Mindfulness students are used to hearing me say “Eyes, Jaw, Shoulders, Belly” as a reminder to check in on those areas of the body. Checking in like this helps us become familiar with where our unique body holds stress.
Here's how the practice works: We pause for a few seconds to become aware of how each area feels. Eyes How are my eyes in this moment? Am I holding tension there? Experiment: Squint (as you might do while in front of a computer screen) while swinging your arms open as though you've just reached the top of a mountain. Bring the arms back down. Now release the tightness in your eyes, and swing the arms open again. Can you tell a difference in the entire body? in the breath? in the way that you feel?
Warrior eyes: Wide open!
Jaw Am I clenching my jaw, which probably means that I’m also holding my tongue tight in my mouth? Try clenching your jaw and smiling. Not too convincing, eh?
Shoulders Are my shoulders rounded forward, or up around my ears? A study was done with a group of top college students: they were asked to slump 24/7 for an extended period of time. Overall, their grades went down and many of them reported an onset of depression.
Belly As I breathe in, my belly should expand. Is that happening in this moment, or am I holding my breath or chest breathing instead? (When I started taking piano lessons at age 40, I held my breath while playing through lines of music—my teacher had to remind me, Breathe!) If we're holding tension in the belly, among other harm being done, our cells are not getting the oxygen they need to be healthy. Bum I've added this one—the sphincter muscle—to the list. We have words for people who stay constricted in this area—“tight ass,” “anal retentive,” etc. Even if there is total relaxation in your eyes, jaws, shoulders, and belly, if you’re holding on for dear life at the point of this muscle, you will not be invited to any fun parties.
A baby has open Eyes, Jaw, Shoulders, Belly, and probably Bum too
You may know of Shakira's hit song, Hips Don't Lie. Actually, no body part lies. If our body is constricted, our mind is constricted, and nobody can hide a tight mind behind eloquent words, good acts, or even a smile.
In crazy times, the practice of returning to our 5 senses is a fundamental way to restore sanity, or at least to get us moving in that direction. For example, you've just learned that your nemesis at work has gotten a promotion, in part because they claimed ownership of work that you completed. Your face gets red, your heart pounds, your throat constricts, and your mind races. 1. See. Notice something small. Don't worry about what it is, just choose something close by and see it. Maybe it's a leaf or a corner of a table. You might notice its color, shape, movement, the way that light reflects on its surface, and so on. Let your visual awareness stay on this object for as long or as little as you like, then gradually allow your field of vision to broaden and return to fuller vision.
Figurine spotted during a walk outside Gampo Abbey
2. Smell. Close your eyes and breathe in. As air enters the nostrils, notice the scents that register on the inbreath. Breathe out fully. Repeat. Does the scent change if you turn your head to the side, if you stand up or sit down, if you move to a different area of the room that you're in? If there seems to be an absence of scent, notice the breath itself in the nostrils—its temperature, and so on. 3. Taste. If no food or drink is in your mouth, does taste still register? Does moving the tongue in the mouth affect taste? Does taste register more in the front of your mouth or at the back? Perhaps you'd like to drink water, bite into an apple, and so on. While closing your eyes, allow the flavors to register. Notice the world of sensations inside your mouth as you eat. 4. Hear. Close your eyes and notice sounds. No need to label the source of sounds (footsteps, telephone, and so on); just hear the sounds: ping, bang, sssssss. Do the sounds seem to be near your ears or far away? inside of you or beyond yourself? Without reaching out for sounds in a seeking way, what sounds do you notice?
Screeching bats: Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne
5. Touch. Place one or both of your hands on yourself: over your heart area, on your cheeks, your shoulders (perhaps give yourself a gentle shoulder massage), curved around your forehead, on your belly. Do this tenderly. Close your eyes and feel the sensation of your own gentle touch. We really do have at our fingertips what we need to bring ourselves back into balance.
Do you replay things in your mind that happened yesterday, last week, years ago? Or maybe you awaken in the night to rehearse what you will do if such-and-such happens in the future? If so, you know the effects of thoughts-gone-wild: muscle tension, headache, stomachache, anxiety, sleep disturbance, increased blood pressure, and more. The fight-or-flight chemicals that allowed cavemen to outrun saber-toothed tigers still surge today, with many of us able to do little more than hold on for dear life in the midst of our incessant mind chatter (aka “monkey mind”).
This is not helping.
Mindfulness practice involves dropping beneath monkey mind to simply be with things as they are; it’s a practice of “coming back” to what the moment actually entails. Do you remember home base in the game of hide-and-seek? “Coming back” during the practice of mindfulness is like making it to home base: we’re still in the game, but we’re relating to it from a totally different vantage point than from when we were hiding or running around trying to avoid being caught.
And avoiding being caught is so very natural for us; we’re hardwired to scan the environment for threats, and the nervous system supports us in this. When an event is perceived as a threat (whether that event is, say, being followed by someone in a dark alley or being belittled by someone in a business meeting), the autonomic nervous system (ANS) kicks it up a notch, releasing stress hormones into the bloodstream. The sympathetic nervous system (SNS) then responds by preparing us to fight, flee, or freeze.
This is a brilliant system. If we are in fact being followed in a dark alley, we need increased heart rate, rapid breathing, more blood flow to the muscles, adrenaline rush, and so on; it’s time to run away! But in a business meeting? There’s the rub. We’re almost never in imminent danger, yet many of us are in a state of autonomic dysregulation, feeling as though our SNS switch is stuck in the “powered up” position. This can make it feel as though even when things are going okay, it’s certainly only a matter of time before the ball drops again.
I've lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.
-Mark Twain
Enter mindfulness practice, which, again, allows us to return to the present moment. One practice of mindfulness involves coming back, again and again and again, to the sensation of breathing as a way to be present. This repeated coming back can be about as exciting as brushing our teeth at times. But just as our desire for good dental health keeps us brushing, the desire for good mind-body health can keep us practicing mindfulness meditation. With this return to the breath, we learn to return to the present moment, without the accompanying pain, anger, anxiety, depression, and myriad of other monkey mind outcomes. The parasympathetic nervous system (PSNS) can serve to return us to a sense of calm.
A favorite "coming back" spot at Karme Choling, Vermont
Without this ability to come back, we have no choice but to continue to spin our story lines until we pop back to the moment by happenstance. Mindfulness meditation is the practice of attending to the moment fully and intentionally, not by happenstance. Unlimited choice exists in the little gap of clear-headedness that comes from realizing that we’re lost in thought, at which point we’re no longer lost at all. Of course we also have the choice to go right back to letting our story lines about past and future spin themselves and pull us around like puppets, but ideally we choose to stop thinking our life and get back to living it.
Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
-Viktor Frankl
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This 12-minute video features a BBC correspondent who describes his initial skepticism at being asked to participate in an 8-week mindfulness course: “I was totally phobic about beards, sandals, incense, and anything to do with Eastern mysticism.” Hear how once he understands that these things have nothing to do with taking a mindfulness course (and that even Marines practice mindfulness), he takes the course and finds himself quite transformed (also see what his brain scan shows after he participates in the course). And hear a woman with chronic pain talk about what the practice of mindfulness does for her.
Challenge: See if you can identify the female reporter’s misunderstanding of what occurs during mindfulness practice (listen to what she says beginning at the 9:13 mark).
