Wedding zen

On 19th September I got married. As you can imagine (or as you may remember from your own big day) the wedding was quite a roller-coaster-ride of events and feelings. In this article, I'm not going to mention the months of planning, decisions, discussions, and bookings. I'm also not going to mention the jittery, energy-filled week preceding the big day, or the plans for how to get various members of the family to the wedding venue on time.

What I'd like to discuss is how the day itself went, how I felt, and in particular how I think my yoga and meditation practice affected things.

"The day"

On "the day" my alarm went at 6:30am and I straight away sat on the floor of the hotel room for 30mins meditation. I remember feeling quite calm and trying to stay present with my attention in my belly, whilst being aware of my room-mate (a good friend of my mum's who had also come from Sweden for the wedding) moving about and using the bathroom. I was actually quite surprised that I was this calm! This friend was desperate to visit Stonehenge (not far from the hotel in Salisbury where we were), and this morning was our only option since we were too late the night before. So after I'd finished the meditation we had a quick breakfast and headed out.

Stonehenge

Me at Stonehenge on the morning of my wedding

Getting out of the car in the visitors car park, the cool freshness of the air hit us. Neither of us had worn enough. After watching the stones silently appearing out of the mist as we approached, we then spent a wonderful half-hour circling the henge, taking photos, and drinking in the stillness of the 5000yr old monument.

I'm sure it was a fairly unorthodox way of starting a wedding day, but in hindsight it worked out really well! Out of town, and away from any stressing family!

My practice has taught me how to stay focussed on the moment in hand. I was able to be present at Stonehenge, feeling the atmosphere, whilst not letting my mind wander onto thoughts of the wedding.

Venue preparations

We got back to the hotel at about 11am. Over the next few hours things began to ramp up in both external activity and internal activity (in my belly)! We started moving stuff over to the venue from about 12:30 and all the preparations and decorating had to be done between 1 and 3pm, with guests due to arrive at 3:30 for a 4pm start.

Strangely enough, I found putting on my suit really helped me stay relaxed (see my previous article on the widsom of specific clothes). Once I'd got my shirt on I didn't want to sweat (miraculously it was a lovely sunny day), and wearing the suit and nice shoes brought with it a feeling of elegance. I found that walking and moving slowly with an intention of grace (whether or not that translated into a look of grace) really helped keep things calm. Purposefully talking slowly and calmly also really helped. It was hard though, and required attention to keep things slow.

Preparing the wedding venue

When I arrived at the venue, I found them still setting out the dinner tables All the stuff we'd hired (linen, crockery, cutlery, glasses, etc) was piled together, unlabelled in a back room. The flowers and decorations were still on their way, and people started asking me what they could do to help...

It was around about this time that I became extra-aware of my belly. Notably the churning, mildly nauseous feelings deep down in my abdomen. I worked on simply accepting their presence, and continuing to do my best to walk slowly, speak quietly and slowly, and being (or attempting to be) graceful.

When we found out that they'd missed off dinner plates from the hire list, my tummy took a fairly significant somersault. But I think this is really where the years of practice started to make a difference. I felt very little sense of panic, and only a slight rising of anxiety. I was acutely aware of my churning belly, which I think helped to keep my attention low in my body and therefore out of my head. I remember feeling sure there was a solution to the problem – and indeed one presented itself fairly quickly. The venue themselves kindly lent us their plates.

The ceremony and later into the evening

Over the last few years I've developed a habit of internally checking every now and then "am I in my hara". What I mean is: is my hara relaxed, and do I have some component of my attention resting in my hara? Experience has shown this to be particularly useful in stressful times, as, when I do check, I often find my belly tense and energy up in my head.

So regularly during the wedding ceremony and all through the evening I was asking myself "am I in my hara?" – purposefully softening and relaxing my belly, and asking myself what feelings are churning around. Every time I went to the loo, that was also a great time to stop, tune in, and purposefully settle, relax and let go (excuse the pun).

I guess you could say I did regular mini-meditations or body scans. This seemed absolutely essential.

The Zen candle ceremony, representing the coming together of our spiritual paths 

I don't think the practice necessarily makes you feel calmer – because you're more aware and sensitive to all that is going on – but it does give you the tools to simply observe without getting caught up in the whirlwind. It allowed me to appreciate the moments, the feelings, emotions, interactions, and the beauty and love of the day in a way that I don't think I could have otherwise. It's about noticing the discomfort in the belly, the stress and rising energy, and being OK with it, softening and allowing.

Before the wedding, friends said to me the day would flash by. But that's not how I experienced it. Sure it went quickly – there was lots to do and lots happening – but my ability to stay in the present moment (developed over years of practice) meant I could appreciate and savour the moments and people that were there sharing it with us.

It was the most amazing day, and I love my new wife very much. Thanks to all who came, helped out, and shared the celebrations with us.

I am a member of the Zenways sangha led by Zen master Daizan Roshi, and I teach meditation, mindfulness and yoga at the ZenYoga studio in Camberwell, London. See my website for further details.

I'd love to hear from you

How do you remember your wedding day? How has your practice has helped in a stressful situation? Leave a comment below, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

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The benefits of mindfulness on your health & wellbeing

Many of life’s demands can cause stress, particularly work, relationships and money problems. When we feel fearful or anxious, our body's hard-wired response, evolved over millennia of dangerous encounters in wild, is the "fight or flight" reaction. The problem is that these days, probably the two worst things we could do when faced with, for example, an impending deadline, or an overbearing relative is (1) punch them/someone or (2) run away...

Stress-proofing

Practising meditation and/or yoga, particularly with an emphasis on awareness and mindfulness, has been shown to be an incredibly effective way of stress-proofing ourselves. It does this in two ways: firstly by providing us with a little oasis of quiet in amongst the business of the day (some me-time); and secondly by teaching us how to see things clearly. There's a huge difference between conscious and unconscious stress. The great Zen master Hakuin compared people who were conscious and aware to water whereas ordinary people are like ice. Our mindfulness is like the warm sunlight that can melt away the perceived stress. It's our relationship to the feeling that changes.

Science has been making some great progress in understanding the why exactly lowering our stress levels boosts our health and wellbeing. Let me talk about just a few of the recent discoveries.

Tell me about telomers

Telomers: chromosome caps

Why of course... Telomers are a repeating DNA pattern that act as a kind of protective cap on our chromosomes, shielding their ends from potential damage each time our cells divide and the DNA is copied. In the 1980s an enzyme called telomerase was discovered that can protect and rebuild telomeres. Even so, our telomeres dwindle over time, and when they get too short, our cells start to malfunction and lose their ability to divide – a phenomenon that is now recognised as a key process in ageing. The discovery of telomers won Elizabeth Blackburn the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

As detailed in this lovely article, Blackburn and her group began a study back in 2000 to test the effect of stress on telomer length (at the time genes were seen as being the most important factor, so at the time this idea was highly controversial). The results from their pilot study showed that the more stressed the participants were the shorter their telomeres and the lower their levels of telomerase. Scientists are always marvelled when they manage to connect real lives and experiences to things happening on the molecular level, and in this study they'd done it! Feeling stressed doesn’t just damage our health – it literally ages us!

Researchers have since linked perceived stress to shorter telomeres in Alzheimer’s caregivers, victims of domestic abuse and early life trauma, and people with major depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

How does it work? The presence of the stress hormone cortisol seems to reduce the activity of telomerase, while oxidative reactions and inflammation (all physiological effects of the stress response) appear to erode telomeres directly. Age-related conditions from osteoarthritis, diabetes and obesity to heart disease, Alzheimer’s and stroke have all been linked to short telomeres.

In one follow-up project, Blackburn and her colleagues sent participants on a three-month meditation retreat, and found that afterwards they had higher levels of telomerase than the control group. A study in 2013 of dementia caregivers found that, after practising 12 minutes of meditation a day for eight weeks, they had significantly higher telomerase activity than a control group. And in another study in 2012 Epel et al. measured the association between telomere length and peoples' natural level of mindfulness. They found those who reported high mind wandering (i.e. lower mindfulness) had shorter telomeres, even after adjusting for stress.

So stress and ageing are clearly very related. No wonder Wallace et al. back in 1982 found that people who'd been practising meditation for five years were physiologically (as shown by their blood pressure, vision, hearing, and skin elasticity) up to 12 years younger than their non-meditating counterparts! For more on that, see this article showing some photographic evidence, or just look at any photo of a prime minister or president – in just a few years they go from looking fresh and vibrant to grey, haggard, and worn out!

New genes, new neurons

In another study, a group based in Massachusetts took blood samples from a group of 19 people who had regular meditation practice, and 19 others who never meditated, and ran genomic analyses (identification of genomic features such as DNA sequence, gene expression, etc) of the blood. They found that the meditating group had suppressed more than twice the number of stress-related genes than the non-meditating group. This is an incredible result, since the more these stress-related genes are expressed, the more the body will have a stress response. This study is in the field of epigenetics, which I've written about before.

Lastly, I just wanted to mention this article detailing some work done here in London that found that increased levels of cortisol seems to decrease neurogenesis (the ability of the brain to produce new brain cells) in adults. Studies have shown that these adult-born neurons appear to have a role in the regulation of stress by possibly augmenting the role of the hippocampus in controlling the stress reaction and/or inhibiting the amygdala (the region of brain responsible for the fear reaction). Neurogenesis has also been linked to brain plasticity.

So, it's never too late to start practising mindfulness and meditation, and slowing down – possibly even reversing – the ageing process!

My next 8-week course in Mindfulness for Health & Wellbeing will start on Friday 16th January, and I'm now taking bookings. See my website for further details.

 

I'd love to hear from you

If you've noticed that, like me, your mindfulness practice is leaving you looking younger and more radiant, your skin is shiny and there's more of a healthy glow about you, I'd love to hear from you! Leave a comment below, join the discussion. 

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Feeling sad, being depressed and how mindfulness helps

We all feel sad, lonely, or depressed at times. Feeling depressed now and then is normal, perhaps we feel a little lonely, we're grieving a loss, maybe lacking in sleep and exercise, or work is being particularly difficult. Depression is a continuum of feeling. For some of us, though, we end up edging towards the dark end, and that's when these feelings can become overwhelming, begin to involve physical symptoms, and last for longer periods of time.

Depression is when we feel sad and low for weeks or months on end. It's not just a passing blue mood. The exact symptoms of depression can be complex and vary widely between people, but it's often accompanied by feelings of hopelessness, a lack of energy, and taking little or no pleasure in things that you once enjoyed. Sadly, anxiety and depression are the most common mental issues in Britain, and between 8-12% of the population experience depression in any year.

Many people come to believe there is something fundamentally wrong with them, but that isn't the case at all. Often it can be to do with lifestyle and external factors, like isolation, grief, or stress.

Happily, mindfulness, either practised in stillness or through yoga, has been shown to be incredibly effective in helping people deal with depression. In this interview with leading mindfulness and depression expert John Teasdale, he explains that depression is often fuelled by streams of negative thoughts going through the mind. This replaying of negative or unhelpful thoughts is termed "ruminating".

Even if you don't suffer from depression, we can all connect with what it means to ruminate, to dwell on negative events, or (more technically) to compulsively focus your attention on the symptoms of your distress. I found myself doing this the other day when I broke a dish in the kitchen...

Replaying of negative or unhelpful thoughts is termed "ruminating". In mindfulness, we gently redirect our attention away from these ruminations to what's happening in the present right now, thereby breaking the cycle.

In mindfulness, we practice bringing our awareness to what's happening or we’re doing right now, gently redirecting our attention away from these ruminations as and when they arise. As John Teasdale describes, by doing this we 'starve' the thought streams of the attention they need to keep going.

By bringing our attention back to the here and now each time we wander off into a thought stream, we learn to live more in the reality of the present moment and less in our heads, going over and over things that happened in the past, or worrying about the future.

But it's important as we practice, as we notice the "magnetic pull” of the negative thoughts and feelings that we apply an attitude of kindness, acceptance, and non-judgement. It only adds suffering to suffering to add criticism and judgements to what we find. It may be that, up to now, these negative thoughts formed a big part of who we perceive ourselves to be, so it's even more important to be gentle, patient, and forgiving of ourselves.

My next 8-week course in Mindfulness for Health & Wellbeing will start on Friday 16th January, and I'm now taking bookings. See my website for further details.

 

I'd love to hear from you

If you've found mindfulness or yoga to help with negative feelings or moods, I'd love to hear your experience. Leave a comment below, join the discussion. 

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For more on the clinical research into the effectiveness of mindfulness on depression see here http://mbct.com/clinical-research/

Releasing tension and stiffness helps us feel more

Tension and stiffness in the body create numbness. They create a barrier to awareness and the full experience of life. If we can’t relax, then life becomes dulled; the extra tension is tiring to hold and inevitably produces an undercurrent of fatigue. Look around you when you walk through the streets of the city and you'll see tension is a chronic condition. Happily through, yoga and meditation practice teaches us how to begin releasing all these tensions, better align and balance ourselves, and brings us to a new appreciation of the incredible vibrancy of life.


Perhaps one of the first things we notice when we start with our yoga and/or mindfulness work are these areas of stiffness or tension – and for some of us discomfort or even pain. They come about for a number of reasons, and can affect us on various levels: from the superficial to the deep. Causes include:

• our genetics (for example weak joints mean the muscles have to work harder, or scoliosis causes asymmetries in the spine muscles)
• past accidents (e.g. a broken toe meant you avoided putting weight on that foot and now the other leg feels overworked)
• past traumatic experiences (the body mirrors the mind in wanting to protect our soft vulnerable parts so often we end up hunching over)
• our occupation (e.g. sitting at a desk for long hours with bad posture)
• our hobbies (e.g. playing or doing an asymmetric sport like tennis or shooting)

So you can see that the reasons our body might be tight or stiff are intimately connected to our past, our upbringing, and our life choices.

I can see now that when I started my own journey into the world of yoga and self-exploration, I was pretty numb, desensitised, and tense! There were many blockages and tight areas, and I was nowhere near being able to feel the subtleties I'm now able to tune into. In the words of a good friend of mind, I was a brut... An insensitive, lumbering vertebrate with his heads in the clouds and a body that, if on a map, would be labelled “here be dragons”!

When we experience unpleasant sensations in our life, one of our strategies for blocking these out (after all no-one wants to feel unpleasantness!) is to tense up, because tension causes numbness. The body learnt that a long time ago!

Releasing the tension

For many years I understood in my head that yoga could help us release the tensions, blockages and imbalances, but I struggled to relate it to any actuality in my body. I could see my weight changing, muscles developing, and stamina improving, but had no sense of my body coming into better alignment or flow.

It took a sustained level of awareness and the keen eyes of my Zen teacher Daizan Roshi and yoga teacher Jonathan Monks to show me, on a physical body level, that this was actually happening. Through my yoga and meditation practice (and to some degree through my years of psychotherapy), I'd begun to let go of my body’s patterns of tension. Slowly, I’d begun to dismantle the layers of holding and blockages built up over years and years. With alignment, mindfulness and relaxation I suddenly found I could feel finer and subtler sensations in the body that I’d never noticed before.

One of the keys to releasing tension and encouraging relaxation is bringing the body into correct alignment. By aligning ourselves with the vertical, with our innate sense of “up” and “down”, then the force of gravity will support us instead of weigh us down. Right now try leaning to one side. It takes work! So aligning of the physical body with gravity allows us to relax and shed unnecessary tension. This is why in meditation sitting up straight is so important, and why in yoga we learn to move with gravity, not against it.

In the words of Will Johnson (from his lovely book Alignment, Relaxation, Resilience), I've started tuning in to the "fine, shimmering currents of sensation that constantly flow through the body”. As I described in this previous post, these are the shimmering currents of our subtle bioelectromagnetic field.

Spiritual energy by Alex Grey

Is yoga all about stretching?

The most common reason I hear for people not doing yoga is that they feel they aren't flexible enough - "I can't touch my toes...!"

So do you have to be flexible to do yoga, and is yoga all about flexibility? Well, I'd say flexibility is a by-product of doing yoga, and bendiness is by no means a pre-requisite.

What is the point of doing yoga then?

To me, yoga is about awareness, it's about re-connecting the mind and body, and tuning in to how we are in each moment.

The thing is, most of us are quite inflexible. Too much sitting, not enough exercise, a dodgy diet, all causes the body to stiffen and to lock in tension. We also spend so much of our time in our thoughts, not feeling but thinking, not being but doing - we literally think ourselves stiff! Our culture doesn't help either – we're encouraged to ignore those knots in the shoulders, that little niggle in the lower back, and keep on working.

The less aware we become of our bodies, the less we notice how tight and tense we get. The tighter we get, the more it gets locked in to the body and the harder it is to feel anything beyond that tension. Our sensitivity to the body becomes more and more limited.

Massage can bring temporary relief and is highly recommended! A trained masseur skilfully guides our muscles to relax - and it feels fantastic. Ah the relief! But it's only temporary... whatever habits and patterns that caused the tightness in the first place haven't changed.

You see, the flexibility we learn in yoga isn't just about he muscles. Fascia – the tissue between the muscles, bones, organs – can also tighten up and hold stress. And since many of our nerves are embedded in fascia, this tension and stress gets felt by our nervous system and ultimately our brain.

Yoga works on many levels to stretch, lengthen, and release. It also teaches flexibility in the way we think. Thoughts like "I'm not someone who does yoga" become "let's try it and see what I feel". Developing a sense of curiosity, interest, and playfulness can work wonders to free up the mind!

So in a sense, yoga is all about stretching, but not just in the obvious way. A flexible, strong, grounded, aware, and adventurous body and mind means a healthy, content, productive and happy one!

I applaud companies offering yoga at work

This last couple of weeks I've been covering for a yoga teacher friend of mine Lucy Bannister while she's been away teaching a retreat. She's let me loose on some of her corporate yoga classes – classes that are offered in the work place for company employees – and it's been great fun!

One of the things I've noticed is the unusual demographic of the people at the classes. A proportion of them are perhaps a bit older, are unfit, or have certain injuries. I'm sure this is a testament to Lucy's lovely, accepting, gentle manner, and the rather therapeutic style of the yoga she teaches. But I'm also sure that by offering yoga cheaply or for free at a convenient time and place, allows people who wouldn't otherwise go to a gym or studio class, to come and do yoga. For this alone, I applaud any company that offers yoga to their employees at work!

And from talking to the people coming to the classes, one of the main reasons they come is to relax and de-stress.

Having a city job means stress. Doesn't it? "If you're not stressed then you're not working hard enough...!" It's almost rite of passage in the city to feel stressed. "Can I speak to John in derivatives please? I'm afraid he's been off for the last month with stress."

And how often do you hear the term "burn out" these days? Burn out, also known as chronic fatigue, is what happens to your system when you've been in a state of hyperarousal and it just can't take it any more.

Our bodies are hard-wired to respond to a situation of danger or vulnerability in a very particular way. Let's say we meet a bear in the forest, or perhaps more likely these days get asked at the last minute to do a board presentation. In both situations our body responds In the same way: it redirects energy and resources from our non-essential systems like digestion and our immune system to things like our muscles and heart (flight or flight). Adrenaline and cortisol are released that raise the heart rate, raise body temperature, and narrow your mental focus.

Getting that stress reaction once is a while is fine - in fact good! It can be exciting, adding a sense of thrill to giving that presentation! But the problems come when you live in a constant state of low-level stress, with those occasional big stresses thrown on top. There's always a deadline looming, your work phone keeps buzzing with emails from the LA office one moment and Hong Kong the next, someone in your team not performing, your partner keeps reminding you that you need to get the car fixed... Like this your body never gets a chance to return to normal, to come off orange alert. You're in a state of "hyperarousal".

Often the first things you might notice is that your digestion isn't working so well (the energy is constantly being diverted to more 'important' areas), you struggle sleeping (the mind is on alert mode), you keep getting colds or infections (your immune system is low), and maybe you have a low sex-drive (reproduction is another system that's compromised in the stress response). You may get sweaty palms, cold feet, headaches.

So what do we do? Our ambition and desire says keep going, work harder - it'll pass. But underneath that you might hear a quiet voice saying you need to relax. And that's where yoga can really help.

Stress brings tension, so yoga helps by lengthening and flexing the limbs so that they can soften and relax. You learn how to focus your attention on the body and sensations so intently so there's no space left in your mind for all those to-do lists and job worries. You learn how to let the movements unfold from moment to moment, and with as you notice that everything is in a constant state of change, and what you thought was fixed actually isn't, you build up a softness and resilience to difficulty, pain, and stress. So how wonderful it is to have it on offer at work!

If you listen really carefully after your class, you might hear your body saying a quiet, heart-felt thank you!