How to Train a Wild Elephant_ And Other Adventures in Mindfulness - Jan Chozen Bays [65]
Final Words: Any time you feel off balance, drop your awareness into your center. It will stabilize your body, mind, and heart.
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Loving-Kindness for the Body
The Exercise: For one week, practice loving-kindness toward the body. Spend at least five or ten minutes a day with this practice. It could be during your meditation time. Sit down in a comfortable chair and breathe normally. On each in-breath, be aware of fresh oxygen and vital energy entering your body. On each out-breath, send this energy throughout your body along with these silent words: “May you be free from discomfort. May you be at ease. May you be healthy.”
Eventually you can simplify this process by just saying “ease” with the out-breath. Any time during the day when your attention is drawn toward your body (when you see yourself in a mirror or when you feel discomfort), send loving-kindness to the body, even if only briefly.
REMINDING YOURSELF
Post the words “Loving-Kindness for the Body” in critical places, such as on your mirrors, on the bedside table, or on the ceiling above your bed. If you’d rather use an image, it could be an outline of a body with a big heart in the center.
DISCOVERIES
A lot of people feel resistant to doing this practice. They keep “forgetting” to do it. Eventually they discover that underneath the resistance lies aversion toward their body. For our entire lives we have all been fed images of perfect bodies, and of people whose youth, wealth, surgeons, or steroids allowed them to create those bodies—movie stars, trophy wives, bodybuilders, professional athletes. Our ordinary bodies cannot compare, and subtle resentment toward the body can accumulate in the mind. My belly is too fat, my breasts are the wrong size, my legs are too short, my hair or eyes are the wrong color.
This used to be a struggle primarily for women, but advertisements have infected men with this pervasive displeasure as well. One young man disclosed that he has always hated his chest hair. This was surprising, since many men bemoan their lack of “manly” chest hair. He said he had been teased badly in junior high school when his chest hair grew in early. Although aware that the other boys were actually jealous, he was left with painful and enduring embarrassment.
Other people discover that they would rather be “in their head,” thinking thoughts they can control, than practicing mindfulness of the body with all its mysterious and even frightening sensations. What does that short, sudden pain in my head mean? Could I have a brain tumor? There is so much that happens to our body that we cannot control, including getting sick, growing old, and dying. We can come to feel threatened or even persecuted by our body. Why won’t it behave as a perfect, maintenance-free, perpetual-motion machine?
DEEPER LESSONS
Nothing can thrive under bombardment by negative energy—not children, pets, potted plants, nor our body. When our body’s appearance does not meet the standards of our Inner Perfectionist or Inner Critic, we may begin to feel subtly frustrated or angry toward it. This can also happen when a body part is in trouble, with injury or disease. We begin to fear or resent our body. This is not a healthy environment for our body, and can even create disease.
Loving-kindness is a palpable force, a healing force. People often find that when they send it to their body, they feel better physically. Mental tension creates physical tension, which restricts blood flow and constricts muscles. As I age, my body objects to getting up early in the morning. When I do loving-kindness practice for my body at the start of morning meditation, it’s like taking two aspirin. When I do loving-kindness for my body before falling asleep, I can relax more deeply. And when I do it for my body