Going Through a Bad Period

Every once in a while, the womanly-cycle thing does not go well.

The problem is one of digestion, I now realize. I get so hungry before my period comes, but if I eat too late, or eat too much at one sitting—or maybe if I eat salad and cereal and cheese and soup at 9pm, as I did yesterday—there comes a mighty problem in the dark of night. It has taken me to the hospital before.

I have forgotten it now. But there was some thought that Death must hurt more than this. There was some thought about choosing What Is, about being present Exactly Now. There was some thought that thinking this way indicates I'm neither completely “present”; nor am I dying.

Better to have one’s mind focused on the dharma than to be mindlessly writhing in pain, though.

The pain comes in 15-minute waves.

I throw up several times, cycling back through the meals of the day. Then I lose myself again, in the bathroom sink: nothing left but purple-red mucus and a single forlorn Tylenol wrenched from the depths.

After each round of vomiting, there is a reliable pain-free moment, a period of real calm. In that lull, I clean up, as peacefully and purposefully as I’d clean any sink. Find my way back to bed. And then I vomit again and again, heaving nothing.

In the next period of pain-free awareness, it strikes me that this might keep going on and on. That I really do need help. And yet, I do not worry. I know this must end. I do not consider the hospital. I do not call any of my friends in Portland.

I have kept a mantra in my heart all night, keeping close to me Tara, the Buddha who in her many color-forms bestows wisdom, or fearlessness, or protection. Her actions are as natural and decisive as a mother caring for her children. As I settle back into my cold bed, I speak directly at last. “Lady Tara, please help me now. If you can.”

There is the impression of whiteness. A vision of a benevolent face with a fluttering third eye mid-forehead. Black ringlets and silver adornments. But mostly those eyes. A slim hand comes out of nowhere, or its proximity. Within two minutes, I am asleep.

I wake three hours later, and feel fine. Rejuvenated, although a little cautious in the body. There is no pain or aching. Evidence of the night’s adventure is strewn all over my flat. The face in the mirror is unconcerned, if a little pale. In the bathroom, ground of memories, a stained, bloated Tylenol caplet looks back at me from the edge of the sink. Resting, too, from its trip into the depths and back.

The Inner Frontier

We are more animals than we believe; that's the mark of humanness, perhaps, to think we're special somehow.

If you present a dog with a freaked-out chicken--a running, shrieking, panicked bird--only one outcome is really possible: dog chases prey. Pretty soon there are feathers and blood everywhere.

It doesn't matter how "good" the dog is: chicken runs, dog chases.

So many of our lives are just like this. Or they were like this once. In a dog, this is instinct. In a human, this is heedlessness. Because we do have a choice. If we don't chase the chicken the way we used to, it's because we had the good fortune to 1. encounter painful consequences and 2. to make the connection between unthinking action and resulting pain, and to learn from that.

Animals kill and cuddle and mate and don't know why. We do too--waking up to find ourselves in the middle of fight, flight, feeding, or f-ing. Dogs are hunters. Men are hunters. Whom do you cheer for on the nature show, the cheetah or the antelope?

And women? I don' t know them so well. I suspect that we run shrieking from warriors, only to be slaughtered--or to become warriors ourselves, with a strength men fear to meet.

In meditation, in sesshin, there is hope. The possiblity of mindfulness, of knowing what we do. We set up a disconnect between the chicken and the bloody, feathery mess.

It's one thing not to chase a physical chicken, looking and smelling so right; but how not to chase the delicious fowl of your own mind? How to turn inward and look into oneself with dignity? At the end, what nobility I manifiest is known only to myself; at the end, I can only be true to my own values, regardless of how I look to others. There is one who knows everything about me; that is the one whose standards of conduct must be satisfied.

Inside the Altar

When you see reality
you will know that you are nothing
and in being nothing,
you are everything.

--Kalu Rinpoche

If that's so, then
WHAT! IS! THIS!?

You know, I woke up today and the altar meant nothing. The spiritual world seemed to have faded. I could only see this looming vulnerability, this overwhelmed-little-girlness.

Then, in yoga--feeling digested and destroyed--I realized that yes, the spiritual is not "out there"--not anything to do with altars. The spiritual is actually right here. There is no "Dharma" in this mind state, because Dharma has drawn close, and there is only one blazing eye filling the field of view. Buddhas and Bodhisattvas cannot be seen; lessons cannot be remembered. Not because they have ceased to exist, but because they are so close in. They are inside; they are experience itself.

This is Dharma-without-idea. Just pure feeling.

Post-Sesshin Verification of Mind

Next time you meet a pet or a child with big eyes--some thoughtful-looking pre-verbal creature--try dropping the boundary of self and establishing the mind-meld love vibe. You need not look directly at little thing; only dissolve the heart into local space. You will inevitably see them react by looking back at you, or making repeated side glances. Occasionally there will be the impression of communication-- bewilderment and anxiety are common concerns among the small and powerless.

You need not wait until after a sesshin to try this, but it feels more normal and less hokey then.

Spirit and Sexuality

I found this article called "Intimacy and Ecstasy" in the current issue of Yoga Journal, and have reprinted some selections here. For me the real juice is in the first few paragraphs, and the rest is an elaboration.

Nothing pushes our buttons more than an intimate, committed relationship. It's only through engaging in relationship that we can start to work through the muck of our own psyche and see where healing needs to take place. Our biggest spiritual awakenings result from how we relate to each other. To run from that would have stunted my spiritual growth." Then, the Scottsdale, Arizona, Anusara Yoga teacher met her husband, Martin, and things came together. Now, she says, "When I'm making love to Martin, I truly see him as the Divine incarnate. I see him as holy. When you're seeing that the other is a manifestation of divinity, you get in touch with your own spirituality."

For most of us, that sort of spiritual-sexual connection—if we've ever had it—is a very rare experience. You might even call it the elusive trifecta of great sex: feeling desired and cherished by your partner; experiencing a complete sense of comfort and of being present and awake in the moment; and connecting deeply to your partner on both the spiritual and physical levels for a satisfying release (whatever that might be). It's what sex therapist Gina Ogden, Ph.D., author of The Heart and Soul of Sex, describes as "a feeling of oneness and transcendence—being wrapped in a sense of universal love."

Love Connection

Chances are, "better sex" isn't at the top of your list of things to work on to bring yourself closer to enlightenment. But the two go hand in hand, according to yoga teacher Mark Whitwell, author of Yoga of Heart: The Healing Power of Intimate Connection, who goes so far as to say, "Sex is the principal means to directly experiencing our authentic life." Sex, at the very least, gives us a peek into our true essence. The moment of orgasm may be one of the most accessible (albeit fleeting) ways we can find nonthinking and nonduality.

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Connecting with ourselves isn't a step any of us can skip, Whitwell stresses. "Your first intimacy is with your own body and breath," he says. "If you try to improve a relationship without developing that receptivity, there is no chance you can receive or be sensitive to another. There is a direct correlation." Without relaxing into ourselves, in other words, how can we truly relax into the body (and soul) of another? If we are only strong (what Whitwell calls a "penetrating" force, rather than a "receiving" one), we haven't set ourselves up to truly accept someone else, and the usual relationship problems ensue. "But," he emphasizes, "if two people are sensitive to their own bodies and their own lives through a yoga practice, and they come together, a natural feeling follows between the two—a sense that their bodies know what to do and how to move."

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Youthful Yearnings

When we're young, and especially if we're in the treacherous waters of the dating pool, having a true spiritual connection in a sexual relationship can seem like asking for the moon. "In your teens, 20s, and even 30s, sexual desire can be wrapped around getting a partner, having a partner, moving in, building a life together," Ogden notes. In treating relationships as something to be accomplished or achieved—much as we often approach our careers at this time in our lives—and having specific expectations for what we want, we're likely blocking the way to a more authentic connection between spirit and sexuality.

"When I talk to people in their 20s, there's a powerful sense of the way things should be versus the way things are," says Jeon, 46. To counter that, Ogden suggests meditation—with your partner or on your own—with "the intention that you will learn about your next step in connecting your sexuality with the larger meanings in your life. What is the next step that your body is leading you to?"

This means overcoming the mistrust of the body that most of us have been taught. "We are told over and over that we learn through our minds, not our bodies, so sometimes it takes a process before you can fully trust the body and learn to separate egotistical tendencies from life-enhancing ones," explains Jorge Ferrer, Ph.D., an associate professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. "If an experience—including sexual experiences—is egotistical, normally it gives you short-term satisfaction and later a sense of emptiness. If it's life-enhancing, there's a sense of satisfaction with the body."

True self-acceptance is a crucial part of combining yoga and sexuality in the service of a richer spiritual life. It's also something that Americans frequently stumble over, particularly during our youth, claiming that we don't feel any shame about our bodies or our desires. But, says Ogden, who's seen thousands of women who say they want more meaningful sex, "guilt often gets in the middle of the desire for spiritual meaning." Whitwell has observed that almost everyone feels self-conscious or "bodily inhibited" to some degree. Which means that it may be necessary to take a hard look at how you're defining what's "normal" when it comes to sex. "You want to begin to shift the focus on the body from its being either dirty or shameful, or as a tool to attract someone, to the body as sacred—not in an inviolate, virginal sense, but as something to treat responsibly," Ogden explains.

And, how, exactly, do you make such a shift to overcome inhibitions or discomfort with the full expression of your sexuality and spirituality? (After all, talking about God often feels more taboo than sharing every detail of our sex lives.) First, says Ogden, recognize that we're all bombarded with "cultural messages that sex and spirit are very separate. Those messages are everywhere, so if you've come to believe them, it doesn't mean you're strange or sick." Women in particular may still hold ideas about what "good" girls should and shouldn't do, she adds.

In her therapy practice, Ogden's clients short-circuit the cultural hard-wiring by talking about what their parents, clergy, or teachers told them about sex. "I find out literally where in their body they're incorporating that," she says. "Often women will feel it in their pelvis. They'll tighten it right up or they'll hold their breath. I can see them breathing just from the chest up instead of taking full breaths." Thus, coming back to the very essence of yoga—the full, deep inhalations and exhalations of pranayama—is a simple way to counter ingrained ideas and feelings that sabotage body and spirit.

Better with Age

If there's an upside to aging, it may well be the greater self-acceptance that comes with the passing years. This softer, gentler approach to ourselves and others may be the reason so many people in midlife and beyond say that their sex lives are better—more spiritual, more varied, more fun—than ever before. "They begin to come from a very clear place of "This is what I want. That is what I don't want,'" Ogden says. "As people get older, they tend to connect spirituality and sexuality more. Sex does not tend to decline at midlife as the pharmaceutical companies would like us to believe." Older people are also likely to redefine what a satisfying sex life is, Whitwell notes. "There may well be a natural inclination to make love less, while the free flow of feeling between intimates remains as strong as ever. A touch of the fingertips may be sufficient, or lying in stillness together."

Like the Crabtrees, Martin and Jordan Kirk have seen sex get better and better over their seven-year marriage. "When we were first together, our sexuality was new and we had lots of sex and were experimenting," says Martin, 46, an Anusara Yoga teacher and the coauthor of Hatha Yoga Illustrated. "Both of us had been married before and had longer-term relationships before, so we knew the cycle that you have sex less often over time, but the depth of our sexuality has increased. It's much richer and more meaningful. I could relate that to our practice of yoga—not just asana—and the deepening understanding of ourselves and each other." Jordan, also 46, agrees: "I feel like I know who I am so much better than 10 or 20 years ago, and with that comes a real comfort level and a confidence with myself and my body that definitely translates into sexuality as I get older."

For men, age loosens what Jeon calls "testosterone's stranglehold," a change that Maril Crabtree's husband has felt firsthand. "The reality of my sex life, versus my perception when I was 40 of what it would be like when I got older, is that it's much more exciting, fun, energizing, and fulfilling than I would have predicted," says Jim Crabtree, 64. "The things that caused me grief or concern in my sex life when I was younger have melted away as I have become more focused on the spiritual aspect. The outcome of that has been that I've just been free to play without performance concerns and I have more fun expressing how I really am, instead of being driven by a part of me that is only a part of me." Or, as Ogden says, "When you combine sexuality and spirituality, a whole new world opens up."

Lorie A. Parch is a freelance writer and yoga teacher in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Why Not to Go There

Lately we have noticed that there are many "opportunities" (or imagined opportunities) in this world. Not all of them are a good idea. Almost by definition, we are faced with a rich ground of practice.

And so, upon reflection and conversation with Dharma Friends, the following list was born. It all sounds obvious, until you really need a reminder, or some skillful self-talk. Or some skillful other-talk.

Arguments Against Casual Sex

• I'm sensitive and I'd like to stay that way.
• You go into it wanting some sort of connection, some depth of experience (otherwise you'd stay home and masturbate). If that's true, why pretend to trivialize things?
  
• Some people can get away with drinking. Others can't. By the same token, casual sex might work for some people. But not this one.
  
• What starts quickly (or disrespectfully, or mindlessly) ends quickly (or....).
• If you want to be close to someone, why not take the trouble to get to know them without complicating the situation with libido?
• There are other ways to experience intimacy. (Spiritual practitioners know this. In fact, I am starting to wonder if sexual yearning isn't a misidentified spiritual yearning.)
• Nobody has ever found this to be a path to respect or happiness--personal or interpersonal.
• It hasn't worked yet. Why would things change?
  

My Dharma friend also quoted these ideas from Reb Anderson:

• With more devotion comes less clinging; with less devotion comes more clinging.
• In every action, from eating lunch, to chatting with friends, to going to bed with someone, we should be motivated by what is best for all beings--that is: self; other; the world.

Why I (Really) Like Yoga

I have started doing yoga several times a week. Vinyasa (flow) yoga is centered around the breath, so it's an excellent compliment to Zen practice. Coordinating mind and body through a series of poses is extremely centering.

What's more the studio is hot--about 100 degress F--so sweat pours off your body. Once you get used to it, being drenched feels really cleansing.

The mysterious thing for me has been that my experience of yoga varies depending on whether are not there are men in the class, and whether they are in proximity. Generally, male instructors attract more male students; those classes feel much more euphoric to me and..I'm not quite sure how to say this--they feel quite sensual and pleasurable.

Before long, it became clear that the feeling of well-being persisted beyond the class. There was a drawback, though, in that I also felt more, er, interested in men. I felt lonely and empty afterwards. And I had no appropriate means of alleviating that feeling.

So I was torn: sweat and feel great; but get whipped up and feel lonely in the process? It occurred to me to borrow a used T-shirt from a male friend, and see if sleeping with it on my pillow helped assuage the sense of longing. None of the guys in my life--at least not the one I felt comfortable asking-- were willing to help me out.

In that context, I came across this article in today's New York Times. As always in matters of biopersonal experience, I am grateful to science for telling me that my experiences are in fact true. Snarkiness aside, does this mean I'm happier with men around? I think so!

By Nicholas Bakalar

New York Times
February 13, 2007

Smelling a compound in men’s sweat called androstadienone raises levels of the hormone cortisol in heterosexual women, a small study has found, suggesting for the first time that human pheromones might be useful in clinical medicine.

Smelling androstadienone has previously been shown to improve mood and increase sexual arousal in women, but this is the first time that an olfactory stimulus from a specific molecule has been found to lead to a change in hormone levels. The study appears in the Feb. 7 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience.

Researchers gave 21 women 20 sniffs from a bottle containing 30 milligrams of androstadienone, and then, on a different day, had them sniff an identical bottle that contained baker’s yeast, a similar-smelling substance. Neither the researchers nor the subjects knew which bottle was being presented.

The researchers then took saliva samples to track changes in levels of cortisol, a hormone that increases blood pressure and blood sugar levels, among other effects. Sniffing androstadienone significantly improved the women’s mood and increased their sexual arousal, according to the women’s own descriptions, and raised their cortisol levels as measured by saliva tests.

The authors acknowledge that they cannot unequivocally determine whether androstadienone influenced cortisol, which then influenced mood, or whether a change in mood caused by another mechanism led to a change in cortisol.

The Physiology of Rapport

One of the hardest things about reentering professional life after several years as a professional meditator is that I am, for want of a better word, extremely psychically sympathetic.

Today the person I was working with started exhibiting obsessive-compulsive behavior. It was exhausting.

Trying to talk to others about how easily I am derailed by others' mindstates usually leads to blank stares, or worse.

But there is something to this. I'm posting this article because I want to learn more about this topic.

(My feelings and reactions have always been real; I don't need some hot new scientific discovery to verify them. But I am certainly curious as to what scientists say they know, and how that relates to what I know.)

This essay reprinted from the October 10, 2006 issue of the New York Times

Friends for Life: An Emerging Biology of Emotional Healing
By DANIEL GOLEMAN

A dear friend has been battling cancer for a decade or more. Through a grinding mix of chemotherapy, radiation and all the other necessary indignities of oncology, he has lived on, despite dire prognoses to the contrary.
My friend was the sort of college professor students remember fondly: not just inspiring in class but taking a genuine interest in them — in their studies, their progress through life, their fears and hopes. A wide circle of former students count themselves among his lifelong friends; he and his wife have always welcomed a steady stream of visitors to their home.
Though no one could ever prove it, I suspect that one of many ingredients in his longevity has been this flow of people who love him.
Research on the link between relationships and physical health has established that people with rich personal networks — who are married, have close family and friends, are active in social and religious groups — recover more quickly from disease and live longer. But now the emerging field of social neuroscience, the study of how people’s brains entrain as they interact, adds a missing piece to that data.
The most significant finding was the discovery of “mirror neurons,” a widely dispersed class of brain cells that operate like neural WiFi. Mirror neurons track the emotional flow, movement and even intentions of the person we are with, and replicate this sensed state in our own brain by stirring in our brain the same areas active in the other person.
Mirror neurons offer a neural mechanism that explains emotional contagion, the tendency of one person to catch the feelings of another, particularly if strongly expressed. This brain-to-brain link may also account for feelings of rapport, which research finds depend in part on extremely rapid synchronization of people’s posture, vocal pacing and movements as they interact. In short, these brain cells seem to allow the interpersonal orchestration of shifts in physiology.
Such coordination of emotions, cardiovascular reactions or brain states between two people has been studied in mothers with their infants, marital partners arguing and even among people in meetings. Reviewing decades of such data, Lisa M. Diamond and Lisa G. Aspinwall, psychologists at the University of Utah, offer the infelicitous term “a mutually regulating psychobiological unit” to describe the merging of two discrete physiologies into a connected circuit. To the degree that this occurs, Dr. Diamond and Dr. Aspinwall argue, emotional closeness allows the biology of one person to influence that of the other.
John T. Cacioppo, director of the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience at the University of Chicago, makes a parallel proposal: the emotional status of our main relationships has a significant impact on our overall pattern of cardiovascular and neuroendocrine activity. This radically expands the scope of biology and neuroscience from focusing on a single body or brain to looking at the interplay between two at a time. In short, my hostility bumps up your blood pressure, your nurturing love lowers mine. Potentially, we are each other’s biological enemies or allies.
Even remotely suggesting health benefits from these interconnections will, no doubt, raise hackles in medical circles. No one can claim solid data showing a medically significant effect from the intermingling of physiologies.
At the same time, there is now no doubt that this same connectivity can offer a biologically grounded emotional solace. Physical suffering aside, a healing presence can relieve emotional suffering. A case in point is a functional magnetic resonance imaging study of women awaiting an electric shock. When the women endured their apprehension alone, activity in neural regions that incite stress hormones and anxiety was heightened. As James A. Coan reported last year in an article in Psychophysiology, when a stranger held the subject’s hand as she waited, she found little relief. When her husband held her hand, she not only felt calm, but her brain circuitry quieted, revealing the biology of emotional rescue.
But as all too many people with severe chronic diseases know, loved ones can disappear, leaving them to bear their difficulties in lonely isolation. Social rejection activates the very zones of the brain that generate, among other things, the sting of physical pain. Matthew D. Lieberman and Naomi Eisenberg of U.C.L.A. (writing in a chapter in “Social Neuroscience: People Thinking About People,” M.I.T. Press, 2005) have proposed that the brain’s pain centers may have taken on a hypersensitivity to social banishment because exclusion was a death sentence in human prehistory. They note that in many languages the words that describe a “broken heart” from rejection borrow the lexicon of physical hurt.
So when the people who care about a patient fail to show up, it may be a double blow: the pain of rejection and the deprivation of the benefits of loving contact. Sheldon Cohen, a psychologist at Carnegie-Mellon University who studies the effects of personal connections on health, emphasizes that a hospital patient’s family and friends help just by visiting, whether or not they quite know what to say.
My friend has reached that point where doctors see nothing else to try. On my last visit, he and his wife told me that he was starting hospice care.
One challenge, he told me, will be channeling the river of people who want to visit into the narrow range of hours in a week when he still has the energy to engage them.
As he said this, I felt myself tearing up, and responded: “You know, at least it’s better to have this problem. So many people go through this all alone.”
He was silent for a moment, thoughtful. Then he answered softly, “You’re right.”

Daniel Goleman is the author of “Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships.”

Parting

Leaving someone you know well requires the body to adjust to loss. There's no way I know to avoid this very basic grief. I don't know that I'd want to.

Reb Anderson used to caution students against sleeping together (including "just" sleeping together) on the grounds that it connects people in ways they may not be ready for. Even if you're not in the same bed, sleeping in the same room with others will put you in synch: entering into consciousness in the morning; drifting into oblivion at night; continuing to be alive in the nonexistence of deep sleep. What are we when we sleep? What has become of the mind, of the "self" that rules the waking hours? Nobody can say, but the breathing bodies resonate anyway, together in a realm deeper than mind or thought.

You know this in the monastery: you can wake up at 3:50 a.m. because everyone else is doing the same.

Leaving the people you sleep with is hard; it disturbs something in that very deep realm, and on the surface there is a feeling of loss, or grief, or anger. We don't know who we are, and part of ourselves is moving to another place. We will sleep in the company of unseen neighbors, in silent buildings hundreds of miles apart. We don't know who we are, and we don't know what we are shaped into by the other lives that invisibly meld into ours.