How to Train a Wild Elephant_ And Other Adventures in Mindfulness - Jan Chozen Bays [28]
Final Words: Please remember, you are always supported by countless beings, including trees. You are never alone.
19
Rest Your Hands
The Exercise: Several times a day let your hands relax completely. For at least a few seconds, let them be completely still. One way to do this is to place them in your lap and then focus your awareness on the subtle sensations in the quiet hands.
REMINDING YOURSELF
Wear your watch backward. If you don’t wear a watch, put a string or rubber band around your wrist.
DISCOVERIES
The hands are always busy. If they are not busy, they are somewhat tense, ready to work.
The hands reveal our state of mental ease or discomfort. Many people have unconscious nervous hand gestures, such as rubbing or wringing their hands, touching their face, tapping a finger, snapping a fingernail, cracking their knuckles, or twiddling their thumbs. When people first learn to meditate, they often have a hard time letting the hands be still. They may restlessly rearrange the position of their hands, and as soon as there is a small itch, the hands fly up to scratch it.
When we relax our hands, the rest of the body and even the mind will relax, too. Relaxing the hands is a way of quieting the mind. We also found that when the hands are quiet in our lap, we can listen more attentively.
As I did this task, I discovered that my hands tighten on the steering wheel when I am driving. Now I can check for this unconscious habit, and relax my grip. I realized that I can hold the wheel with a lighter grip and still drive safely. When I relax my hands on the steering wheel, I often find that ten minutes later, they have resumed their habitual tight grip again. This is why we call it mindfulness “practice.” We have to do it over and over again to truly become aware. We set out to do the practice, then revert to unconscious behavior, then become aware again, then start the practice again, and so on.
DEEPER LESSONS
Body and mind work together. When we put the mind at ease, the body can relax. When the body is still, the mind can settle. The health of both is improved.
Tension is not necessary for most of the tasks of our life. It is a waste of energy. There is a meditation called a “body scan” that can first help us to discover unconscious tension lurking in the body and can then help us to soften or dispel it. It goes like this: You sit quietly and focus your awareness on one part of the body at a time, beginning at the top. What are the sensations coming from the scalp and hair? Once you are aware of these sensations, try to notice any extra holding or tension you may be doing and try to gently soften or release it as you breathe out. Next move on to the forehead, then the eyes, and so on, one body part at a time. It is interesting to discover how much tension is unconsciously held, and in which body parts.
We generally go through most of our lives in one of two modes. At night we are lying down, relaxed and asleep. When the alarm clock rings, we get up and switch to the mode we use during the day, upright, holding tension, and alert. There are not many times in our busy lives when we are both upright and relaxed. (Unfortunately there are also times when we are lying down and are neither relaxed nor asleep. We are instead brooding, anxious, and restlessly shifting, unable to sleep.)
Being awake, alert, and relaxed is a state we may experience on a vacation day. We wake up later than usual, fully rested, and lie in bed a while without anything on our mind or anything to accomplish. We hear the birds and the garbageman, but there is no tension in the body or mind. My mother used to call this “the time in-between, my best time to ponder important things.” This is true, it is the best time, because the mind unclouded by worries about the survival of “I, me, and mine” can look more deeply into important matters.