Christmas practice

Christmas is a funny time isn't it? A season of mixed messages, confused intentions, and contrasts. The shops and adverts bill it as a period of overwhelming happiness, good will, festive fun, and good food, but we all know that isn't the whole story. For many people it's one of the most difficult times of the year – and I'm not just talking about people on the bread line or homeless.

Like living in a big city, Christmas can often act to magnify loneliness. If we've got no one obvious to be with, what do we do? If family life is difficult, then spending concentrated time with family can seem like a nightmare. If we're a bit low on money, then how can we fulfil people's gift expectations?

For most of us with family, that's where we end up at this time of year (at one point or another). Maybe we end up seeing more family over Christmas than we do in the rest of the year combined! And no matter how lovely your family is, they do have this amazing ability to push (whether intentionally or not) your most sensitive buttons. The way your parents always bicker, the way your sister says things in a way that annoys you, the way your auntie and uncle are always late, etc, etc. All those decades of history… Old behaviour patterns pop up like a rash. Emotions like frustration, annoyance, aversion, even apathy or anger might bubble up and find ways of expressing themselves in ways you didn't expect (or that you did!).

By virtue of sharing your DNA, family members can often reflect your own traits, behaviours, or views. If it's a generous spirit, an enlightened political perspective, or great cooking skills, then fantastic! Appreciate what they've passed on to you via your genes and what you share. Sometimes, however, it can be traits or behaviours that you're not happy with, sides of yourself you're uncomfortable with. Perhaps even things in yourself that you've worked on changing because you recognised they're not healthy or wholesome ways of acting or thinking. And that can really get your back up!

This is where your daily yoga or meditation practice comes into it's own. On a basic level it provides you with that oasis of calm and quiet – giving you time out from the Christmas craziness. But it also provides an opportunity for you to see things for what they really are, to get some perspective on things.  Was what I said just an old way of reacting to mum fussing over the right way of preparing the sprouts? Am I disengaging from the conversation because I don't like how disrespectful everyone's being to each other? Did I really need to eat that 3rd helping of Christmas pudding or was I giving in to greed and the attraction of the delicious flavour?

If you notice something like this happening, remember, don't be hard on yourself. Just notice, be aware, be still with it. Allow yourself to feel and 100% be with that Christmas pudding bulge as you lie in child's pose. Notice that tightness in the belly as you sit in meditation arising from your annoyance with your granddad's storing in front of the TV, and allow it to be there. Acknowledge and allow yourself to feel lonely if that's what's coming up.

Your practice is more important than ever over a period like Christmas, wherever you are and whatever you're doing. But circumstances often conspire against you. Even if you stay at home, a holiday and time off work means a change in routine which can easily put things out of kilter. Visiting family or having family visit can mean no quiet time by yourself, or having no suitable quiet, undisturbed space to go to. You can feel self-conscious of doing your practice in front of family or in someone else's house. Maybe you haven't got the right equipment (yoga mat, tracksuit, meditation cushion).

But in the end these are all excuses. Go and do some walking meditation in the park. Tell everyone not to interrupt you (or just don't respond to any interruptions). Be flexible about when you do your practice – try 3x10 mins instead of your usual 1x30mins. Make it an opportunity to experiment.

Above all, enjoy the opportunities this period brings for leaning and understanding more about yourself, for letting go, and being present with everyone, every feeling, and every event.

I wish you a contented, mindful and loving Christmas, and a happy new year.

Waiting for the morning star

About 2500 years ago, a young prince from an area just into present-day Nepal, northern India, left his comfortable palace life and went off into the forest in search of what life was all about. He met a number of teachers who taught him how to meditate, and through these methods he achieved amazing states of relaxation, bliss and joy. But still, he felt, something was missing – these states he achieved were very beautiful but they wore off when he came out of it. They were changes in state, not trait.

Bodhi tree much like what the Buddha sat under

So he tried some other things, including fasting. In fact he fasted to such an extreme that he became just a bag of bones and almost died. The legend says that one afternoon he met a milk maid who offered him milk rice sweetened with lumps of honey and he took it. It gave him a boost, and settling himself down comfortably in the shade of a big tree he made a vow: "if only my bones and sinews remain and all my skin and flesh wither away I will not leave this practice place until I have realised full enlightenment".

So he sat all through the night, and as he saw the dawn and the rising of the morning star he woke up completely and fully – not because he was snoozing(!) but in the sense that he realised everything and understood the true nature of the universe. After that he became known as the Buddha – meaning the awakened one.

In the Zen tradition they celebrate the Buddha's awakening on 8th December. In a monastery they would hold a 5-day retreat (called a sesshin) in the days preceding the 8th, and on the last night, sit all night until the dawn like the Buddha did. It's called the Rohatsu sesshin, and here in London we just did the last bit.

So we gathered at the ZenYoga studio in Camberwell on Saturday night (7th) at 9pm, and after a short recap from our Zen teacher Daizan about why we were there, we all had a bowl of milk rice sweetened with lumps of honey (commonly known as rice pudding). Freshly lifted into the Ambrosia sugar high we began our night of celebration: 25 mins sitting meditation, 5 min break, 25 mins sitting, 10 mins walking meditation outside around the neighbouring tennis courts, all the way through to 7am.

At about an hour in I started calculating how many hours there were left! After about 2 hours I needed to open out my cross-legged posture. After 3 hours my back muscles which were holding me upright started getting quite uncomfortable. The hardest period for me was from 12-2am where my body was uncomfortable, I was restless, and it was difficult to stay concentrated. The discomfort in my legs started shouting "YOU MUST MOVE", but I knew the best thing to do was to just encourage it to soften and let it be. It took some effort to resist though. Surprisingly the pain gradually faded into the background – only to move into my left shoulder and the process repeated.

At about 2am I realised just how much I was resisting being in the moment. And somehow that realisation allowed something deep inside to give up its fight. The minutes start flying by. The sound of someone's breathing came into sharp focus for a moment or two and then disappeared. The sound of the second hand of the wall clock became incredibly loud. And that made me remember how physical time goes at a constant rate no matter how much you will it to go faster, or how much you get absorbed. Time is such a funny thing.

By 3am I had an impulse to work out how many sits we'd done, to congratulate myself on how far we'd got. But I had no idea. How many times had we walked around the tennis courts? No idea. But it was bracingly cold each time we went outside (no-one put on a coat or extra layers besides shoes) and so invigorating. I came back inside zinging each time! Sleepy sensations swirled around but never really took hold. My body seemed to stay quite upright without much problem (the back pain had faded), but by 5am the mind started going in and out of dull sleepiness like someone was slowly twiddling the focus knob.

Each time we sat back down, I noticed how the same muscles felt sore, then sorer. I was stretching and trying to relax those same muscles again and again. For a time I was fed up with doing these same movements – there's that resistance again. Then I was grateful for how relieving it felt, then there wasn't even that. There was just the movement, the sitting, the walking, and no me doing it.

At 6am with only one hour to go I got a second wind! Only one hour... well I'd better get down to it then. I'm not sure everyone felt like that though. Glancing around the dojo I saw at least 5 people slowly falling, nodding sideways with sleep!

At 7am we finished, stood up, bowed, and hugged each other. We shared a simple breakfast from what people had brought, and left into the morning sunshine to go home.

Offer the time,
offer the space,
offer our presence,
offer our effort,
offer the support,
offer our willing,
make the intention,
and the rest will take care of itself.

The Evolving Dharma

"The Evolving Dharma" by Jay Michaelson came out just a couple of months ago, and I came across it via twitter linking to a few blogs about it (like this one). It's billed as a "guide to the meditation revolution", charting how meditation and mindfulness have moved from Buddhist monasteries to self-help groups and retreat centres, to classrooms and hospitals, neuro-research labs and academic conferences. It really sparked my interest.

He begins the book discussing what he calls the post-modern, post-Buddhist, mindfulness movement, which has evolved out of Buddhist practice in the last 20-30 years. Mindfulness is now a completely secular set of techniques for what he describes as brain-hacking, or upgrading the software of our brain, and is indeed a flourishing academic subject, government-endorsed practice, and general buzzword in its own right.

In part two he discusses how the more traditional Buddhist pursuit of awakening or enlightenment is evolving in the west, using much of his own experience (mainly from the Theravadan tradition) as the base. He gives a very eloquent account of his months-long silent retreat exploring concentration and the four dhyana (or jhana) states, then his subsequent retreat looking more into insight, and his experiences of the shadow side – what St. John of the Cross called "the dark night of the soul" (which, interestingly, has been the subject of scientific study by Dr. Britton at Brown University).

The subject of the third section is how this "contemplative wisdom" is interacting with our western cultural ideas of religion, spirituality, identity and gender, and is being extended to things like political activism (known as "engaged Buddhism"). He comments on how we're in the age of contributed content (blogs vs. newspapers, etc.), which tends to have the effect of flattening the power structure as people take responsibility for creating their own media. In terms of Buddhism, the consequence may be a decreased emphasis on the role of the guru-teacher. He also talks about the interaction between contemplative practice and social justice, and mentions a few examples of where teachers in the American Buddhist community have fallen foul of their desires.

In general Jay does a great job in describing Buddhism's ongoing journey to the west, looking at its first 100 years of integration and evolution. Being an American he's obviously very US-centric in his description of how Buddhism and meditation practice have encountered "the west". I think most of the trends though are present in Europe (even if the specific teachers he mentions are not), although I'm not sure whether movements such as the Buddhist Jews (so-called BuJus), or queer/gay Buddhists are quite so well-known or outspoken over here. Perhaps this reflects a more progressive or open culture in the US, or maybe just Jay's own background and interests (he's gay and a Jew).

Before reading this book I was worried that this might be another fluffy journalistic account of Buddhism written by someone who hadn't really done much meditation themselves. But I was impressed. Jay has obviously travelled a good way along the meditative journey himself and writes very eloquently about his own experiences. I think this adds a great deal of credence to what he says.

After all, all of us who practice or study yoga, mindfulness, meditation, or zen are actively involved in the evolution of Buddhism to the west. That encounter or dialogue actually comes up more often than you might think – it's a regular topic of discussion at our zen group in London. For example, as Zen students should we wear our formal robes to our weekly meditation session or is a tracksuit more appropriate? Should we bow in gassho to greet each other, or shake hands/kiss on the cheek as you would do in everyday life? Should we chant in Japanese or in English? Obviously we follow our teacher's lead on this, and he must have to think pretty hard about what's most appropriate for the London culture we live in. We're ploughing new and exciting furrows...

Workshop on the 8 Silk Brocades of Qigong

On Saturday I went to a workshop at the ZenYoga studio led by long-time martial arts practitioner and teacher Keith Alker on the 8 silk brocades of Qigong (Chinese: Ba Duan Jin, Japanese: Hachi Danken). It was great - we learned just 8 very simple moves in 6 hours! Simple on the outside maybe, but certainly not simple on the inside... 

So what is Qigong? Qi (sometimes spelled 'chi', Jap: ki) is the universal energy, life force, or vital energy. Literally translated it means breath or air. Qi is the central underlying principle in traditional Chinese medicine, martial arts including T'ai Chi, and is also part of Zen practice. The idea is we're born with a certain amount in us, and then we take in more via food/air and directly from the universe, and use it to move and live. 

Qi flows around the body through meridians or energy channels. There are 12 main meridians associated with each of the different organs (heart, lungs, kidneys, etc), and 8 subsidiary meridians which include the belt meridian around your waist and the governing/conception meridian going up the spine, over the head, and down the front. 

Acupuncture/acupressure or any kind of Anma practice works on energising or unblocking these meridian lines and the points along them. A few of the most important points that Keith mentioned include Bai Hui on the crown of the head, Hui Yin on the pelvic floor, Lao Gong on the palm, Yong Quan on the sole of the foot, Ming Men on the small of the back, and the three Dan Tien's (energy centres) in the belly, chest and head. 

What is the difference between Qigong and T'ai Chi?  

Tai Chi is a Taoist moving meditation practice based on the interplay of the two complimentary forces - yin and yang. Tai Chi consists of four types of practice (the 'Four Pillars'): Qigong, Form, Pushing Hands and Application. When you see people practicing in the park they're most likely doing the Form. This is an aesthetically beautiful flowing sequence of movements designed to develop physical and mental skill and health, and varies in emphasis and complexity between different schools. Qigong (the first pillar) is the foundation of Tai Chi, and comprises a set of exercises to get your qi moving: both around and into/out of the body. 

Does the 'qi' or 'chi' in the two names refer to the same thing? It's pronounced the same...

I didn't know this before asking Keith, and apparently no it doesn't. The confusion arises from the different ways of romanising certain Chinese symbols. T'ai chi is the spelling using the Wade-Giles system and is the one most commonly known, whereas Taiji is the spelling according to the Pinyin system. The 'qi' in qigong refers to the energy that moves along the meridians, whereas the 'chi' in Tai Chi doesn't (hence Taiji is a better spelling). Taiji means the "great pole", or the "Supreme Ultimate".

At the beginning of the workshop Keith introuduced us to a few main concepts or principles.

One of these was that in all martial arts, qigong and meditation, we aim to regulate (1) the body – through alignment, movements, and the balance between tension and relaxation; (2) the breath (and hence our qi) – through breathing exercises, focusing on the tanden, breath sounds, etc.; and (3) the mind – through concentration, mindfulness, awareness, etc. 

He also talked about how finding the balance between yang/yin is so important. Taking our arm as an example, he showed how if you tense your arm, both the bicep and the tricep are working as if almost fighting each other. He called this double yang, and, he said, corresponds mentally to a state of active distraction. The opposite is a weak and limp arm which is obviously double yin, and corresponds to a kind of mental fog. Finding that balance (tension only where needed) is the key to correct practice in any of these arts. 

He also emphasised the concept of 'peng', meaning expansion – through the head, feet, hands, and ultimately through the energy body as well. It's very difficult to describe, but incredible to experience in a well practised teacher like Keith. It was literally explosive, and when he sent it in my direction I actually felt a physical push backwards!

So, what about the movements, the 8 silk brocades? Keith taught us the standard issue version from the Chinese Health Qigong Association and recommended by the Chinese government to maintain health and wellbeing after much research. 

The 8 exercises are:

• Holding the hands high with palms up to regulate the internal organs
• Posing as an archer shooting both left and right handed
• Holding one arm aloft to regulate the functions of the spleen and stomach
• Looking back to prevent sickness and strain
• Swinging the head and lowering the body to relieve stress
• Moving both hands down the back and legs and touching the feet to strengthen the kidneys
• Thrusting fists and making the eyes glare to enhance strength
• Raising and lowering the heels to cure diseases 

Now I need to go and practice them...  

Watch the full set of movements:

Mindsight and the wheel of awareness

How would you describe our ability to perceive our mind and that of others?

Self-awareness? Consciousness? Emotional/social intelligence? Theory of mind? Dr. Dan Siegel of the UCLA School of Medicine and co-director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center came up with the term "mindsight". Nice word! I like it. He wrote a book about it in 2010 called "Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation".

He describes mindsight as "a powerful lens through which we can understand our inner lives with more clarity, integrate the brain, and enhance our relationships with others." He says it's "a kind of focused attention that allows us to see the internal workings of our own minds."

We all learn and develop mindsight as we grow up. Through it we start to see what's inside, to map out the internal landscape of our mind and recognise what things like sadness, anger, grief, pleasure, love, and excitement are. But the skill of mindsight goes way beyond just observing what's inside. Through focussed attention we can learn how to notice and acknowledge a thought/feeling/sensation, without getting caught up in it or identifying ourselves with it. It can give you perspective. In Dan Siegel's words, "it gives you the understanding to distinguish the difference between 'I am sad' and 'I feel sad'." This is similar to what the great Zen Master Obaku said: "that which sees suffering is itself not suffering".

In his talks and books, Dan Seigel likes to use the analogy of a camera lens. As we grow up, he says, if parents don't provide clear feedback on the child's emotions and feelings then the mindsight lens can become distorted. Nurturing and healthy relationships help develop a "stabilised mindsight lens", and (from his book) "when the lens of our mindsight camera is stabilised, the details come into focus. We see with more depth and precision.

Developing our mindsight skills (if you like, stabilising and polishing the mindsight lens) is an important part of what we do on my courses in mindfulness (next course starting 17th Jan 2014), and is also an integral part of my yoga classes.

Along with this idea of mindsight, Dan Seigel has also come up with lovely analogy to help us practise mindsight. He calls it the "Wheel of Awareness" (click here to listen to his recorded meditations).

Close your eyes and picture a bicycle wheel (or just look at this picture...).

In the middle there is the hub. The hub represents knowing or awareness. Around the outside is the rim (perhaps carbon fibre if you're into racing bikes, or perhaps old-fashioned steel that's slippery to your brakes when wet...), and the rim represents all the things that can be known. The spokes represent our attention – the way we become aware of all these things. We can think of sending out a spoke of awareness from the hub to the rim.

In his meditation, Dan Siegel splits up the rim into four quadrants or segments.

1. The first segment represents our senses. The ways in which we connect to and are aware of the outside world. The ways we take in data about what's around us: sounds, touch, tastes, sights, and smells.
2. The second segment represents the interior of the body – sensations, feelings, proprioception. Just take a moment to notice all the parts of your body and all the sensations arising from within the body.
3. The third segment represents mental activities. These include thoughts, experiences, memories, emotions, moods, plans, feelings, desires, wants, etc. This segment also includes our awareness of how things arise and pass. Do these things come up suddenly or gradually? Do they then stay constant, fade in and out, or vibrate? Then how do they leave? And are they replaced immediately with something else or not?
4. The fourth quadrant represents our sense of connection to others – to people physically close to us, to our family, friends, people in the neighbourhood, the city, country, continent, in the whole world, and finally to all of life.

In the expanded version of his meditation he also directs us to bend a spoke of attention back towards the hub. If you've got carbon fibre spokes this'll be difficult... What he's asking us to do is become aware of our awareness itself. Remember that quote by Master Obaku? "That which sees suffering is itself not suffering".

I'd definitely recommend doing one of the meditations from his webpage - the shortest is only 8 mins long.

Points to anyone who comes up with a way of incorporating the valve and the reflector into this analogy. Add your comments below.

Jaw clenching stuff

Just have a check - right now - are you clenching your jaw? Even just a tiny bit?

What about your lips? Are they pursed?

Clenched jaw, pursed lips...

If you've answered yes, just let yourself relax - release the tension. Un-clench your jaw, relax your tongue (very important) and part your teeth slightly.

Just by relaxing your jaw, you relax your entire nervous system. This is something that Zen and Tai Chi/Qigong masters have known for centuries.

Generally, the body reacts to fear, worry, stress, anxiety, and pain by tensing up. We all know about the tension that manifests in the shoulders, neck, belly – but the face, and particularly the jaw, often isn't one we so tuned in to. Sometimes the jaw might even carry the "burden of the emotion" on its own, and this can lead, for some people, to excessive jaw pressure, lock-jaw, or teeth grinding (technically termed Bruxism). 

Ok, so if you're tense or stressed you might clench your jaw. But it can so easily become a habit. Can you think of someone you know who often clenches their jaw or purses their lips? Often-times the habit will have arisen as a response to a tension/stress of some kind but then develops into a long-term habit. Habit energies can be very strong, and take a great deal of will-power to break.

Now let's just pause to think what that might look like who clenches their jaw and tightens their lips. What do you think? – angry, tense, sad, frustrated, hostile even. Body-language-wise, you're sending signals of closing off, being unavailable, unfriendly. Never mind the fact that by doing it, you're introducing tension into the face, which can often result in headaches, pressure in the temples, nerve pain, damage to your teeth... And it takes lots of energy to hold a tense, tight face!

So on many levels it's better to have a relaxed face and jaw! Try making it your object of focus in your next yoga class for example.

In fact we could go one step further. Try yawning... Yawning is known to help reduce anger, anxiety and stress, and enhance awareness, calmness, alertness and bodily relaxation. Yawning opens up and relaxes the throat – great for your voice and laryngeal health. Some research suggests that yawning actually plays a part in regulating the body's temperature so that we can think better. Perhaps that's why people often yawn when sitting in warm rooms regardless of whether or not they are physically tired!

From the ground up: common foot problems

In yoga the concept of grounding comes up a lot - both as a verb (to ground through the feet) and an adjective (a grounded feeling). Personally I try to avoid using the word in my classes (e.g. at ZenYoga Camberwell) because I'm not sure how many people really know what it means. What would you do if I asked you to ground through your feet...?

Nevertheless, grounding is incredibly important. It brings us into connection with the ground and with the world around us. Without that we can't go anywhere – no plant can ever grow upwards without first sending some roots downwards.

In Zen and Zen Yoga we put a strong emphasis on the "down", but focussing our attention/intention/awareness downwards may seem at first rather backward! After all who wants to move down in the world? Our cultural ideals are all about going forward, moving up, growing up, or waking up. Even in yoga, we often find (either explicitly or implicitly) a strong emphasis on the "up". In many practices we're told to put your feet together, engage your thighs and lift your kneecaps. Can you feel the difference between that and place your feet apart and soften your knees?

Ups and downs

As far as I see, spiritual practices are indeed about liberating energy, moving it up the spine, and awakening to higher levels of consciousness. BUT (and it's a big but), by doing this without building a firm and stable foundation first we run the risk of getting very sick, getting lost in the clouds, and floating off away from the world – in effect spiritually toppling over. Down has to precede up, as Zen Master Hakuin learnt the hard way.

The problem is that many spiritual practices, including yoga (as I said either explicitly or implicitly), only teach going up. It's like building a skyscraper without drilling the foundations first. And in our highly distracting, intellectual, and stress-filled world, this serves only to draw us even further away from the ground, from reality, from common-sense, and from worldly connection.

In this series of posts I'd like to take a look at our roots (and by roots I mean everything from our pelvic floor downwards). I'll be talking to my sister Kim, a physiotherapist who lives in Stockholm, to get the physiological and anatomical view on things and a few exercises to help things out.

This week we're going to be looking at the feet.

Put your best foot forwards

So, according to the anatomy books there are 19 (or 20, depending on how you count) muscles in the foot, and a good number more of the lower leg muscles attaching to the bones of the foot affecting its motion and balance.

Sadly, from a very early age our toes are squeezed together. When we're babies our muscles and bones are soft and even socks are enough to start the squeezing process – then later it becomes shoes (high-heeled, pointy ones are the worst...). All this squeezing-in inhibits the natural movement of the foot and consequently prevents a good development of the foot musculature. However, despite this terrible start to life, out feet tend to succeed in carrying us (more or less) though our life. Thank you resilient feet!

Most of us, though, get the odd twinge and pain here or there, and although it's often difficult to know for sure which body part is causing the pain in another body part, we can safely say that our feet are a good place to start. They play an essential role in the balance of the entire body standing on them. It's important to learn how to love them (nice article by Lorna Clancey)!

For good stability and balance, the feet need to be stable in the arch and ankle as well as having a good 'fan' shape in the toes. From what I see in my classes (and what Kim sees in her patients) though, people's toes tend to be a bit (sometimes a lot) squished in, arches more or less collapsing, and the ankles very wobbly while standing on one leg or up on tiptoes.

So lets look at those points:


1.    Toes 'squished' in:

Each of our toes has a muscle on either side that moves the toe from side to side (just like we can with our fingers). An inability to spread your toes (i.e. engage these muscles) can come from:

• difficulty making contact with those muscles (brain to toe nerve messages not working)
• difficulty activating the muscle because of muscle weakness
• in combination the muscles on the opposite side can be tight and therefore making the job of the weak muscles even harder.

Toes that are spread out in a fan shape (the big toe is especially important) give much more stability, and hence connection to the ground.

Try: If your big toe angles inwards, try standing on one leg while allowing your big toe to fall inwards, and compare this to how it feels after you manually pull your big toe out straight.

Simple exercises to do: highly recommended!

• stretch: pull your toes apart passively with your hand one at a time then try putting your fingers between your toes (see photo)
• exercise: spread your toes actively as much as you can, hold 5 sec then release, repeat 10 times. Do this daily to 'find' and 'activate' muscles. Don’t be discouraged if you don't 'find' the muscles at first.
• every time you stand up (in daily life, in a yoga class), consciously spread your toes.

2.    Collapsing arches:

Many peoples' feet, to some degree, roll inwards due to weak arch muscles. Kim points out that again the big toe plays an important role here – if it points inwards it allows the foot to roll in. Pointing the big toe outwards creates a kind of 'stop' or wedge and prevents the arch from flattening.

The other important player in the arch of the foot is the posterior tibial muscle which originates from the inside of the chin bone, goes round the back of the inner ankle bone and inserts under the front of the big toe (see figure). If you trace out that line on your own foot/ankle you'll see why this muscle plays such an important role in holding up your arch.


Kim's exercise to try:

With your foot flat on the floor, activate the posterior tibial muscle by intending to move the ball of your big toe closer to your heel whilst keeping your toes relaxed. I find this very hard! Let me know how you get on using the comments below.

With the big toe in place and this muscle firmly activated you should be a lot more stable in all your standing positions. Try it even in downward dog.
 


3.    Wobbly ankles:

Working on points 1 and 2 will certainly strengthen the feet and stabilise your ankles. Hopefully you'll be much less wobbly when standing on one leg.

But what about on tiptoes?

When standing on your tiptoes you might find your ankle(s) have a tendency to wobble or fall outwards. This might be due to a weakness around the ankle itself. We have important ligaments which hold our ankles stable as well as many muscles that originate from the lower leg and insert in the foot that all hold things stable. If you have this tendency for your ankle to wobble or fall outwards, Kim recommends you start training the muscles to compensate.

If you can come up onto tiptoes and mindfully, with control, get your ankles facing forwards without any outward wobbling, work on that. If you can’t control this movement by concentration and will power alone, Kim suggests you hold the back of a chair to take some weight off the ankles so they won't be working so hard. Practise in this way to train your muscles so they know what they’re doing. Gradually allow your ankles to work under more and more weight until they can work stably under your whole body weight.



Daily exercise plan for healthy feet:

1. 'clench' then 'spread' your toes, hold 5 sec in each position, x10
2. stand on one leg for about 1 min each side
3. Come up onto your tiptoes x20

Interested in more? Come and join me for one of my yoga classes at ZenYoga in Camberwell. See my website for my class schedule and more details.

I'd love to hear from you

Have you suffered from foot problems? How have you got on with these exercises? I'd love to hear from you! Leave a comment below, join the discussion. 

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Why you'd want to live a long life

A couple of weeks ago I reviewed a workshop I went to on the Energetic Basis of Zen Yoga where we were introduced to a book written in 1211 called Kissayojoki or "Drink Tea and Prolong Life" by Zen master Eisai. Eisai wrote it to help convince the Japanese shogun at the time to give up being an alcoholic and drink tea instead - essentially to live a better and healthier life. However, in writing the book he set out a great deal of knowledge and many practices he'd learnt in China for boosting health and vitality, and the keys to living not just an average length of life, but a very long life.

So the question is why would you want to live a long life?

Why wouldn't you...?! In the west we seem to have a preoccupation with finding the elixir of life, the secret of immortality, sometimes called the philosopher's stone - a mythical potion that supposedly grants the drinker eternal life and/or eternal youth. Just google for "secret of eternal youth"! But as far as I see it, this preoccupation or desire to live forever is really driven by fear. Fear of change, fear of getting older, fear of loss, and ultimately a fear of death. Death is one of the great unknowns that we will never know about. Just pause for a moment and think of what might happen to you when you die - it's scary!

Why is it scary? I think it all stems from that little word "you" (or actually "me"). What will happen to me? What is 'me'? Who am I? What is self?

When it comes down to it, aren't we just scared of finding out that we're not who we think we are? We have these ideas like "I have good skin", "I have a healthy body","I have a good memory", "I have many friends", then as we get older we find our skin wrinkles, our hair falls out, we lose our memory, and this is scary.

But if we can learn to let go of this precious 'self' we care so deeply about, then change, getting older, and even death suddenly seem much less terrifying. We just need to stop making those "I am..." identifications.

Of course it's not quite that easy! If you spend some concentrated time looking at that question of "who am I?" you might get a genuine direct experience of no-self - when the self dissolves and you realise that 'I' doesn't really exist in the way you thought.

But it's one thing having this realisation, and another thing altogether living fully and completely from this realisation: seeing through all those old habits driven by thinking of yourself as separate, and fully integrating this realisation into your life.

So that's why I think one might want to live a long life. Because it takes time and a lot of effort to see through the strong and habitual delusions of the self built up over the decades since you realised you had a self. And it takes time to work out how to truly live from this place. Developing wise or skilful intentions, making wholesome and compassionate actions, speaking wisely and kindly, finding the right kind of livelihood, putting your efforts and energy in the right kind of directions, paying attention skilfully, and practising the things that cultivate all these qualities. That's the Buddha's 8-fold path, that is! And it's a life-long practice.

Available here

Is a daily practice important?

I guess it all depends on what you’re doing it for. And what the “it” is.

Going to a weekly physical yoga class is a great way to keep up your bodily health and fitness, flexibility and strength. If you’re looking to improve any of these things, then maybe going to a class twice a week is a good idea – or combining the yoga with another physical training activity.

But when you’re wanting to develop a deeper understanding of yoga, and particularly when it comes to meditation, having a daily practice is very important. But why?

Did you ever learn to play a musical instrument when you were at school? Learn how to do keepie-ups with a football? Learn how to touch-type? Like learning any difficult skill, practising a little every day gets you a lot further than doing a big blast of it once in a while. If your hamstrings are tight, a daily physical yoga practice with lots of forward bends will work wonders to loosen them up and help your posture. If your concentration skills are poor, then a daily meditation practice of counting the breath will gradually enable you to hold your mind still on something for longer and longer periods.

So a little every day improves our skill, but is that the only reason?

Why of course not! How about patience? A whole day of hamstring stretching might really loosen up your legs - but it won't be lasting, and you might end up very sore. It takes time, gentleness, and patience to let those tight areas open up.

Committing to a daily practice brings also us up against all those times when we don’t feel like it, don’t feel well enough, or we’re so busy that there’s no time.

In my 8-week courses in mindfulness we make a commitment at the beginning to practice every day for the whole 8 weeks. In our 3-year sadhana course with Jonathan Monks, we also made that commitment. One of the most common questions I get is: if one day I really don’t want to or just don’t find the right time, is it ok to miss that day? Of course you can miss a day – I’m not going to chase you up and make you do your practice! But what an incredible missed opportunity it would be.

Why don’t you want to? What are you finding hard? Where are the resistances? Instead of finding every excuse not to practice, why not practice with a spirit of compassion, patience, inquisitiveness, curiosity? Face those resistances head on and you might find they start to dissolve – or perhaps aren’t as powerful as you thought they were.

Another question that comes up: if I force myself to do my practice when I really don’t want to, won’t I start building up an unhealthy association with it?

True, if you’re forcing yourself to do something you don’t want to, then you'll end up resenting it, resenting your teacher, or hating the practice. But the question to ask is if it’s really something you don’t want to do. Hopefully you can see the benefits of doing the practice (or I guess you wouldn’t be doing it) – so why do you think it wouldn’t benefit you today?

A sustained daily practice also makes you aware of the cycles of ups and downs in your life – day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month. Your practice is like a constant light, illuminating your mood, feelings, body and mind state. Without this, these very normal fluctuations can easily go unnoticed. One day you might wake up bright and full of energy, confident you can run 10 miles; other days you might feel sore, down in your mood, not wanting to get out of bed.

And why is it important to become more aware of these up and down changes? Because then we can start making that connection between our yoga/meditation practice and our everyday lives (see my blog article on that). Developing that awareness of how we feel right now can help a great deal in our relationships, and knowing how best to manage our lives, what we eat, etc.

Another aspect of life that daily practice helps us to cultivate is that of acknowledging change. Every day when you come to your yoga mat or meditation cushion, you are different. Life is a flow, everything changes all the time – moment-to-moment. Just because I can't sit cross-legged today doesn't mean it'll always be like this. Just because I have a good range of movement in all my limbs now doesn't mean I'll always have this. Yes I can remember what I did yesterday, but one day I may not. Nothing remains the same. Practise every day and you'll see how obvious this is, but also how the subtle strands of our disbelief of this fact take years of practice to break down.

"Practice once a week, and you’ll get sore. Practice three times a week, and you’ll get fit. Practice every day and you will transform your life."

The Energetic Basis of Zen Yoga

This week I'd like to review a workshop I went to last weekend (12th Oct) led by our Zen master, Daizan on "The Energetic Basis of Zen Yoga". The workshop was designed to look a little below the surface of our Zen yoga and meditation practice - to look, as it were, at the underlying operating system, what the practice is built on.

This workshop formed part of the continuing professional development (CPD) days Daizan runs for his yoga and meditation teachers.

We started off looking at the Japanese word for yoga: do-in - literally translated as guiding and pulling! Sounds strange until you think of it in terms of energy. We guide and direct our energy around the body using movements and stretches in order to unblock or work on certain channels. That really set the scene for what this day was about. (For the energy sceptics out there, see this article.)

The workshop was centred around the teachings of the first monk to bring Zen to Japan, Myōan Eisai (b. 1141). After originally studying Tendai Buddhism, he spent 4 years in China learning Zen (or Chan), before coming back to Japan and establishing the first zen temple in remote Kyūshū (the third largest island of Japan to the southwest). Among his notable disciples was Dōgen, founder of the famous Sōtō Zen school. Eisai is also credited as the first person to bring green tea into Japan from China.

It seemed Eisai was pretty successful (read politically skilled) at bringing Zen into the Japanese mainstream, and in 1202 he founded the famous Kennin-ji temple in Kyoto (still very beautiful and worth a visit today). The Shogun (military governor) at this time, Minmoto no Sanetomo, was a complete alcoholic, and Eisai took on the responsibility of trying to get him to sober up an live a more healthy life. Eisai thought that he could get him to drink tea instead of alcohol... Jolly good plan I say ;-)

Drink Tea and Prolong Life

In the process of trying to convince the shogun it's not all about going out on continuous benders, and that being an alcoholic is actually very bad for the body, he wrote in 1211 a book called the Kissayojoki - literally translated as "Drink Tea and Prolong Life". In it he says "tea is the most wonderful medicine for nourishing one’s health; it is the secret of long life." More on that later.

As you might imagine, it actually contained more than just a plea to drink tea. It was a manual for healthy living, in fact describing very much what we would call Zen yoga. The Kissayojoki is part of the tradition of Yangsheng (Chinese) or Yojo (Japanese) referring to a broad array of practices aimed at nourishing and prolonging life through breathing exercises, dietetics (especially abstention from grains), sexual practices, meditation and visualization exercises, pharmaceutical prescriptions, and methods of "guiding and pulling" (Japanese: Do-in, Chinese: Dao yin). Why you'd want to prolong your life will be the subject of a future article.

One of the central ideas that's been around in traditional Chinese medicine for at least 4000 years is that of the energy meridians. These are energy pathways through the body that make up a circuit or web that delivers our life force, (Chinese: qi, Jap.: ki) to the organs and tissues of the body. There are 12 major meridian channels, each correlating to the organs in the body in a reciprocal relationship. For example a healthy liver allows energy to flow easily along the liver meridian, and unblocking the liver meridian can help the liver function better. The idea is that when meridians are blocked, or the flow is too great or too little, problems result.

Qi/ki is stored in three main centres in the body, known as Tan Tien (or Dan Tian; Chinese) or Tanden (Japanese) literally translated as 'field of elixir'. They are the East Asian equivalent to the Indian Chakras. The main tanden is in your belly, known in Japanese as your hara.

Japanese monks have been involved in accupuncture at least from 1227, which implies a good understanding of the energy meridians (Japanese: myaku). In the Kissayojoki, Eisai goes into some detail about the meridians and their relationship with the organs (see picture).

So why tea?

In the meridian system, each organ and organ meridian is associated with a different quality - season, colour, taste, element, direction, emotion. Here are the organ associations for the 5 tastes:

Heart – Bitter
Liver – Sour
Spleen – Sweet
Lung – Spicy
Kidney – Salty

The heart is seen as being the chief among the organs, but the problem was that at that time (and probably still nowadays) very few bitter foods were eaten - particularly by this drunken shogun. Nowadays those that are bitter, we tend to liberally sweeten.

So, as a way of balancing our diet and restoring health to our chief organ, the heart, Eisai suggested drinking tea. If you've ever had green tea, you'll know how bitter it is! These days other bitter foods include coffee, beer (bitter), cocoa/dark chocolate, olives, and citrus peel.

Prolonging life further

Of course, balancing the diet and promoting the health of our inner community of organs is just the start. We can't do anything if our physical body is out of whack, undernourished, weak, unbalanced. Once we've got that under control though, we can start working on boosting our health and wellbeing higher and higher - and this is how we really prolong our lives.

With this in mind, the physical yoga practice during the workshop focussed on stretching and opening up all our main meridians. Not only is it important to open/unblock these channels, but it's also important to get the energy flowing down them, and for that we did some practices using the sound 'mu'.

Mindfulness and meditation are also an essential part of this unblocking process. If you're interested I run regular courses in mindfulness in Camberwell, London.

What's in a front door? [a poem]

Delivering flyers. Delivering potential. Delivering junk to be recycled!
Lots of front doors, front gardens, front steps.
21A is up and 21B is down.
Letter boxes: flappy, tight, snappy, shite... vertical?
Behind their shiny exteriors, stiff draft excluders - not just drafts they keep out.
Lift the old chipped ones though and the opening is clear,
the leaflet glides with a cheer.

What's behind the door?
A pile of other unwanted junk mail?
An interested householder?
A single mum with no time to sleep, let alone yoga?
A hungry dog?
A keen yoga bean?
Only builders?

Frustrating letter boxes.
Getting hot from all the stair climbing;
Come on you, stop whining!
This is part of my job now;
I'm a yoga teacher, web designer, leaflet dropper.
Leaning down to open the flap, like a bow.
Finding grace. Finding flow. The true nature of the universe.

250 down, more hundreds to go.
They say one hour of advertising for every hour of class.
Potential... who knows.
But I will see you again, street of many houses.
Street of potential. Connections, meetings.
Street full of real life. Suffering, laughing, living.

Yoga offers ways to heal.
Are you ready? Come join me.

Bridging the space between formal practice and everyday life

What situations do you find hardest to stay mindful, to keep the ego from rearing up, to remain true to yourself, to stay in the flow?

I'd guess it would be a situation involving a group of people. Maybe your family, maybe work colleagues, housemates... The closer they are, the better they know how to press your buttons!

So maybe we can do yoga or sit in meditation and observe our tendencies to judge ourselves, perhaps as someone who's easily distracted, or someone who always wants to make things ok, or worries about what others think of us doing yoga or meditation. Maybe we can even start letting go these "I am" identifications: "I am a person with tight hips", "I always get angry when I can't do something", etc. But how does this help at a family dinner when your adversarial uncle starts drawing you into a conversation on the rights and wrongs of intervening in Syria? It's not much use to pull out your best warrior II pose on him... (might make him shut up for 5 mins though!)

It's not easy to bring what you learn on the mat or on the cushion into everyday life. But isn't that why we call it a practice? We're practising for everyday life. And what use is a practice where you can achieve beautiful flowing, non-dual, ego-less, oneness for 30 mins a day but still bite your colleagues head off in your morning meeting?

That's why it's helpful to build a bridge into our practice. A bridge between formal on-the-mat/cushion time and normal life. We create time to do a reasonably unchallenging activity 100% mindfully, bringing our practice to bear on something that isn't on the mat/cushion.

For this reason, in Zen we practice working meditation, or Samu in Japanese. It's emphasised to such a degree that it's actually one of the four principal components of Zen practice (along with sitting meditation, private meetings with your teacher, and talks).

Working meditation includes the practice of mindfulness, giving or generosity, duty, and selfless service. In Zen monasteries every monk (or retreat participant) has a duty to do work for the maintenance and upkeep of the building and grounds, or help with the cooking, shopping, accounts, etc. But it's more than a duty - the task is performed with the same mind as sitting meditation. Doing the activity 100%, becoming the activity. An opportunity to put what you've learned on the mat/cushion into practice.

Me doing samu on retreat in Japan (weeding the gravel)

For inexperienced practitioners (like myself), the working meditation activity should be super-simple: something like cleaning, gardening, or chopping wood/vegetables. The repetitive simplicity of these kind of activities needs very little thinking power, leaving plenty of energy to devote to being 100% mindful. A favourite
in Japan is weeding the gravel in the monastery garden (see photo).

Can you see the true nature of the universe in every weed you pick? In every stone or piece of earth you move? Can you disappear into the flow of the cleaning cloth sliding over the kitchen floor?

Gradually as our practice develops and we're able to stay with it more and more doing simple tasks, we can introduce some harder things. Cooking, for example, requires much more cognitive input, but can you stay 100% mindful when the saucepan is boiling over but the recipe says "gently simmer"?

I remember my teacher Daizan saying that the monastery accountant is always one of the most senior monks because it takes a very developed practice to stay 100% with it when you're doing the books!

So you can see that letting go of our frustrations, our right/wrong judgements, our need to win the argument, remaining empathetic, compassionate, loving, and not letting the ego direct our actions is hard enough when we're just hoovering the living room. Doing all that whilst your uncle is banging on about how important it is for our economy to maintain a military presence around the world, including Syria, is advanced practice!

Start small, and build up. If we're patient, diligent, and compassionate, one day we might find ourselves flowing through every situation with ease, being 100% our true nature without a speck of self.