Stand At EASE!!!

1024px-Postawa.zasadniczaIn the talk – ‘Dissolving conflict in life and death’ James mentioned the limitation on openness which can result from tensions held within the body.

Sometime ago, on the radio, I heard someone saying they felt their jaw tighten in response to  some event.

It got me wondering whether my jaw had ever felt really loose… and I explored that a bit. Sticking the tongue out works well, so does rubbing the hands together ’til they are warm then gently softening the face and jaw into that warmth… but just imagining that area becoming  soft, like a cloud, from the inside worked best for me.

Shortly after this ‘noticing’ my whole jaw started to really ache – tension stored there from a long time ago when I had broken my back teeth through grinding them together at night-time.

The dentist had diagnosed ‘buxitis’ and made me a plastic plate to wear inside my mouth so that the teeth could slide over each other as my jaw worked away in my sleep… an activity which naturally also led to problems with the temporo-mandibular joints!

I was only in my twenties at the time and never thought to think that the tooth-grinding, along with other maladies, had causal factors… and did not realise how resulting tensions can be stored in the body… and that these can be released.

I think of these tensions as being a bit like like compressed springs… vibrating with the energy stored in them… maybe at a low level but even so, vulnerable to being amplified by identification with, and fusion with, the impact of situations which resonate with this particular patterning of energy.

For as soon as, as long as, we take ourselves to be things – entities which can marked and labelled and judged, wanting validation and expecting completion from external factors…suffering is woven with the story. So it was that one night, when I was very sad, I grabbed a thought which was so so dismal… and I felt the impact directly on my breath and the contraction in my body.

This led to some anguished howling as realisation of all the suffering, all the damage we do to ourselves and others as we fuse with thoughts, taking them as true and definitional, really struck home.

A few months back, listening to a radio programme – the Reunion, about the conflict between Rupert Murdoch and the trade unions around the move to computerised printing at Wapping in 1986, I was struck by the absolute contradictory convictions of the participants.

One (for whom the dispute had been all-consuming) was convinced that the heart-attack he suffered  at the time was caused by Rupert Murdoch… whilst another, on the opposing side, was equally convinced that this was completely ridiculous notion – that the heart attack was nothing to do with the situation, mere happenstance…

So an understanding of dependent co-origination – that within relative reality events occur due to a multiplicity of interlinked factors – is absent and, for them, that heart attack was either ‘just the luck of the draw’ or ‘all his fault’…. no middle way.

Also striking was the word used as Brenda Dean and Charlie Wilson  agreed that their oppositional, polarised, political views were – not informed by but – “forged” during the heat of that intense conflict. Attitudes, tensions formed and held, giving particular oppositional shapes to their lives ever since.

For myself… over time… as well as applying the ‘dharma massage’ – listening, reflecting, meditating/acting – over and over again, I’ve enjoyed releasing or being helped to release embodied tensions through qigong, tai chi, yoga, five rhythms dance, Rolfing, massage, drumming, sound healing, myo-fascial release, contact (and comedy) improvisation, art, walking, swimming, talking and so on… whatever I felt might be helpful and was available to bring some more ease and a different sense of the possibilities of my embodied existence.

As  one area loosens up it highlights the lack of looseness in other areas. Rigidities like the soldier’s ‘attention position’…back straight! shoulders back! stomach in! chest out! head up! do you want to wear a coat-hanger in your shirt? …and many further instructions about how to walk, eat, laugh etc ‘correctly’….are more than likely to have a somewhat negative effect on fluidity and embodied ease!

But every block has possible release and little by little things change. With meditation the facility to release any new snarlings increases as does sensitivity to the connection with the environment…so the amount of effort expended is more appropriate and attuned, more harmonious.

At first there’s the imagined ‘me‘ acting on the imagined ‘it’, with only partial connections to ‘it’ or me. Whatever I think I am is the main event…and there are these other ‘things’ – things that I make use of, often whilst i’m thinking about something else.

But, in thinking about something which isn’t there (in an on-going, random, fashion) – i’ve stepped out of embodied existence into mental-cyberspace – so, naturally, I can’t fully receive what is here.

At some point i noticed this – that when i was distracted there was a kind of snatching and clumsiness in the movements i made.

A simple example would be that I became conscious of opening the door a little roughly – I pushed the handle down a bit harder than i needed to in order to open the door.
Why was this?… Because, in my mind, I had gone ahead of myself…headed towards the end of my journey upstairs, pulled along by fusion with the thought of doing whatever it was. The door was just something in the way.

Ordinary mindfulness would give me an instruction to pay attention…to notice the coolness, the feel, the shape, the sound of the movement opening… so ‘I’ would be here and noticing something in particular…and that would be an improvement.

But by staying as presence in time, as time… when each moment of interaction is equal as experience… it is the whole of the journey and the entire field which is inviting the participation of inter-subjectivity.

And as the body softens from the inside there’s a softness to these cloud-like interactions which leads to more softness

….ahhh…easier breathing

…ahhh…just this

and this…ahhh….

 

‘Inch foot time gem’ – not twice ever does this precise moment arise…

but then.. as it’s coming and going however it is, you might think that this physical stuff is unnecessary activity for a meditator….and for some it would be, it’s not the main event.  But, already having ‘issues’ with my neck and shoulders, at one time when i did a lot of sitting meditation I found that things had locked up to the point that i could barely turn my head. Working on the lap-top is not comfortable….so remedial action is ‘working with circumstances’.

Feeling the body to be soft and light (as developed in practice) and rounded rather than tight and stretched offers a lovely alternative to twitchiness or rigidity.

 

Thanks to Julo for image of Polish soldiers (Wikipedia)