Stress-Less Aging: The Art of Growing Old Mindfully

Inside every old person there is a young person wondering what happened.
Osho

When we are young getting older is all the rage. The infant strains to crawl, the toddler perfects walking, the child plays “dress up," the teenager fights for independence, the young adult reaches for a career. At some point in life, however, the constant struggle to grow succumbs to gravity. Then it happens, getting older no longer seems like a good idea.

Mark Twain’s famous comment that “age is an issue of mind over matter; if you don't mind, it doesn't matter” is central to the question “when does aging become a problem?” In the absence of a rite of passage like the time-honored tradition of getting knock-down drunk when one turns 21, we have no obvious bench mark for “old.” Black balloons at the 40th birthday party are a sarcastic reminder that one is over the hill, rather than a signpost to a new phase of life.

Taking Mark Twain’s lead, maybe old is in the mind. Maybe there are two processes going on at the same time: Aging, the gradual and inevitable wearing down of the physical form, and getting old, what one thinks about that process.

The great mystic, Osho, drew a finer distinction between aging and maturing. Aging, he pointed out, is something that the body does and it happens regardless of personal characteristics or what we think about it. Maturity is a function of one’s level of consciousness and is not guaranteed by nature. In his terms, maturity is a level of development that goes beyond growing old and not only gives meaning to this process, but actually transcends it.

This maturity is what I call aging mindfully. It not a case of the mind not caring about getting older, it is moving beyond the mind altogether. Mindfulness does not end the aging process, it brings about a new relationship with the flow of energy that we call getting old. Through mindfulness we free ourselves from our judgments and learn to participate fully in the process of growing up.

Aging mindfully is a journey and should not be embarked on without some basic planning. Yes, it would be super cool to throw caution to the wind and set sail for lands unknown minus the GPS, using whatever serendipitous jewels fell one’s way to chart the course. But it’s one thing to be daring and quite another to be dangerous. So let’s set some basic ground rules for the trip.

1. Have a mental health check up first. Before heading into the uncharted territory that is your psyche, it might not be a bad idea to make sure that you have the skills necessary to find your way back should you choose. This does not necessarily mean going to a therapist’s office to obtain a permission slip for traveling beyond your mind. But it may mean spending some time checking in with the old neuroses to make sure that none of them are going to spoil the trip by constantly asking to go to the bathroom, or whatever it is your particular neurotic tendencies do.
2. Bring along a totem or two. Many people never take a trip without some reminder of home or good luck charm. These can be quite soothing when in strange surroundings. Get some worry beads, a statue of the Buddha, a rosary, a dream catcher or whatever reminds you of the world beyond your senses.
3. Realize that this is not an educational trip. Think back to your childhood and all of the places your parents dragged you to because “you’ll learn something.” What stuck with you the most was probably how much you hated educational trips. The journey through mindful aging is for the fun of it. Stop being so serious.
4. Know that everything you need for the trip you already have. If you are one of those people who needs a U-Haul to simply have a weekend getaway, now is the time to learn to pack light.
5. Forget about time. Too many trips are spoiled by the NASA-like countdown to the end of one’s “free time.” You have an eternity to get this right and, in the end, there is no wrong way to go about it. There is, however, a long way but even that was meant for you.

All Stressed Out and Nowhere to Go

The world is ruled by letting things take their course. It cannot be ruled by interfering.
Tao Te Ching

The stress of going nowhere? It’s true, not only do we stress when things are not going right, we stress when we think they are not going at all.

Many of the stressors in life seem to be related to the feeling of being trapped in a situation in which there seems no means of escape without Houdini-like skills. For many of us this will bring up images of work. Others may picture a relationship that they can’t work out, or an emotional pattern that seems entrenched. Whatever the apparent cause, the fuel for the stress is the perception of stuckness.

In a drastic attempt to jump start life, we may resort to emotional CPR maneuvers. These often backfire and only feed the stress monster. The move to a new job, relationship or living arrangement only brings on further worries and the only movement experienced is that of vertigo as life begins to spin out of control.

If we can withstand our own inactivity and resist the urge to do something during our stuck moments, we may discover the art of wu-wei (pronounced woo way). While often thought of as non-action, wu-wei is best described as non-forcing, or going with the flow. Even if this flow has slowed to a trickle. Wu-wei teaches us to resist the urge to force ourselves against the natural tides of life and instead ride the waves. This process was summed up to Pooh, in The Tao of Pooh, as “putting square pegs into square holes and round pegs into round holes.” A quick look at our stress shows how often we are at odds with this basic wisdom.

In the end, we are a raging rivers of activity—from the constant whirring of the mind machine, to the eternal dance performed by every cell in the body. Stressing out over being stuck is to be taken in by an illusion created by time and measuring our selves against this artificial benchmark. So the next time you find life grinding in neutral gear, ask yourself, “Where did I think I was going in the first place?” “Where do I need to be so badly?” Resist the urge to down that super-charged, triple caffeinated, stay-up-all-night, energy drink and take a nap. Don’t worry, the world isn’t going anywhere without you.

Just Desserts: The Stress of Good Times

If people can dance a little more, sing a little more, be a little crazier, their energy will be flowing more and their problems will, by and by, disappear.
Osho

A quick glance at the standard stress tests that identify levels of inner tension reveals something interesting that people may not think twice about. Nestled amongst the obvious stress-producing events such as “loss of job,” “death of a loved one” and “major illness” are such things as “marital reconciliation,” “vacation,” and, I swear I’m not making this up, “outstanding personal achievement.” The conventional wisdom seems to be that not only do the things you try to avoid bring you stress but so do the very things that you work so hard to obtain.

If you examine the stressors associated with positive events in your life you will find mental demons lurking in the shadows. Take the example of getting married, which ranks only behind marital separation and death of a spouse on most stress scales. Is it possible that this union of two souls publicly vowing to love each other for all time could be the cause of so much tension? Stop smiling for a minute and consider the following: It is not the wedding itself that is the problem, it is the ever-worrying mind that spoils the show. Doubts about whether or not you have chosen the right life-partner aside, the stress of most weddings comes when the mind says “The flowers won’t arrive on time,” Uncle Jeb is going to get drunk, do his table dance and fall and break his other hip” or “What if the band plays only 80’s music?”

Look behind any of the positive stressors in your life and see if you do not catch a glimpse of the mind goblin that is secretly gnawing away at your enjoyment. Good stress is a result of the mind being an equal opportunity destroyer. With the mind, when it rains it pours and even when it’s sunny there is a chance that the harmful rays of the sun will leak through the depleting ozone layer and turn your tan into a third degree burn. Oh, the antics of the mind.

The notion that good times should come with a warning label is best summed up by the phrase “you can’t have your cake and eat it too.” As a Food Channel junkie I can tell you with authority that whenever someone makes a cake, somebody eats it. As further proof, while I am writing this blog I am eating a hostess cupcake sandwiched between two slices of devil’s food cake. I have even gone as far as countering with my own sentiment, “If you're not going to eat the cake, don’t bother to bake it.” The author Richard Bach was more eloquent when he addressed this issue by saying “the best way to pay for a lovely moment is to enjoy it.”

As the poet Hafiz pointed out, we were meant to “dance in this sweet world,” to experience the depth of its joy. So forget about the fact that desserts spelled backward is stressed, put down that stress questionnaire and take a big bite out of life. Feel free to wash it down with extra slice of chocolate cake; we now know that chocolate is good for you.

e-Guru

Only the hand that erases can write the true thing.
Meister Eckhart

Many of people who profess that mindfulness is your natural state and that you need not take a step to discover it, go on to talk about their routine trips to India to visit their guru, their private meetings with the Dalai Lama and their experiences washing dishes in a secluded Buddhist monastery. Their travels can leave the average Joe or Jane wondering if higher levels of consciousness are available with their frequent flyer miles.

It is my understanding that one can experience the peace of mindfulness while mowing the grass, attending a PTA meeting or watching Dancing with the Stars. If this bliss is so within our grasp, why travel to such distant places to try to obtain it? Isn't it just as available to the person who rather than meeting with their spiritual guide, met with their stock broker who informed them that their 401k just dropped about 399k?

It was with these questions that I turned to the website Gurus R Us and found my own guru, the Venerable Swami Rama Ding Dong. Now I would find the truth behind the accessibility of mindfulness.

Me: Swami, I text you with a confused mind. Why do so many people seem to travel great distances in order to learn to be in the here-and-now?
Swami Rama Ding Dong: It is wise to ask this question. But you might have also asked why does the sun travel across the sky, why do the geese fly south or why does the river run?
Me: I’m not sure that helps.
Swami Rama Ding Dong: Yeah, I know. I just wanted to try the “let’s confuse him with more questions” technique in hopes that you would log off.
Me: Your honesty is refreshing. But I would still like to know if it is a mixed message to say that the kingdom of heaven is within and then send people out in search of roads to lead to that kingdom?
Swami Rama Ding Dong: Who sent you to search?
Me: You are still answering my questions with questions.
Swami Rama Ding Dong: Sorry, it’s a hard habit to break. Try this, remember the scene in The Wizard of Oz where Glinda tells Dorothy that all she had to do to get back to Kansas was to click her heals together because she had the way back all along?
Me: Yes, I remember. I always secretly hoped that Dorothy would read the riot act to Glinda as to why she had to suffer through flying monkeys, talking trees and all of that other acid trip stuff.
Swami Rama Ding Dong: Me too, but Glinda was asked why she hadn’t told Dorothy in the first place. Do you remember what the answer was?
Me: No, but give me a second and I will Google up the script…here it is:

Glinda
Because she wouldn't have believed me. She had to learn it for herself.
Tin Man
What have you learned, Dorothy?
Dorothy
Well, I - I think that it - that it wasn't enough just to want to see Uncle Henry and Auntie Em. And that it's that - if I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own backyard, because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with. Is that right?
Glinda
That's all it is!
Scarecrow
But that's so easy! I should have thought of it for you.
Tin Man
I should have felt it in my heart.
Glinda
No. She had to find it out for herself. Now those magic slippers will take you home in two seconds!

Swami Rama Ding Dong: Get it?
Me: So, the search is essential in order to find that which was never lost? Seems a little misleading.
Swami Rama Ding Dong: Terribly misleading, to be exact. But such is our fate.
Me: I’m not sure this is any comfort.
Swami Rama Ding Dong: Good, it is your discomfort that keeps you searching.
Me: But what about the finding part. When do I get to that point?
Swami Rama Ding Dong: To find that which was not lost?
Me: It feels like we are going around in circles.
Swami Rama Ding Dong: Exactly the point! Welcome home!
Me: This reminds me of the quote from Meister Eckhart who said “God is at home; it is we who have gone for a walk.”
Swami Rama Ding Dong: A wizard in his own right. I would love to chat more but the rules are that I can’t give away the whole show in one session. Keep in touch, lol.

So it was with a more precise confusion that I left my online guru to meditate on the following:
1. All travels lead to the same place, the eternal you.
2. If you think you need a spiritual guide along the way, then you do.
3. All methods you pick up along the way will have to be dropped in order to experience freedom from mind.
4. The essential search is for nothing, no thing, and to make it you have to become a nobody, no body.
5. Chatting with an online guru is much cheaper than airline tickets to India.

The Meditative Life

Dig within. Within is the wellspring of Good: and it is always ready to bubble up, if you just dig.

Marcus Aurelius

Often shrouded in New Age mystique, meditation is offered up as a solution to everything from overcoming your deepest fears to finding ways of leaving the body in order to check out what your neighbors have in their refrigerator. Far from being other-worldly, mediation is directly tied to the universe that is you. It is not so much an act as it is a state of consciousness. This state arises when the incessant need to think about your life subsides and you experience yourself in the present moment, minus the story line.

Despite being around for centuries and documented evidence of the benefits for mind and body, many people avoid mediation like it was broccoli. I attribute this to poor marketing. Meditation would probably be an easier pill to swallow if it were wrapped up with all of the flair of an advertising campaign for the latest wonder drug. Who wouldn’t try it if it were presented as follows?

Low on energy? Feel like everyone else is getting ahead of you? Can’t think straight? Sex life on the skids? Want to feel young again and lessen your chances for heart problems and increase your chances for eternal life? Try new Medi-tate. That’s right, Medi-tate was designed by the greatest minds the world has ever known and was once only available to sages, prophets and soon-to-be deities. Medi-tate is easy to use and you can take it anywhere. You can use Medi-tate in the comfort of your home, in the office, in the subway, in your car, at the big game or while on the big date. So don’t agitate, Medi-tate. Possible side effects include the belief that you are one with the universe, feelings of bliss or euphoria and a decrease in obsessive behaviors.

Now there’s a product that would fly off the shelves.

In all seriousness, many people avoid meditation because of the concept of having to “practice” meditation. Bombarded by the constant intrusion of thoughts, it is easy to feel that one is not doing it right and in the absence of instant enlightenment, the payoff seems questionable. Thus a mental workout mentality takes over and meditation lingers unused like a dusty treadmill that seemed like a good idea when you bought it.

The good news is that you don’t necessarily have to make up your mind to meditate; whenever you leave the mind you are in a meditative state. Sure, you can sit in lotus position and gently watch as thoughts cross your mind likes clouds before the sun. But you can also tune into your breathing during the big board meeting rather than obsessing on your need to update your resume. You can pay careful attention to your steps as you take the dog for a walk rather than trying to understand why he seems to be enjoying life much more than you. Or you can turn your attention to the experience of the steering wheel in your hand as you drive rather than trying to text message a friend about the driver who just cut you off. Remember, there is no rule that you have to be sitting still in order to be in a meditative state.

The key to meditation is to drop the worry about where it will take you and simply enjoy the journey. Meditation is like dancing in that one does not dance in order to hit a particular spot on the floor but to simply experience the delight of movement. When you reach the point where your mind is still, simply be there. Realize that if you go in with your mind, it is the mind that wants an explanation. The deeper you already knows the value of silence and has been waiting for you to be quiet long enough so that you can remember. When your mind is at rest the question of “now what?” will never even occur. If, however, you still find the need to explain why you sneak off for these private moments to your friends and family you can impress them with the words of the great enlightened teacher Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj who said, “The primary purpose of meditation is to become conscious of, and familiar with, our inner life.”

As you begin to experience the world from the inside out, you will begin to feel the power of Medi-tate as it dissolves the damaging forces of stress. Rather than feeling run over by a world out of control, you will feel yourself being driven by a more compassionate force.

Give Medi-tate a try, if it does not work right away take two deep breaths, count to 100 and relax every muscle in your body until you’re a just a limp bag of flesh. Now, doesn’t that feel better?

Your Karmic Footprint

This is the profound, simple truth:
You are the master of your life and death.
What you do is what you are.
Hua Hu Ching

If I asked you what your carbon footprint is, you probably would be able to respond with something "green" that suggests a basic knowledge of how your daily living impacts the environment. Are you aware that there is another form of energy emission that also needs your attention?

Your karmic footprint refers to how you use the vital life energy that is at the core of all existence. In order to understand this life energy you have to look at the concept of karma as it was put forth thousands of years ago, before it was misinterpreted as a system of divine retribution. Far from being God’s version of "paybacks are a bitch," karma means "action." Simply stated, karma is not something that happens to you but something that you do. It is the unfolding of your life, roses and thorns included. This unfolding is not an ego event, confined to the small space of the self, but is part of the greater movement that Buddhists refer to as "interdependent origination" that points to the interconnectedness of all things. In the web that is the universe, your actions are impacted by all other actions. Additionally, everything you do sends ripples out in every direction.

When you motor through life on autopilot you do not take note of the reverberations of your actions and often stand in wonder as to why things never seem to go your way. Driven by the mind, you are likely to stumble into situations that feel like they have been scripted by someone else or are the result of the cruel hand of God. This may leave you feeling like the cartoon character, Calvin, who once told his tiger friend, Hobbes, "the world is either mean or it’s arbitrary and either way I got the heebie-jeebies."

One way to balance your karmic energy is to accept things as they are. This frees up the energy generally used to complain about the unfairness of life, allowing you to appreciate that life is not arbitrary or mean, it simply is and you provide the rest.

In the end, to know your karmic footprint is to understand the truth that Jesus pointed to when he said "you are the light of the world." Whether that light burns with the efficiency of a compact fluorescent light bulb or an itty bitty book light is up to you. Here are some helpful tips to keep your karmic energy from polluting your world.

1. Conserve: Look for the areas in your life where your energy output leaves you feeling drained. If you give it all to work, for example, chances are you are not going to have much left for family fun night.
2. Recycle: Reconnect with experiences in your life that charge your emotional battery. Take walks in nature, visit art museums, listen to your favorite music, eat more chocolate or whatever it is that makes your heart sing.
3. Unplug when not in use: The Tao Te Ching teaches "stillness and tranquility set things in order in the universe." Give yourself permission to do nothing more often.
4. Go hybrid: Don’t be afraid to mix your fuel sources. Sages from the East and West have left behind profound teachings that will get your metaphysical motor running with new-found enthusiasm.
5. Be organic: Realize that you did not come into this world, you came out of it. You are not a fluke of existence but its purpose.

I hope this helps you find the greener pastures of tranquility. It has helped my search and I know that passing it on is good karma.

Themptiness

Mindfulness is like the sun. It only has to shine its light to do its work.
Thich Nhat Hanh

What is this elusive process called mindfulness? People often talk about it with a hushed reverence normally reserved for things other-worldly. The best description I have come across is that mindfulness is "bare awareness." This refers to observing the world, both inner and outer, without the interference of the constant chattering mind. Another great description is that it is "to stop thinking without falling asleep." Far from being the sole property of monks, sages and prophets, mindfulness is actually our natural state. Watch a very young child at play and you will observe mindfulness. Get absorbed in the moment, whether listening to a beautiful piece of music, watching a sunset, seeing your team win the Superbowl (or so I am told, my team has never given me this opportunity) and you have experienced mindfulness.

Breaking through our thought addiction is the essence of mindfulness. The practice of letting thoughts pass like clouds across the sun is instrumental in seeing the world as it is rather than the way we think it should be. This non-attachment to thought brings about what I call "themptiness." This is the vast space created within us when we realize we are not our thoughts. Themptiness is the space that holds all the planets, stars and galaxies. It is the same space that makes a glass useful and turns four walls into a room. Themptiness is the interval between sounds that makes music possible and the silent gap between the in and out breath that makes life possible. It is not "nothing" but it is a "no thing" and within it all things are contained. To be thempty is to fully experience the present moment. In the here and now, you are the observer. You are awareness itself and no longer a part of the passing parade of ideas in your head. You are above thought like a Macy's Day balloon, minus the tethers.

While there are many vehicles that can lead you to mindfulness, such as meditation, yoga, and mantras to name a few, the mind often tries to grab the wheel of these vehicles as it hates taking a back seat. When this happens your practice becomes just another head trip without a map. Here is a quick exercise you can use to keep your egoic mind in the back seat where it belongs:

Find somewhere quiet to sit and observe your breath. Next begin counting with each breath. Breath in and count one, breathe out and count two. Keep counting in this manner until you get to 10. Anytime a thought enters your head, start over at the number one. Do not judge the thought and do not get mad at yourself, just start over. Keep doing this for about five minutes. Remember, the goal is not to get to 10, it is to gently go back to the start anytime a thought arrives. Happy travels!

The Joy of Stress

Our tragedy is not that we suffer, but what we miss when we suffer. Rejoice, then, when a negative feeling has been aroused in you, because if you follow it up, it will lead you closer to liberation.
Anthony De Mello

Can you remember the first time that stress entered your life as a force to be reckoned with? How far back in your history do you have to go to find the time when stress did not seem to be your constant companion? Do you find a smile creeping across your lips as you think back to the carefree days of your childhood?

During those early days, stress was something that erupted like a volcano whenever you loaded up your diaper and there was no one around to change it, or your prized blankie was reduced to its final thread. The outpouring was great, it was loud, and then it was over. You moved on. More to the point, you did not hang on to the stress. It would be back, surely, but your concern at the moment was the little teddy bear that made a funny squeaky sound when you pressed his tummy—ah, childhood.

When we grow up we have a very different relationship with stress. It is very heady in nature and deadly serious. We brood over our stress. We seek to understand it, manage it and avoid it. All of this attention, rather than solving anything, prevents stress from moving on as in those early days. We have grown out of our crib cages only to be surrounded by prison walls of experience, and we have built them high and built them strong. As children, it was our ignorance that kept us free, as adults it is our “wisdom” that locks the prison door.

Stress is the mental friction that results when the world as it is rubs up against the world that we think should be. In and of itself, it is simply energy and can be very beneficial; think of rubbing your hands together on a cold winter’s day. However, left unchecked and surrounded by the right fuel there is the potential to create a more destructive force; think of rubbing two sticks together over a pile of gasoline soaked rags. No matter what we tell ourselves, the difference between the two is not a matter of fate or fortune. The fault, as Shakespeare pointed out, “lies not in our stars but in ourselves.” Once we fully appreciate this point we can see that the solution also lies in ourselves. Once we become again as little children and take the world for what it is and not what we wish it to be, we will find that stress moves on and so can we, minus the whole dirty diaper thing.

The joy of stress comes from experiencing ourselves as we were before the thought monster ate us whole. It comes from allowing tension to be in our life without resistance. Without the fight or blame we become the perfectly tuned guitar string for which tension is essential and necessary. Once we face the fact that our attempts to avoid stress are simply games of hide and seek with the self, we will be able to return to a time when all we had to do to put an end to searching was call “olly olly oxen free.”

Unquiet Slumbers: The Stress of Sleep

Sleep is the golden chain that ties health and our bodies together.
Thomas Dekker

The inability to have restorative sleep is the result of taking stress to bed with you. With a few exceptions, such as sleep apnea or a large animal on your chest, most sleep disturbances are simply daytime disturbances that want to stay up all night and party. During my personal struggles with anxiety, bedtime was something to dread. The desire and need for sleep stood there like the twisted opening of a Halloween fun house just daring me to step inside. Nightly, I lived with the basic truth that if you want to destroy sleep, start thinking about it. Obsession breeds exasperation, and exasperation is not a good bed partner. Exasperation hogs the covers and has very cold feet.

The subtle trick that the mind plays on itself during the dark hours is to convince itself that it can now solve the problems that eluded it during the day. The brain begins to lay out ideas like Reese’s Pieces in front of E.T. The promise is "just one more and then you can rest easy, you will have figured this out." The "this" can be anything from restructuring your stock portfolio to planning the layout of your garden. The mind’s efforts would be comical if a sense of humor wasn’t one of the first things to go when you are really tired. Attempts to stop the dripping faucet of thought usually end up the way most amateur plumping projects do; a bigger mess to deal with than when you started.

It is a huge irony that most of us sleepwalk through our waking hours only to feel so completely wired during the period where we actually give ourselves permission to be unconscious. This twist of the natural order is behind the no-sleep cycle. The key to a good night’s sleep is tied directly to the quality of your waking hours. While many of us roll out of bed, very few take the next step of conscious awareness. The great teacher Anthony de Mello was famous for chiding his listeners to "wake up!" His message was that many of us slumber through our daily lives and then wonder why we find ourselves in such dire straits. If we can introduce even a modicum of mindfulness to the daylight hours—really participate in the act of living, moment by moment—our night hours can only respond positively. If one has been truly present in the events of the day, there is no need for the mind to try to balance things out at night.

Waking up to your life is not a mental process, it is a spiritual one. This means allowing your entire being to experience the wonder of the world around you. Resist the urge to figure out everything; you are way too tired for that. A mindful day does not stir up the mind to such a frantic pace that it continues to whir throughout the night. When you put the body to rest at the end of a mindful day, the brain rests easy after being allowed to carry on its usual functions without the constant ego interruption . When you stop getting into bed with every unresolved issue, every nagging concern and every constant reminder that there was something you could or should have done, you will finally rest in peace.

The next time you find your mind tossing and turning under the blankets of unquiet slumbers, turn your attention to your breathing. When you focus on this natural process, the raging river of thoughts slows down to a trickle. If the mind shows up with the critique of "that breathing sounds a little irregular to me, I’m sure it’s a sign of a lung disease that needs to be checked out on Web MD" it simply means that your attention has drifted away. Bring it back to your breath and the next thing you know you will be throwing your pillow at the alarm clock as it tries to motivate you to start your day. Or, in my case, you will find a dog on your chest who is eagerly awaiting your conscious presence to come and fill her food bowl.

Forget Me Not: The Stress of Memory

The true art of memory is the art of attention.
Samuel Johnson

Neitzsche wrote "many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory is too good." The American writer Elbert Hubbard said "a retentive memory may be a good thing, but the ability to forget is the true token of greatness." Then there is yours truly who only this morning said "Honey, I can’t remember where I left my keys."

When it comes to destructive stress, memory often serves as both the gasoline and the match. It does not take long for the glowing embers of "what used to be" to flare to a three-alarm inferno of "my best days are behind me." As a therapist, I have watched in amazement as clients struggled to put out these fires while diligently refueling them at the same time. As a recovering anxiety junkie, I have become quite familiar with this rekindling process and have spent many sleepless nights trying to roast marshmallows over the coals of endless worries.

Memory and stress are intertwined because the mind is a huge filing cabinet that stores away every experience we have. Not only does it download the sights, sounds and smells of all that happens in our lives, it also records the emotional reactions we have while events are taking place. All of this is extremely useful in managing our daily lives. Because of this vast storehouse of information we are able to move through life without having to relearn everything from scratch. This is very helpful when it comes to remembering your spouse’s name, remembering your spouse’s birthday, remembering the anniversary of when you and your spouse got married, remembering to pick up that item at the store that your spouse told you to pick up on your way home, and so on.

Memories become a problem when they show up uninvited and then get unruly when asked to leave. Even something as benign as reliving the "glory days" becomes problematic when it takes the place of living in the present moment. Often, psychotherapy will actually reinforce this avoidance of the now by suggesting that we can only understand where we are if we know where we came from. While it may be true that the past is the key to the future, this key only works on the door of the present moment.

"Die to the past everyday, you don’t need it" exhorts Eckhart Tolle. "What?"say the rest of us, "who would I be without the past? I had some good times back then, why would I want to let that go?" The mindful response is that it is the story of yourself that is causing you so much pain, so much stress. Our minds have become so habituated that we barely ever catch a glimpse of what is really going on around us. The world comes at us in all of its glory and we are so busy comparing it to previous experiences that we miss the awe and are left feeling awful.

The art of memory is to use it when needed and not be used by it when not needed. An occasional junket to the past to retrieve a mind tidbit or two is not the problem. It is when we book the holiday cruise to "any time other than now" that we risk getting trapped on Fantasy Island, which ends up feeling like Gilligan’s Island only without the cool coconut shell telephones.

Take some time over the next few days and actively remember to forget something from your past. Or, you can try forgetting to remember something from your past. Either way, you end up at the very place you began when you headed out on the mind trip that is life. Oh, and if you are concerned that you won’t remember the way back, don’t worry, when it comes to your true journey all roads lead to home.

Twisted and Unbent: The Spirit of Yoga

Peace can be reached through meditation on the knowledge which dreams give. Peace can also be reached through concentration upon that which is dearest to the heart.

Patanjali

So there I was, a twisted pretzel of flesh and bone, when the yoga instructor’s reassuring voice reminded me that if I did not breathe soon I risked an aneurysm. "What an irony that would be," I thought to myself, "blowing out brain cells while trying to calm my mind." The fact that I was having this thought was my first clue that I was resisting the very lesson that I had come to learn, which was to use this ancient practice to slow down the racing thoughts in my head. Most everything else I had tried had failed, and even imbibing in a glass of fermented grape juice had lost its magic. Why not try yoga? Sure I hadn’t really stretched a muscle since high school, (pulled a muscle, most certainly) but I was ready to risk days of a sore body if it meant even a brief respite from my restless mind.

Despite my naivety and my frozen shoulder, and mostly because I have access to a wonderfully talented instructor, I ventured forth. I found that the effort did have the benefit of taking my mind off of itself. This relief was incredible and made me eager to return to the yoga mat despite pains in body parts that previously had gone about their business unnoticed. Eager to catch another break from the incessant thought train that had been circling for several weeks, I went headlong into a more advanced yoga class (like a boy who conquers subtraction asking to be taught calculus). I saw this as the ultimate opportunity to force my mind and body to get along again and give me back my sanity, ability to sleep, desire to eat and perhaps even catch a glimpse of the elusive nirvana I had read so much about. If you are thinking "I bet that didn’t work," you are correct. Instead of staying quietly on the sidelines, my mind took on the role of frenetic coach and was determined to win this yoga match. "Come on, powder puff, raise that leg higher," it screamed. "You’re going to let these women show you how it’s done, nancy-boy?" it chided. "I got your nirvana right here," it mocked.

When the session was over, I was drenched. Body and mind, far from being joined, were no longer speaking to each other. It felt good in a "thank God I survived that" kind of way but it was not what I had expected. Or was it? In the silent exhaustion that followed I began to realize that my expectations were the problem. I was thinking about something that I should have simply been experiencing. My brain had stepped in and turned the yoga session into a contest.

Yoga literally means "to join." The union it refers to, I later discovered, is not mind and body. It is essentially joining with the universal or eternal self. This meeting takes place not in the mind but through what the great yoga master, Patanjali, called "the cessation of mind." When the mind is busy working to make the body stretch, bend and breathe with complete focus, it is not able to run down the laundry list of "things I should have done better, things I should never have done at all and things I will do when I finally find the time." Minus this constant chatter, one is able to make contact with one’s true essence, the divine light hidden behind the shroud of thought.

Patanjali suggested that yoga creates doors and windows within us that allows this divine light to enter. It is not an exercise as much as it is an exaltation; an invitation to a deeper knowing. That it often gets packaged as a new age form of the game Twister, is a function of the Western mind-set that needs to know the rules behind every activity. "Right hand red, left foot green," makes sense to the mind. The goal of trying to stretch oneself to the tipping point fuels the competitive spirit of the ego. The goal of yoga is not to see how far you can extend yourself before you fall, but to get you back on the straight and narrow path you fell from when your egoic mind decided to play hide and seek with itself.

If you get the chance, take a yoga class. Pull on those somewhat tight fitting shorts and throw caution to the wind. The benefits of increased flexibility, balance and muscle tone would be enough for your efforts but you also get increased awareness, balance of mind and spirit and, if you stick with it, the chance to become a metaphysical Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Rebel With A Cause

A rebel is one who trusts nature, not man-made structures, who trusts that if nature is left alone, everything will be beautiful.
Osho

When you step back and consider the mass mentality of our nation, it is easy to see that living mindfully, allowing ourselves to experience the world without the constant interference of thought, is a deviation from the norm. The intellectual life is what most people consider to be normal. This means using our brains to solve problems created by our brains, or, even worse, problems created by the brains of others. It is the pinnacle of nonconformity to drop the habitual thought patterns that dominate our lives and experience peace and connection with the universe in the present moment.

The great irony is that we actually live mindlessly when we allow ourselves to get lost in thought. When we switch to autopilot we allow conditioned brain movements to take the place of true intelligence. Many great teachers saw this as a form of self-hypnosis or even insanity and did their best to point it out. The response they received was often less than enthusiastic. More often than not, the tag of heretic was pinned on them and their words were twisted to conform to something more palatable to the ego. This is the fate of many rebels. This is also the reason that many enlightened souls keep the whole experience to themselves. Perhaps this explains the Tao Te Ching’s contention that "those who speak do not know, and those who know do not speak."

If you are going to experience the healing power of stress, you are going to have to take the leap and be willing to live outside the bounds that society has placed around you and rail against the constraints of your own mental habits. Here are some tips that will be of assistance once you decide to be a rebel with a cause.

1. Expect scorn and doubt. While this may take the form of friends and family telling you that you are nuts to think that you can have a healthy relationship with stress, it will most likely be your own mind that tells you this. Many risk-takers had to overcome personal demons long before the external ones showed up. No matter what you hear, you are not going crazy. You may, however, be going out of your head, and that’s a good thing.

2. Know that you will still feel bad at times and that you may actually feel worse when you begin to break old thinking habits. Any recovering drug addict can tell you that the early phases of recovery are not always filled with peace and well-being. There will be a withdrawal phase as you begin to shift your conscious attention away from thought. You may find that feelings long masked by mind mechanics begin to show up with alarming frequency. The simple process of meditation may bring up a fountain of tears, with perhaps no easily identifiable source. Know that this inner storm will pass.

3. Avoid compulsive advice givers. You will most likely find that everyone around you has their own take on what is best for you. Know that while deviants are sometimes revered, they are more often reviled by those around them. Thus the pressure to conform to the sentiment, "If you ain’t miserable you ain’t one of us." Take the advice of others with grains of salt, perhaps laced around the rim of a margarita glass, if you feel inclined.

4. Forget the lightening bolts and look for the fireflies. You are taking on a process that has millions of years of momentum on its side so don’t expect that the skies will open up and the universe will reveal all of its secrets to you immediately. You will, however, begin to experience little miracles all around you; from no longer being disturbed by the least little thing, to being moved to deep appreciation by the least little thing.

5. Stay the course. Understand that this is not a one-shot deal. You are in this for the long haul and the old pattern of thinking will attempt to steer you off course. Know that you have within you the ultimate GPS for this journey and, despite your feelings to the opposite, you have always been on the road that was meant just for you.

Gurwho?: Avoiding the Self-Help Trap

Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.
Carl Jung

"The unlived life is not worth examining" is an adage that has stuck with me since I first heard it in an introductory counseling class. Over the years I have come to realize that thinking about life should never take the place of actually living life. I say this with the humility of a recovering self-help book junkie.

The allure of self-help literature is great. The Western mechanistic model we have grown up with tells us that we are works in progress and that we need only study the right owner’s manual to have a happy and meaningful life. Once we discover the secret to the purpose driven life we can begin to attract all manner of material goods, live in bodies that never age with minds that never fail, and find that one special person with whom we can spend the rest of eternity. At least that is what I read in the book, Have It All: The Last Book You Will Ever Need to Read.

Ironically, the self-improvement movement may create more stress than it relieves, as it often leaves its followers feeling inadequate and just a few karmic cycles short of being enlightened. The underlying message seems to be "you will never be happy as you are now, so you had better start making some serious changes before time runs out." The destructive power of stress is directly related to our belief that the ego is the sum of our existence and that we only have a limited amount of time to whip it into shape. If that doesn’t get the cortisol pumping, I don’t know what will.

I want to suggest a gentler path through the often rocky terrain of self-acceptance. I propose that the self that most self-help literature is trying to fix is none other than the egoic self. This self, as the Buddha and many others have pointed out, is actually a mirage that doesn't exist outside of our heads. Alan Watts puts it very plainly when he said "the reason you can’t change you is that you don’t exist." The ego, as a mind-made entity, will always need work. We can always add something to this self; teach it a new skill, rid it of a bad habit or help it become the next American Idol. Our true self is complete and perfect already. It stands patiently in the shadow of the ego waiting for it to finish taking bows so that it might reveal what the show was all about in the first place.

When his followers asked how they could go on without him, the Buddha responded "be a lamp unto yourselves." The great mystic, Kabir, used to look out at his followers and exclaim, "To whom shall I preach?" because he saw the divine spark of God rather than sin in all their eyes. Jesus said "you are the light of the world." What happened? Who turned the lights out? The good news is that we don’t need to stumble through our lives in search of an itty-bitty book light for illumination. We simply need to pull up the shade of thought that filters out the light. After that, it is just a matter of stepping out into life. Oh, and bring a book, it can get boring at times. May I humbly recommend The Healing Power of Stress? It is the latest offering in my brand new category of "Non-Self Help."

I am Stress (And So Can You!)

In order to maintain an untenable position, you have to be actively ignorant... One motto on the show is, "Keep your facts, I'm going with the truth."
Stephen Colbert

America is under attack, people, and I don’t mean from terrorists, reality TV shows or bears. I’m talking about stress. We have become one nation under stress and it’s time to take the bull by the horns. Or, at the very least, recognize the fact that there is a bull loose in the china shop called the psyche and it’s about to knock over what you have spent your life stacking neatly on the shelves.

It’s time to look stress straight in the eye and, in the words of the president, "not blink." "What about the dangers?" you ask. "Stress kills and I have grown found of continuing my existence, so of course I want to run away from stress" you say, even before I can respond to the first question. Take a breath and let it out. Feel better? Don’t answer, it was rhetorical. Stress doesn’t kill, your reaction to stress kills you. More to the point, it is the constant flood of cortisol and other stress hormones that gradually begin to shrink the brain, eat away at a healthy heart and close off the otherwise open pathways for blood flow. Feel better?

The way out of this stress trap is not the fight or flight method. Save those reactions for the constant barrage of news stories about the stock market. The way out is to go through, to feel that stress is not separate and outside of yourself. To overcome stress one needs to come to terms with one’s stressiness™, a term I have trademarked. Know that you and stress are intimately connected. Without you there is no stress.

What I am proposing is no less than a stress revolution. It is time to throw off the chains of the Western mechanistic model of stress that sees stress as an invading force from the outside, and adopt the silky ropes of an Eastern model that sees stress as an organic process. We are going to have to admit that we grow stress inside of ourselves, some of us with the care of a master gardener, and then watch as the fruits of our labor spread across the landscape we call our lives. It’s time to wake up and realize tension is the stuff that life is made of. From the battleground that is your cellular system to the farthest reaches of the solar system where stars collide like an episode of Entertainment Tonight, the push and pull, rise and fall and yin and yang of existence are complimentary movements not contradictory ones.

You have stress in the same way that you have a temperature. It is only when this temperature moves away from its set point that we call it a fever. When body temperature rises too high, we suffer. So, too, with stress. So let’s drop the silly notion that we can be stress free. Let’s stop looking for "the secret" that will remove all tension from our lives. You can become a manifesting machine and use the law of attraction to bring all of the new cars, boats, and houses you want into your life, you will still have stress (in most cases even more as you try to figure out how to pay for all of these things). Let’s take an oath to move head-on into our stress and come to know it as ourselves. I know that when I am stressed, I am stress, and so can you. Join me, Nation, on this great adventure in search of the ultimate truth.

Are We Having Fun Yet?

The bow cannot always stand bent,
nor can human frailty subsist without
some lawful recreation.
Miguel De Cervantes

Recreation, literally to "restore or to make anew," at times loses much of its fun status and seems to create only more stress in the lives of those engaging in it. You know how this goes; the card game turns ugly when you accuse your neighbor of dealing from the bottom of the deck, bowling night becomes brawling night after you catch the opposing team’s top player juicing up in-between frames, and the fishing trip goes south after you snap your pole in half trying to reel in that trophy-size log. What has become of us? Have we allowed stress so deeply into our lives that even the things that are meant to bring us joy and relaxation make us feel tense and frustrated? If you find yourself increasingly opting out of "games night" in order to scrub the bathroom floors or clip the cat’s claws, then I suggest that the answer is yes, you have allowed stress to take over the game board, and as everyone knows, stress does not play fair.

According to Webster’s dictionary, the word fun means "hoax or to be duped." Think about this for a minute; fun is supposed to be a situation in which we allow ourselves to be taken advantage of in some way—it is a trick we play on ourselves. The archetypal image of this is the game of hide and seek, where getting lost is as much of a thrill as trying to find those who have hidden themselves. The problem arises, and destructive stress sneaks in, when we forget the agreement that we made to be duped and start taking ourselves too seriously. This is when winning becomes more important than just being part of the game and the competitive ego sees even Candyland as a place to exert its control over the world.

If you want to get into contact with the healing power of stress, you are going to have to learn to play again. I hope that the last line sounds strange to you. I hope that you have a visceral reaction to the thought that having fun is something to be learned, it means there is still hope. It is only because of years and years of mental conditioning, often in the guise of formal education, that you have lost the ability to be silly. Ironically, it is because the world sometimes makes us feel so foolish that we wear our "game face" to let the world know that we mean business.

It is a sure sign of the stressed times we live in that we can no longer simply run through the fields unless there are clearly defined lanes, rules to keep cheaters at bay, and ribbons when it is over. Think about your last vacation (from the latin word vacatio, meaning freedom). How free did you feel? Were you taking in your surroundings in mindful peace, or busily trying to pack as much into twenty-four hours as humanly possible? When it was over did you return to work feeling rested and relaxed, or was your fading tan the only proof that you had been out of office? Stop doing this to yourself. Stop resisting your natural tendency to have fun and to be fun. It might literally be killing you.
Whenever you get the chance, watch children at play. Resist the urge to referee and simply observe how children go about their nonbusiness. Remember that this was you once, and is still you, at your deepest level. Restore your sense of awe for the world and your part in it. Stress cannot live in you when you are filled with wonder.

Here is a personal stress strategy you can use to put some fun back into your life. The next time you head out into the world, whether it is a trip to the supermarket, your in-laws or a dinner party, take along your party hat. Try your best to view whatever it is you are doing as an actual game. Remember that all games have rules, and that the outcome is up for grabs. This is where the fun comes in; the not knowing how it will turn out. Make it a point to fully engage in the hoax-like quality of the game that you are playing and realize that everyone you encounter, even the person who steals your prime parking spot at the Quickie Mart, is also playing the game. Marvel at how well some play and how others seem to lack a sense of enthusiasm. Notice those who try to bend or even break the rules of the game in their favour. Know that this is part of the game too. Be weary of your mind showing up as the supervising adult trying to tell you that play time is over and you have to get serious again. The mind is afraid of play because it knows that when you really get into it you lose yourself, and that it the death knell for the ego. Play these games as often as you like as see if you don’t re-create your stress.

Now or Never

Come out of the circle of time
And into the circle of love
Rumi

If you look back on the truly joyous moments of your life you will find that most happened in the absence of an awareness of time. People describe ecstatic experiences as "I was totally lost in the moment," "time stood still," or "it seemed to last forever." It is no mere coincidence that joy exists in a timeless state; it is the release from time that allows joy to be. You cannot experience true happiness while you are torn between past and future, between this moment and the next.

The reason that it so hard to give up our dependence on time is that we have placed all of our bets on time. We put in so much time so that we may later use our time more wisely and live out our remaining time in peace. Throughout our lives we constantly feel the pressure of the past at our backs while the future seems to be heading toward us with ever increasing speed. There we sit, a tiny grape in the vice of what was and what will be, knowing that the big squish is coming and there is nothing we can do but hope that we will have a better life as grape juice, or even better, wine.

To break free of time’s grip does not require Herculean strength. To the contrary, it requires the simple act of letting go. When you drop the mind conditioning that has you rocketing back and forth between the past and future, you will find the stillness of absolute presence. By accepting the present as it is you will discover the wisdom in the Taoist saying "if you want to have a stress- free life, wish for things to be the way they are rather than the way you want them to be." The circle of time is the not-so-merry-go-round that we often ride day after day. If this has left you feeling a little nauseous, feel free to jump off. The only thing that you will miss is the sense of vertigo that comes from a life spinning out of control.

If the time vice has you tightly clamped at the moment you are probably thinking "where I am going to find the time to practice this present moment stuff?" I am going to ask that you put down that day planner and slowly back away from the belief that there are not enough hours in the day. Understand, deeply, that there is no such thing as work time, free time, down time or the right time. Begin to appreciate that life is just one big happening that you have sliced into what you thought were more manageable pieces. Stop worrying about past events, they are nothing more than antique stores of the mind. Put an end to obsessing about how your future will turn out. Settle into the present moment.

Here are a few tips for breaking free from your role as time traveler:

1.Hang out with animals, they are Zen masters of present moment awareness.
2.Focus on your breathing. You can only breathe in the now. Enjoy a breath of the present moment.
3. Take breaks from time. See what happens when you respond to your body’s
rhythms rather than the unnatural ticking and clicking of the multiple time pieces that surround you.
4. See if you can stop retelling "poor me" stories, they simply give your ego a new place to hang its old hat.
5. Release your need to control your future. Your ego has about as much influence over the future as your child has over your car as he sits next to you with the little plastic steering wheel in his hands.
6. Read any of Thich Nhat Hanh’s wonderful books, or The Healing Power of Stress by that savvy author, Mike Verano.

Two's a Crowd: The Stress of the Other

The only thing worse than

the egoic me is the egoic us.
Eckhart Tolle


I’m going to go out on a very sturdy limb and suggest that if you were to follow the trail of your stress to its source, more often than not there will be another human being at the end of that trail. Sartre’s famous comment that "hell is other people," might as well be our generation’s theme song. We rub shoulders daily with our fellow citizens and that rubbing often leads to sparks and maybe even a three-alarm fire.

I know from my work with teenagers in residential treatment centers that this experience begins very early in life. Many kids, no matter how awful their upbringing, no matter how traumatic their early years, will do relatively okay when left to themselves. Throw them in with a peer group and you will immediately see the divisions arising, gangs forming, and the inevitable "us against them" mentality taking form. Watch the news on any given day, and the state of the world will show you that these youngsters are simply imitating what their elders have taught them—life needs enemies. The stress that this social dysfunction creates is felt around the world.

Why are we so bad at something that is supposedly wired into our DNA? Why do we spend our lives trolling the waters for that one other person to make us feel complete and then work so hard to cast off all of the other fish that have accidentally landed in our nets? How much more enjoyable would life be if our brothers and sisters were no longer seen as proof that God should have created either Adam or Eve, but not both? While it would be stretching it to suggest that I can help you love your enemies as yourself, I would like to suggest that with the healing power of stress comes the ability to better navigate the social waters you find yourself in. I want to assure you that once you begin to see that stress is within you, your interactions with others will take on new flavor. The hell of the other is none other than the hell that you have made. To move out of this hell takes only a minimal amount of awareness on your part.

This awareness begins by realizing that our social interactions are filled with stress because we are each a mini stress factory, and when we gather together we fuel each other’s fires. Want to keep this fire from burning out your relationships? Remove the fuel inside of you that gives it life. Take away the mind-kindling that catches whatever spark it can and turns the casual passing comment into a personal attack on your integrity.

Finally, we are going to have to come terms with the advice of sages past and present that all good relationships start with the one we have with ourselves. Narcissism and ego mania aside, most people need to work at learning to get along with themselves. Years of self-loathing, self-deception and even down-right abuse leave many people feeling like they should have walked out on themselves a long time ago.

Since no discourse on relationships would be complete without some unsolicited advice, I want to give you a list of tips to help you fall back in love with yourself.

1. Leave your mind out of it. Over-analyze anything and it dies.
2. Give yourself space. Stop trying to fill yourself up with things (this includes thoughts) and give yourself time to be really alone. Put down the books, turn off the television, log off the internet and take the blue tooth out of your ear and simply be still.
3. Surprise yourself. Nothing kills relationships like boredom and predictability. Do something different. Set a goal to do something that scares you at least once a week. Feel free to check with a close friend just in case your "what scares me list" includes things that could get you arrested or a prime spot on Youtube.
4. Forgive yourself. Practice telling yourself that it is ok that you never became the top executive of a fortune 500 company. If you are a top executive of a fortune 500 company, forgive yourself for having to crush so many people in order to get there.
5. Don’t go to bed mad. Anger is the jack hammer that grinds relationships into specs of human dust. Stop beating yourself up, that’s abuse without the benefit of the make-up flowers or candy.
6. . Let go of your need to have the admiration and adoration of every person who happens to stumble onto the stage that is your life and you will find that your exasperation and desperation goes with it. Change the theme song in your mind and watch to see if others don’t start whistling a different tune. Then just sit back and enjoy the music.

Role Playing

The only problem with not castrating
a gigantic ego is that it will surely become amorous and father a hundred screaming ideas and kids who will then all quickly grow up and skillfully proceed to run up every imaginable debt and complication of which your brain can conceive.—Hafiz

In order to fully appreciate the healing power of stress you are going to have to come to terms with the fantastic trick you have played on yourself by creating the illusion that is the ego. When you entered the world in your skin suit you became a member of an actor’s guild of epic proportions. If we peek behind the curtain to see that big bad ego wizard, we find that he is afraid you will find out that it is all just smoke and mirrors.

Alan Watts stated that ego is nothing more than "futility married to an illusion." He suggests that the feeling created by this illusion is that of chronic tension in the body as we contract ourselves against the world around us. It gives us a sense of being in control. This tension is our stress Seeing through this illusion is the key to unlocking the healing power of stress.

Often when people discover that the self they have invested so much in is nothing but a mental phantom, they turn to self-loathing in order to try and shake themselves free from their pain. This is merely the ego taking on the role of victim, and only increases stress as you try to run away from yourself. The wiser course is to make friends with it and use the advice of Arjuna Gargh, to look at it as the "crazy uncle" who often gives you really bad advice. This makes perfect sense if you think about it. Has anyone talked you into anything even close to the insane things you have convinced yourself you should do? Be honest; you know that it was you who told you that eating nothing but cheeseburgers would help you lose weight. You know you were behind the decision to seek inner peace by having the word "om" tatooed on your forehead. And surely you remember the time that you convinced yourself that no one would notice the comb-over.

If you find that you have grown weary of yourself and your efforts to "act right," you might want to take a look at the roles you are playing in life and take a break from those that are causing you the most pain. Don’t worry about losing yourself should you drop the robe of the ego, it is because of the ego that you feel disguised in the first place. Once you step out of character you immediately step into the truth; you are nothing less than a divine essence pretending to be human. Oh, and by the way, I read the reviews and you were "marvelous, darling, simply marvelous!"

What, me worry?

Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy.
- -Leo Buscaglia

If stress has a flag-bearer, then that title has to go to the mind phenomenon that is worry. Interestingly, the word itself means "to strangle or constrict." This is a great image to keep in mind when you think about worry, as it is the mind that has you in a strangle-hold, constricting any positive flow of energy. Worry has its roots deep within the habitual thought patterns of the brain. It seems that the mind, in an attempt to prove its worth, creates problems and then sets out to solve those problems. This is relatively harmless when struggling over a crossword puzzle or trying to complete your taxes, but when it comes to life problems, such as what to do about one’s past or future, then it moves into the category best verbalized by parents at one time or another, "You’re going to worry me to death."

The ego needs worry to sustain itself—it has formed a conspiratorial relationship with the mind. This relationship has a "you scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours" quality, that leaves many of us scratching our heads. Put your worries to the simple test of "Why is this so important to me?" and you will realize how seductive worry is. Try to stop worrying and you will realize how deep its tentacles penetrate—how truly insidious this form of stress can be.

One of the age-old psychological methods for taming the worry beast is to go ahead and have a worry-fest. Set some time aside and worry like there is no tomorrow—you can even worry that there won’t be a tomorrow. Use this time to give in to all of your deepest fears—"my dream of being the next American Idol is never going to be realized, the mole is really skin cancer, the headache is a brain tumor, and my children will grow up to be game show hosts," Doing this, "forced," worrying will have multiple benefits. When you feel a worry cropping up in the middle of the day you can tell yourself to save it for "worry time" and go on about your business.

A mindful approach to worry would be to feel it in your body without the mental commentary—picture CNN with the sound off and the "breaking news" crawl at the bottom of the screen no longer running. Take your attention to the places in your body that worry seems to be lighting up. Whether it is butterflies in the stomach, tension in your neck, or a nervous twitch of the eyelids, go there and observe your body. In the absence of an inner dialogue, you will be amazed at how many of your worries simply dissolve like an Alka-Seltzer in a CEO’s glass of water. When you tune into the music in your body, rather than the voice in your head, you will find that many of the sad songs you have been singing have a new ring to them.

It was Marshall McLuhan who said that the age of anxiety was a result of "trying to do today's jobs with yesterday's tools." This is true for your stress. You have been trying to solve the problem with the same mind that created it. Worrying about your worries only drives the anxiety to deeper levels of your consciousness. In essence, you have been using a hammer when you really need a pair of pliers, a screwdriver where you need to use a saw.

If you stay mindful when worry shows up, you will see it for what it is—a mind cloud that has temporarily obscured the shining of your light. If you are feeling particularly playful, you can even become the weather forecaster who maps out the passing front and seems delighted every time conditions seem favorable for the "perfect storm"--
"Today’s forecast calls for early optimism followed by a heart-warming trend. However, if you look just to the west of this band of bliss you can see doubt building up, and right behind that there seems to be some very high pressure in the form of a deadline. We will probably see some tears by this afternoon followed by some rumblings as dinner approaches."

Overthinkers Anonymous

To eliminate the vexation of the mind, it doesn’t help to do something; this only reinforces the mind’s mechanics. -- Lao Tzu

The professionals who work with alcoholics have created several screening tools to determine if one’s drinking has become a problem. Many of these are self tests and are very useful if you are honest. I have modified one of these questionnaires to look at thought addiction.

Are You a Thoughtaholic?

Please answer "yes" or "no" to the following:

1. Are you thinking more than you used to?
2. Has a spouse, partner, or relative, friend or coworker ever complained about your thinking?
3. Do you ever feel ashamed or guilty about your thinking?
4. Have you ever tried to stop thinking only to find that you could not?
5. Have you ever gotten into a verbal or physical altercation because of your thinking?
6. Do you start thinking as soon as you wake up?
7. Do you find yourself thinking before you go to sleep?
8. Have you ever asked anyone for help with your thinking?
9. Has your thinking ever caused problems between you and a spouse, partner, relative, friend or coworker?
10. Do you often think when you’re by yourself?
11. Do you seek out the company of other thinkers?
12. Do you continue thinking despite negative consequences due to your thinking?
13. Do you sometimes think in order to feel better?
14. Has anyone ever told you that they are worried about your thinking?
15. Have you ever lost a relationship or job because of your thinking?

Count up the number of "yes" responses and score accordingly:

0 = You are lying, take the test again and be honest.
1-2 = High degree of self-awareness with the ability to keep your thoughts from harming you or someone else.
3-5 = Problem thinker. Your thoughts are starting to get the best of you and have caused you a moderate degree of pain.
6-9 = Abusive thinker. Your thoughts are causing high levels of pain to you and those around you.
10 or more = Thinking dependence. You got it bad; your thoughts are running the show and you are just a bag of flesh being pushed around by the whims of the gray matter between your ears. You are also in the company of about 98% of humanity.

The Silent Treatment

By a quiet mind I mean a mental consciousness within which sees thoughts arrive to it and move about but does not itself feel that it is thinking or identifying itself with the thoughts or call them its own.--Sri Aurobindo

The mental noise that is stress, the whirring of the mind machine, grinds away all day and through many people’s nights as well. If you look closely, you can see how this grinding is slowly working you through the pepper mill of existence until you are left with a mere dusting of what once was a whole human being. The tragic irony has been that in an attempt to take care of our stress we send in more noise. We think about our stressful thoughts, we worry about our worries and we even complain about our complaints. Taoist teachers refer to this as putting a new head on top of the one you already have, and contrary to poplar myth, two heads are not better than one.

If you want to see progress in shifting from your old relationship with stress to a new and improved one, then practice cutting off the lifeblood of noise that stress needs to live on. Am I telling you to simply "Shut up and get over it?" Would that help you? If so, then yes, I am telling you to shut up. The getting over it part will actually take care of itself if you can get to the state that the Buddhists refer to a "noble silence." Noble silence is simply being quiet and aware at the same time. This is contrary to what most of us do when we say that we are relaxing. Hanging suspended from a rope cot, while cool summer breezes blow across the lawn is not relaxing if the whole time your mind is ruminating on all the things you should be doing, if you brain is desperately trying to figure out how to you are going to be able to retire before the age of 80 so that you can start relaxing like this in exotic places.

To experience noble silence is to give attention to the space between the noises in your head. What I am calling the silent treatment is to enter into this meditative state minus the incense, new age music and long bearded guru—not that these things are bad. When you tune into the silent moments of your life, you will discover that stress has no home there. More to the point, stress is transformed into its basic structure of a vibrational energy that, despite your effort to get it moving out of your life, is still lodged deep in your psyche. By withdrawing your inner dialogue, you immediately impact this energy charge. Without its noise juice, stress loses its story. This is the power of the silent treatment—the ability to end the narrative of a life that always has you on the losing end.

"No fight, no blame," says the Tao Te Ching, No thoughts, no stress, say I. Eventually, when you reconnect the mouth/brain cable, you will find the urge, desire and even need to say something. More than likely, however, it will not have the same urgent quality to it and you may find that on second thought—really no thought—you don’t say anything after all. This deep wisdom was beautifully summed up in the story of The Little Prince, when he tells his friend that just before he leaves him he will not say anything because "words are often the source of misunderstandings." I could go on about the silent treatment, but I think I have said enough.

The Healing Power of Stress at Work: Part 2

"The character of your existence is determined by the energies to which you connect yourself." Hua Hu Ching

If you really want to turn your work stress around you are going to have to evaluate your values and see how often they are on a direct collision course with your actions. If time with your family is your primary value, what are you doing spending weekends at the office? If your physical health is your primary value, why are you working eighteen hours days and catching quickie naps while you drive home? The stress therapist, Roger Mellot, once said that people leave jobs that are no longer serving them when the value of their sanity overtakes their need for a paycheck. The good news is that you do not have to choose between wealth and health; you can have both as long as you are clear about your needs and stay aware of the ways you go about meeting them. Once you shift from serving your ego to serving your inner self you will find that many of the work related stressors simply have no more meaning for you.

Unless you are willing to confront the habitual thoughts that are in conflict with what you truly value, you will most likely never experience the healing power of stress. It would be insane to think that you can subject yourself to ritualistic doses of bad stress forty hours a week and still feel like your life is anything other than drudgery, covered up by an occasional weekend’s worth of "down time." If, instead, you choose to take your work stress head on, I assure you that the rest of your life will benefit from the ripple effect. When you start to see your work environment for the playground that it really is, you might find yourself earning a true living, and happy hours will now take place at home rather than at the local watering hole. Commit to being truly self-employed—working in your own best interest—and watch as your self-worth begins to rise in ways that your stock portfolio never will.

The Healing Power of Stress at Work--Part 1

"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important. "

Bertrand Russell

It is ironic that what we call "earning a living" leaves so many of us feeling dead tired when it is over. I am willing to bet that no matter where you go to earn a day’s pay, you most likely report to a stress factory that pumps out some of the finest product around. I am also willing to bet that you have, at one time or another, thought that if you did not have to work, there would be no stress in your life. So synonymous are work and stress that I propose we just go ahead and say we are going to stress, rather than to work, and at least avoid the idealistic hope that it should be anything else.

Sarcasm aside, we can see that work is both the laboratory where we give life to our stress and the playground on which we let it run amok. Recent studies have suggested that as many as 80 percent of adults identify their jobs as their leading cause of stress—the other 20 percent, apparently, are unemployed and currently stressing over when they will be able to return to work. Being miserable at work is so embedded within our collective psyches that even people who profess to love their jobs will find things about it to stress over. The unstated pledge in many workplaces seems to be "If you want to be one of us, you are have to hate being here." Thus my phrase, Misery loves companies.

If we are ever going to break free from the destructive powers of stress while still having a roof over our heads, food on the table, and a thousand high definition channels on our super-plasma television sets, we are going to have to come to terms with work- related stress. I’m sure you have had the experience of having a perfectly planned day spoiled by the sudden awareness that it was not the weekend and your boss was eagerly anticipating your arrival. The fact that most heart attacks occur on Monday mornings is a depressing commentary on the power we have handed over to our careers.

I want to use the healing power of stress to provide an even more direct path through the job jungle and see if we can machete our way through the trials and tribulations of our careers. I hope to help you see the workplace as a training ground for your new outlook on stress and begin to take some of the work out of working. As some of you make this journey, you may have to face the reality that your jobs no longer serve your sanity and that your insurance is no longer covering the fallout. Others will discover that work has simply become the center ring in the circus of stress that seems to set up tents wherever you land. In either case, you are going to have to break the cycle of thinking that you can have a negative outlook and a positive outcome. We will do well to remember Eckhart Tolle’s advice that "When you fight life, it fights you back."

A good place to start your adventure is to pay close attention to others as you interact with them while they do their jobs. Try this with the cashier ringing you out at the grocery store, the bank teller handing you your money, the waitress taking your lunch order, the telemarketer trying to get you to buy and subscription to "Get a Life" magazine, the nurse taking your blood pressure and the taxi cab driver taking you home after realizing that you were the last one standing at the bar when they call "last round."

If you do this, minus the critical mind that will want to critique the performance of your fellow human beings, you will begin to experience suffering in its raw form. Allow your mind to extend itself and imagine what it is that lies behind what you once simply labeled "a bad attitude," "poor service," or "the devil incarnate." See if you can, if only for an instant, allow this wall to drop and feel the humanness in someone who, like you, most likely only wanted to come to work today and not leave with a splitting migraine. Don’t be surprised if this is a little overwhelming at first. Many of us have created such a separation between ourselves and the others that we bump into in the game of life that we see them as mere obstacles to our need for the good life. We are no longer our brother’s keeper but ones who keep our brothers and sisters at a safe distance so as to try and keep the crap from their lives splashing our happy suits.

Once you have encountered the workforce in this way, turn this light of awareness of yourself while you are busy doing whatever it is you do to keep the poverty monster off your back. Rather than berate yourself for missing the deadline, just watch the movement within yourself. While doing this, avoid the "poor me" syndrome that has you as the most overworked, underpaid and underappreciated employee in the known universe. Simply watch where in your body the tension lands and how your body responds to it. When the phone rings, avoid the reflex response of thinking that it can only be someone on the other end who has made it their personal mission in life to push you over the edge. Instead, really listen to yourself as you talk and feel the words as they slip across your lips. Apply this same routine to every interaction and activity at work. The point here is not to concentrate on yourself at work but to simply experience yourself while you go about your day. Don’t label you actions or interactions, instead, be what Buddhists refer to as the "silent witness."

What you will most likely find is that many of your responses are simply old habits playing over and over again. We are all good at witnessing these in our coworkers. The world of substance abuse recovery calls this "taking someone else’s inventory." I am suggesting that the very process of taking this inventory produces unnecessary stress in you. I am suggesting that one of the reasons that the work place becomes so dangerous is that many of us walk around carrying what we think are maps of all of the emotional land mines around us, while at the same time carefully burying our own around every corner and in every break room. This is why so many people actually report not feeling safe at their jobs.

Psychotic coworkers aside, you are your own worst enemy at your job. Yes, it might very well be true that your boss possesses all of the savvy of a sponge and that you have to rub shoulders with more shady characters than you would find in a Star Wars bar scene. However, you will still be faced with the fact your work stress still says more about you than those around you. To be fair, it actually says more about the human condition than it says about you, but I did not think that would get your attention in the same way. As the ego’s playground, the workplace will always be filled with tension. Mind games are the product produced at every job site no matter what the official company mission statement says and the fine print of every work contract should read, "The only thing worse than being left alone with your thoughts is being surrounded by the thoughts of others." So it should come as no surprise to you that at the end of a day’s worth of "my ego is bigger than yours" your head hurts, your chest feels tight, and the only thing you really have a grip on is the stirring wheel as your race home, with NASCAR-like precision, so you can tell your significant other about your plans to open up a fruit stand.