. Minimize the pause between inhalation and exhalation.

The exercise goes as follows:

8 breaths lying on your back.
16 breaths lying on your right side.
32 breaths lying on your left side.

BENEFITS:

It helps in getting a restful sleep.
Effective to minimize chronic fatigue and insomnia.
Excellent exercise to teach children who suffer from night terrors or sleepwalking.
If you don’t fall asleep the first time, repeat the exercise; practice every night until you can fall asleep easily and stay asleep all night.

TAKING CHARGE OF POWER

Self-discipline doesn’t mean self-punishment. Self-discipline is about accessing inner strength and developing the ability to do whatever we choose to do. The beauty of this is that we already have everything we need to become skillful human beings. All we need to do is understand a few simple things about the mind and body, and we can use power in creative and useful ways for ourselves and others.


Our Habits: Channeling the Power

A habit is like a groove that channels the energy of the mind in a certain direction. The more often the mind’s energy travels down that channel, the deeper the channel, and the stronger the habit becomes. We form these groves, or habits, through a process called conditioning, repeating behaviors associated with pleasure and avoiding behavior associated with pain.
We also build habits through association. The cause and effect may not be related to each other but occur close enough in time that we make a connection. Like my brother had stomach flu just after eating Prawns ten years ago. Even though he knows intellectually that the prawns was not the cause of his illness but the feeling is so strongly associated with prawns that he can’t force himself to eat it again.
When habits are practiced and refined, they are called skills. If we do something well or easily, it is because we have the habits that support the behavior. When something is difficult, it means we don’t have habits to support the behavior. We become skilled at driving, brushing our teeth, eating healthy or having good posture. We also become skilled at worrying, self-criticism, self-doubt and poor health habits because we practice them. Every time we worry, we are practicing worrying. No wonder we become so skilled at worrying.
The most powerful and subtle habits are those learned in the first five or six years of our lives. But we didn’t choose these habits they developed unconsciously as a result of our interaction with parents and society. Once these habits are established they become part of our personalities and guide our behavior for rest of our lives. If we grow up thinking we are not important or smart, it becomes difficult in later life to experience ourselves as important or smart. And we will probably spend a great deal of effort trying to prove that we really are important and smart. As long as we remain unaware of these built-in biases, we don’t have any effective way to counteract them.


Bad Habits Bring Bad Outcomes

We are all familiar with those habits that create emotional reaction for us. Let’s say that you walk into a crowded room and see two people together. One is a stranger, the other is someone you don’t like or trust. Your eyes meet this “enemy,” and you experience the moment of mutual recognition. Then the person smiles and drops his gaze. You see him whisper into the ear of the person sitting next to him. The next moment the stranger looks in your direction, smiles, and quickly looks away. Now, what does your mind do with this? Are they talking about you? No doubt! Are they saying what a wonderful person you are? Very doubtful! And what is your emotional reaction? Does the term “paranoia” fit?
Did you make a conscious decision to be upset? Highly unlikely. You walked into a situation and unconsciously interpreted actions along the lines of your past experience (Habits). The consequence was an emotional reaction, not a choice. Very few of us consciously choose to be disturbed!
It is the consequences of these physical habits created by our emotional reaction that we often call stress.


The Unconscious Power

The key to self-control is to take charge of our habits. Habits develop in many ways and for many different reasons. But all habits share one critical aspect – they only operate in, and because of, the unconscious mid. We may consciously build our habit, such as when we practice playing guitar or proper breathing and relaxation techniques. The whole point of practice is, in fact, to build a habit, to have a certain behavior that we don’t have to think about. Not a single habit function as a part of the conscious mind. According to the late B.F. Skinner, the “grandfather of behaviorism,” we are products of our environment, and are controlled by our environment.
Just think about the last time you became furious. A few moments before you exploded, I’ll will bet that you did not consciously and rationally think: “ hey this individual’s behavior call for an drastic expression of anger. I better scream and demonstrate some anger here.” Instead, you just felt an explosion of anger that came right out of the unconscious emotional reaction. This person pushed one of your triggers, and all your repressed emotional energy got channeled into your reaction. You didn’t really had a choice, you simply reacted. When we react to such emotional stimuli, we lose the power to act and our environment governs our behavior.
For example, let’s say you have acquired the deep-seated habit of feeling incompetent. This attitude learned in childhood, lies in the unconscious, where you are not fully aware of its power.
However, whenever anyone questions your judgement, you react with anger or aggression, and overwhelm your questioner with intense, logical argument. The intensity of your response indicates that one of your triggers (your old habit of believing yourself to be incompetent) was pushed, and you react to this with fight-or-flight reaction. When your inquisitor backs down, both the effectiveness of your reaction and the old habit of feeling incompetent are reinforced. More than likely you rationalize your reaction,, never really aware of the reason behind your action.

Nasal Breathing

Sigmund Freud found that menstrual cramps were often related to an inflammation and discoloration of specific areas in the lining of the nose. When these are anesthetized, the menstrual pains disappeared until the effects of anesthesia wore off.
Modern research is also finding that emotional states are related to an over dominance of either right or left nostril activity. For example preliminary research indicates that some forms of depression are related to over-activity in the left nostril, while excessive airflow in the right nostril has been found to be associated with hyperactivity. This does not necessarily mean that a constantly overactive left nostril causes depression, or that an overactive right nostril leads to hyperactivity. What it does show is the connection between the way we breathe, certain neural conditions, and physical and emotional states.
Yoga science states that when you are doing active work, the right nostril should be open and dominant. Consciously working with your breath in this way gradually allows you to establish control over your breathing with your mind. The goal is to be able to establish sushumna, the ability to willfully direct both nostrils to be open equally at the same time.
The purpose of sushumna is to allow the mind to be deeply concentrated without effort.

THE COMPLETE BREATH

In this exercise all three mechanisms for breathing – diaphragm, chest, and collarbones – are brought into use. When you first practice this exercise, place your right hand on your upper stomach area and your left hand on your upper chest. When you breathe with the diaphragm, the right hand will rise on the inhalation and fall on the exhalation. The left hand will rise when you inhale with the chest mechanism. Once you are sure of the proper movement of the diaphragm, chest and clavicles, you can do the breathing without using your hands.
Inhale first, using the diaphragm and expanding the belly; then continue the inhalation by expanding the chest; then let the inhalation continue to the very top of the lungs. At which point a slight upward movement of the clavicles may be experienced. The exhalation is done in reverse motion, letting the clavicles drop slightly then letting the chest wall collapse slightly, then letting the belly collapse as the diaphragm moves upward, pushing the air out of the lungs. The breath should be slow and smooth, without any pauses or jerks.

BENEFITS:

The complete breath is a very useful technique to use when you are sitting at your desk and feel a lot of tension in your shoulders.
A few minutes of practice will be very helpful in reducing not only muscle tension but also mental fatigue.
The complete breath is an energizer and can be used any time you feel mentally dull, or need to be more alert. For instance, when you have been driving for some time and are beginning to feel a little tired, you can energize yourself by taking six or seven complete breaths.

RETRO: THE SENSORY MIND

Don’t confuse the mind with the brain. The brain is the physical organ, part of the body, which serves as the control room for the mind. Brain changes the subtle energy of the mind into biochemical and neurological events that move the body. Of course the quality of the mind’s expression is greatly influenced by the condition of the brain. It doesn’t matter how sophisticated your software program is – if the circuits are damaged that program will not run properly.
We call the third dimension of the personality the sensory mind because it collects, organizes, and interprets sensory data. The sensory mind is a busy, noisy place filled with sensory stimulation, emotions, wants and desires, habits and feelings. Its primary job is to interpret the world around us, and to create a personal sense of reality, the context through which we view the world. The sensory mind makes meaningful patterns from sensory input. It does this through four power functions:

1. Perception –

Two people sitting in the same room, having the same experience, will see and interpret that experience in highly individual ways, and will not always agree as to what really happened. A favorite story of mine:

In the clubhouse, three umpires were discussing the pending World Series game. The youngest, proud of being selected to participate in the World Series, bragged to his colleagues: “ I never worry about mistakes. I call them as I see them.”
The other two umpires started laughing, and the middle-aged umpire retorted: “ Well, you are still a little wet behind your ears. I call them as they are!”
The old umpire smiled and looked out the window.
“What are you smiling at?” the middle aged umpire finally asked his elder.
“Well,” said the old wise one. “It seems as if there are two here who are still little wet behind the ears. They are what I call them.

A particular event in our life can be good or bad, exiting or dull, awful or wonderful. We don’t actually describe the actual event but what that event means to us.

2. Language –

Language is the tool we use to create meaning. Once we use language, we are stuck with the consequences of our interpretations. Much of the unhappiness that we create for ourselves happens because we don’t realize the impact that our language has, nor do we know how to use language as a tool to help ourselves.

3. Emotions –

The interpretations we make determine our emotional reaction. In turn, our emotional reactions distort our perceptions, interfere with thinking, lead to conflicts and create disease. Many of feel victims of our emotions and yet we alone create them. We need emotional energy to succeed in life. Our emotions stimulate, challenge and motivate us to accomplish what we want. But all this depends where we channel our emotions.


4. Habits –

Whether we use our emotions to help or to hurt ourselves depends a great deal on our habits, the fourth function of sensory mind. Habits are the most deep-rooted and pervasive functions of the mind. We express our entire personalities through habits. It’s easy to see the enormous impact habits have in your life. Try shifting a habit when you get dressed tomorrow morning. As you put on your slacks, stop, and put the other leg in first. Most people fall over as they alter this simple, almost meaningless pattern of behavior.
Habits dominate the three outer levels of the personality – sensory mind, energy, and the body. We have habits of driving, eating, walking, and talking. How we react, feel, whether or not keep our muscles tense, even how we think are all regulated by the power of habit. All our skills – typing, playing cricket, managing, building a fire – are determined and controlled by habit. The friends we choose, the work we do, and the clothes we wear are all controlled by habit. Of course there are other factors involved in behavior, such as the power function of the mind, genetics and the environment. But habits provide the structure of what we think, what we do, and how we react. Habits allow us to live skillfully and usefully. Habits can also kill us.
As we shall see later, habits are the power behind our skill. But we didn’t consciously choose most of our habit, and many of them are destructive because they feed the three dragons of the mind. However, if we know how to take control of the powerful function of the mind, we can build habits that help us create a healthy body and mind instead of chronic conditions of stress, unhappiness and disease.

ALTERNATE BREATHING:

Close your eyes and sit comfortably, with your head, neck and spine in straight line. Rest the index and middle fingers of the right hand on the space between the two eyebrows. Determine which nostril is active. (The active nostril is the one in which the air is flowing freely. The passive nostril is the nostril in which there is some natural blockage due to the natural cyclic swelling of the mucosa.)

1. If the right nostril is active, press your ring finger against the left nostril, closing it, and gently exhale through the right nostril, counting to six (or about six seconds) mentally as you exhale. Then inhale immediately through the same nostril for a count of six.

2. Now press the thumb gently against the right nostril, closing it off and at the same time release the pressure on the left nostril. Exhale for a count of six, and then inhale for a count of six through the left nostril.

3. Now press the ring finger gently against the left nostril closing off the flow and at the same time release the pressure from the thumb on the right nostril. Exhale for a count of six, and inhale for a count of six through the right nostril.

4. Close the right nostril and open the left. Exhale and inhale for a count of six in the left nostril.

5. Close the left nostril and open the right. Exhale and inhale to count six in the right nostril.

6. Close the right nostril and open the left. Exhale and inhale for count of six through the left nostril. You have just done three rounds. This completes the exercise.


BENEFITS:

· It enhances your power of concentration.
· It should be practiced three times daily.
· It strengthens the ANS and leads to increased lung capacity.
· It maintains balance, and helps in developing control over emotional reactions.
· It is recommended in resolving depression.

CAUTION:

· Notice that you begin this exercise with an exhalation, not an inhalation.
· Length of inhalation and exhalation should remain the same.
· Maintain the same count until you can breath comfortably and effortlessly without any bumps, jerks or pauses.