Here is a potentially life changing question for you.
Do you meditate? It's a simple question but one that is often answered with hesitation accompanied by a guilty look that emits the message, uh no, but I've tried or I have been meaning to but things have been too hectic lately.
The bottom line, is that meditating on a regular basis potentially has more life enhancing effects than almost anything else you can do for yourself.
A growing body of research continues to point to the life transforming qualities of developing a regular meditation or mental focus practice.
In as little as 6 weeks, the brain has been shown to measurable grow larger as a result.
Recent studies show that meditation can improve relationships, decrease pain and the emotional impact of pain, help with balance and coordination and much more.
Practicing this new habit is something that I strongly recommend to all my patients.
Since not having enough time is a common complaint, I will often teach them to do what is called a Right Brain Startup as a simple to do 7 minute mental focus/meditation type daily practice.
Before moving to Whidbey Island, I had participated in many silent meditation retreats in the rolling hills of the Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Marin County.
I had inspiring teachers like Jack Kornfield, Sylvia Boorstein and others.
My repeated attempts at developing a daily practice usually often lasted for up to three or four months and always eventually yielded to the complications of life, work and family.
It was not until I really "heard" the message in a deeper way from my friends, Stephan A.
Schwartz and Dr Joe Dispenza, DC, that I knew I could no longer afford not to heed the call.
It certainly helped that my wife, Alina, decided to join me in this first hour of the morning ritual.
It has been nearly one year now and I am grateful to have conditioned myself to make the daily choice to continue this practice.
The support of a meditation partner helps too! It is not easy, however, and I always have a little (or some days a lot)of resistance upon waking, but am always proud when I rise from my sitting cushion.
The practice is an ever-changing one; always evolving with new obstacles.
Recently I decided to challenge myself.
I wondered if meditating only once at the beginning of the day was akin to having only breakfast and fasting for the rest of the day.
So, I committed myself to see how many times during my busy work day I could find a 20 second "Meditative Pause.
" My goal was to randomly catch myself amidst a flurry of work and to stop and pause by taking a deep breath, check in to see how my body was feeling and reflect on what my mind had just been pondering before the pause.
Then I would continue with whatever task I had interrupted.
On day one, I made mental notes of the five or six times that I remembered.
I was not ecstatic about that day's accomplishment during bedtime reflection.
The second day began with a renewed determination and a new method for keeping track of my small victories by making little hash marks on scrap paper.
Surely it would be a much more focused day.
It turns out eleven was a better tally than the previous day and the following day I reached twelve.
I noticed that the number and times were clustered and that there were periods of 2-3 hours with no hash marks, but things were improving and three days in a row was an accomplishment! It was the fourth day that "he" emerged.
A little bit of confidence, perhaps cockiness, and part ego, led to the emergence of a growing internal voice.
It told me that when I took my pause, I was allowed to still keep doing the task at hand as long as I took note of the thought.
That then led to when taking a deep breath being the same as a deep breathe and a body check.
Soon, I was convinced that I did not have to stop my movement or even take a deep breath, just noticing was enough.
However, when I went on vacation, I felt I was justified to put on hold the pausing practice and that's when it hit me! I realized who I was dealing with, my inner manipulative sneaky terrorist.
I explored what came up in my mind when I thought of the word terrorist; ideas of hijacker, kidnapper, covert harm-doer.
I realized that I thought of a terrorist as evil and certainly bore no resemblance to myself.
Although, when I looked at what was happening to my conviction to enhance my day with mindful attention, it was truly as if I my mind had been kidnapped; coerced away from a worthy mission that led me to clouded decision making, laziness and failure.
This process of being hijacked by an internal terrorist is more common and dangerous than we might wish to admit.
When we get hijacked away from our intentions for healthy behavior choices, we lose our ability to be present with our feelings and lose access to our inner wisdom.
Periodic mindful pauses allow us to get to, what Eugene Gendlin, in his book Focusing, described as, a "felt-sense" of ourselves.
A felt sense may be described as the gestalt or totality of experiencing something, and is a physical sensing more than mental knowing.
It combines body sensations and internal knowingness.
Without stopping and having a way to listen we don't hear the subtle signs that our bodies offer us to teach and warn us.
Without these check-ins, we do not notice the habit of holding our breath when we are anxious which increases our blood pressure,or the subtle clenching of the jaw as we sit in traffic that leads to headaches, or the continual contraction of belly muscles at work that lead to digestive stress disorders.
Once I really noticed the deviousness of my particular terrorist's tactics, I found myself hating him.
Did he have a right to survive? Couldn't I just kill him off so that my world could be a calmer and more peaceful place? I noted the irony of my request and saw quickly that violence begets more violence.
The next question was: could I really show compassion to this destroyer of my inner peace? Was a ceasefire possible and could it last? The answer is that it is all a work in process.
I have to consider if I can have empathy for him, but also view him as a personal, master teacher.
Perhaps his purpose was not to thwart me, but to teach me.
Perhaps he is what indigenous cultures would refer to as a "heyoka" or trickster.
A heyoka teaches through shadow teachings, with the illusion of being your enemy, but instead being the greatest of allies.
I have found greater acceptance for my inner terrorist as I think of him now to be my "inner contrastor" who shows me the opposite or complementary aspects of my choices.
I now know that when I set my mind to creating something new in my life, immediately an equal and opposite reflection of itself is created, kind of a yin-yang thing.
The greater my intention to manifest something new and worthwhile, the greater I can expect the appearance of my little terrorist.
I accept this because his presence, when I am able to see him with clarity, serves to remind me that I am taking a large step that demands his presence.
His absence speaks to my living life with few risks or changes.
The shadow aspects of ourselves are there to be embraced.
They may initially look dark, shadowy and evil, but what they have to teach us are the greatest of all lessons.
Knowing that helps me to run towards rather than away from those things in my mind that I first want to hate.