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A Journey This Weekend

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This Saturday I'm leading a retreat called "A Meditative Journey:  Movement, Meditation and Deep Relaxation." We'll be exploring meditation through the lens of relaxation, taking time to contact and release deep-seated stress through breath and movement as well as lying down 'body scan' meditations.

The day is all about slowing down and drawing the attention inward.

This is one of my favorite retreats.  Do come if you can!   Click here to register  online.

 

R.I.P. Hakuna

 

It's been said that it's never a tragedy when and old man dies.

But it sure feels sad.

Hakuna, the monster beast pictured above, in his New England dead-of-the-winter youth, passed on this morning just a month shy of his 15th birthday.  He pretty much milked everything he could out of his body.  It was was fully used up and worn out.

If you ever had the chance to meet him you know what a character he was.

I understand grief comes in waves.  I will miss this creature immensely.

 

 

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Transforming Your Relationship with Pain

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 Next month I'll be joining with my good friend Dr. Gary Kaplan, Founder and Medical Director of the Kaplan Center for Integrative Medicine in McLean, VA to offer a series called "Transforming Your Relationship to Pain."  This is a topic of great interest to me as I've been struck with migraines regularly since I was about six.  When I practice meditation on shifting my relationship to pain, I am serious about it!

A few months ago Gary and I taught a six week series called "Medical Meditation" where we explored and measured the effects of establishing a meditation practice over a six-week period.

Here's a quote from Gary's write up:

During this initial training we wanted to see if we could objectively demonstrate an improvement in the participants' health. To do so, we measured their morning and evening cortisol levels (a physiologic measure of stress) and asked everyone in the group to complete a pre- and post-training questionnaire called the "SF-36."

After just 6 weeks of training, the group's evening cortisol levels did decrease, a finding consistent with the improved sleep reported by many members of the group. The participants also experienced an overall improvement in their emotional well-being as measured by the SF-36. In addition, as you can read below, the participants greatly enjoyed the program.

Jonathan and I were pleased that the participants not only perceived that they had received health benefits from the program, but that we were able to objectively demonstrate an improvement. Our findings are consistent with a growing body of scientific literature demonstrating that the regular practice of meditation reduces physical pain, improves sleep and brain function, and strengthens the immune system.

It's somewhat astounding and consistently pleasing to discover again and again how much shifts inside and outside when we engage into these attentional training methods.  We're excited to be diving directly into how we can transform our relationship to pain.  Of course, 'pain' is a synergistic blend physical, emotional and mental states.

The bad news is that 'pain' happens.  The good news is that we can indeed shift our relationship to it.

A few links if you're interested in more:

Meditation: Can It Reduce Your Pain? by Dr. Kaplan

You Can Think Your Way Out of Pain

Meditation Leads to Greater Pain Relief Than Morphine

Meditation Reduces the Emotional Impact of Pain

 

I'll have more to share as we move through the program.  This course is fully enrolled now, but we hope to be offering it again soon.

 

In the meantime,if you like, here's a talk I gave on the topic during a weeklong meditation retreat last year.

 

Back in the Saddle Again, Technically Speaking

I can post images again! After battling weird bugs in my site that seemed beyond resolution, I went online in search of a Wordpress Master to whom I might surrender my ego and my troubles.  I came across a site called Elance where you can post what you need and invite bids from techies around the planet.  I wrote up my issue as best I could, posted it online and within twenty minutes had 9 bids from locations such as Belarus, Mongolia, India, Pakistan, Canada and the deeply exotic locale of New Jersey.

I obsessed about who to chose, reading reviews and job descriptions the bidders had done in the past, and settled on the folks from Canada.  Their technical people I think are oversees but the main contact is in my time zone.

After a quick set up and contract I passed along my log in information and within a few hours my man was on it.

I'm happy to pass along recommendations if you are looking for a Wordpress consultant who is ridiculously fast and efficient.

And then ....

To top off my tentative technical prowess, I also managed to figure out how to get a podcast up and running.  Deep thanks to Randy Coon and his cohorts at The Motley Fool who provided me with not just inspiration, but real-time action items.  You can sign up for the podcast here: Jonathan Foust

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Back from the Heartland

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I was in Alberta, Canada this last weekend leading a retreat called "Yoga and the Art of Inner Listening."  I'm fascinated by the play of awareness and intuition and deeply enjoyed the immersion into embodied inquiry with such kind people. As I flew across the continent and watched the landscape shift from the wooded east to the plains of the midwest I remembered my years in college and grad school while simultaneously working on a farm on the Illinois/Wisconsin border.

There is a reason they call this the heartland.  There's something about the openness of the earth that is reflected in the open hearted kindness of my fellow adventurers.

Here's an image from a little further north and west than where I was.  (Thanks, Laurel.)

 

And here's a link to the image from NASA.

Good Works

Last weekend the 5th DC Global Mala Event drew over 100 participants to raise money to bring yoga to underserved areas.  Anahata Grace sponsors the event.  I was happy to give a dharma talk as a lead in to the 108 sun salutations led by yoga teachers from around the city. A bunch of money was raised for a yoga program on the West Bank.

A shot of the flowing sun salutations in Meridian Park:

Meditation and Pain

I've been collaborating with Dr. Gary Kaplan from the Kaplan Center for Integrative Medicine in McLean, VA, to bring meditation to those who are working with chronic pain.  In our first series we explored classic meditation techniques and tracked cortisol levels to determine whether a six-week meditation regime would lower the levels.  The good news:  Yes!  I've yet to completely understand the 'statistically significant' numbers, but by all accounts, there was a measurable difference in how the participants felt. We're going one step further this fall with a series specifically on techniques for working with pain.

The evidence is in that mindfulness can dramatically make a difference when it comes to coping with pain, or as we say in the meditation business, 'unpleasant sensation.'

Here's an article that spells this out in greater detail.

 

 

Hot Links

Project Happiness: Teaching Social and Emotional Skills for a Meaningful Life Rethinking Tinnitus:  When the Ringing Won't Stop, Clear Your Mind

Is Meditation the Pushup for the Brain?

Forest Trees Remember Their Roots

Quit Smoking Community, raises awareness of the consequences of smoking and helps communities become smoke-free: Quit Smoking Community

Vaping Daily which did a great article on how alternative medicine can help people quit smoking: Vaping Daily

Thank you, everyone.