A good first step to take at the beginning of any endeavor is to take stock of where you are and what you have, so you know what your resources are, internal or external, and what your limitations are.
With your physical health, this is far more than just noticing that you have a problem or having the typical understanding that you have two arms, two legs, a head, and a torso. It involves taking the time and space to clearly and thoroughly examine and explore your body.
A good health care practitioner will do that for you when you have an initial visit. The methods vary according to what they practice, of course: A doctor or nurse might listen to your heart and breathing, take your pulse rate, take your blood pressure, maybe order some basic laboratory tests and have you pee in a cup. An acupuncturist might take your pulse, look at your tongue, palpate the abdomen, and examine your face. You’d be asked a number of questions about what’s going on with your health.
But no matter how thorough the diagnostic procedure is, no one can know you as well as you know yourself.
At this point, it’s important to differentiate between a good professional diagnosis and your own self-knowledge. I am not saying, necessarily, that you can do for yourself what a medical professional can do for you; after all, they spend years in training for a reason. Some diseases are undetectable and have no symptoms, and the only way you know you have it is if you have someone knowledgeable examine you.
On the other hand, many diseases develop precisely because people ignore the subtle or even not-so-subtle distress signals the body sends. And perhaps because they give up their own authority or ability to notice what’s going on in themselves, they just set it aside until the pain is unbearable or they’re peeing blood, or their insurance agrees to pay for a visit to the doctor’s office. This is essentially a reactionary approach to health, focused on putting out fires when they flare up.
A self-reliant approach to health must begin with self-knowledge. Obviously there will always be conditions that require a medical professional to diagnose. But they will never really know you as well as you know yourself.
So how do you start? Simply, with meditation.
The word “meditation” has accrued a lot of different definitions and connotations, ranging from the mystical to the downright stupid, to the point where you might get turned off instantly just by reading the word. So I need to make clear what I mean. Meditation simply means a focused mind steadily directed, with conscious intent, at a specific object. That object can be internal (the easily recognized Buddhist monk sitting in lotus position is a good image of this) or external.
Some of the readers of this blog might be familiar with the sit spot or secret spot routine that is the centerpiece of the Kamana program, the independent naturalist training program offered by the Wilderness Awareness School. It’s a routine wherein you choose a place and you visit it regularly, practicing awareness of what plants, animals, weather, etc. affect that area. That entire routine is a meditation, in that you are focusing your attention on a regular basis on the natural world.
The sit spot routine, practiced consistently, builds a body of experiences that forms a baseline for your understanding of the natural world. You can do the same thing with your body. By making the object of your meditation your own body, rather than your sit spot, and by doing this on a regular basis, you can build a set of experiences that forms a baseline for your understanding of how you function.
In other words, by definition, meditation is setting aside the time, space, attention, and intention, to bring awareness to some aspect of your world, inner or outer. Thus, meditation is a central practice and an essential starting point for taking stock of who and where you are.
A useful skeleton structure to follow for this initial practice is given in Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Full Catastrophe Living
The Body Scan is a variation on a traditional Burmese practice … [that] involves tuning in to sensation in a narrow horizontal band that is slowly brought down through the entire body as if you were giving yourself a CAT scan … I thought it would be hard for people in chronic pain to sit for forty-five minutes, so I modified the practice. It is done lying down starting at the toes and moving up through different regions of the body.
This practice is a way of getting out of the head and developing intimacy with the body. The challenge is, can you feel the toes of your left foot without wiggling them. You tune in to the toes, then gradually move your attention to the bottom of the foot and the heel, and feel the contact with the floor. Then you move to the ankle and slowly up the leg to the pelvis. Then you go to the toes of the right foot and move up the right leg. Very slowly you move up the torso, through the lower back and abdomen, then the upper back and chest, and the shoulders. Then you go to the fingers on both hands and move up the arms to the shoulders. Then you move through the neck and throat, the face and the back of the head, and then right on up through the top of the head.
The thing to note about this type of mindfulness practice is that it is specifically not about fixing the problems you find; at least, not directly.
Many of us tend to jump to solving a problem the instant it surfaces. This approach has two drawbacks. First, you miss out on the big picture. If you start the Body Scan and you work your way up the leg and suddenly notice that your calf is stiff, and you start trying to relax your calf, then you’ve pretty much missed out on the whole rest of your body. You need to have a thorough understanding before you are able to take effective action, and you can’t do that without being patient and being willing to be with, rather than push away, what you discover in yourself.
And that’s actually a fundamental conflict that leads to so much denial of ill health for many of us. We all want to be healthier, but all to often we attempt to reach that goal by trying to get rid of what feels bad, by pushing away from our suffering. To most effectively take stock of your capabilities and your limitations, it’s important to observe yourself without the need to judge, approve, or reject. Just see what is. That’s all.
The second drawback of the instant-solution approach is that our habitual ways of solving problems are often what has caused our problems in the first place. We act incorrectly. For instance, in the above example of stiffness in your calf, let’s say you try to relax your calf by stretching it; but in order to stretch your calf you contort your body and you end up tightening your jaw and shoulders, thus adding more tension. In the end, the added tension leaves you feeling worse than when you started, even though your calf muscle feels a tiny bit looser.
Giving yourself the time and space to notice yourself just as you are may also extend to noticing your actions and their consequences, just as they are — thus seeing how you are affected by what you do, positively and negatively.
Practice the Body Scan every day, or every other day, or every week, for some set period of time. Kabat-Zinn recommends 45 minutes, but I suggest you simply set a period of time that suits your interests and needs. Done regularly, this practice can be an excellent way of recovering a lost or numbed experience of the body.
There are variations of this practice. You don’t have to do it lying down; you can do it sitting up, or standing, or any position you choose. You don’t have to do it while stationary, either; you can do it walking, or dancing, or doing any activity. (Kabat-Zinn suggests yoga.) The benefit of starting in a lying-down, stationary pose is that it is comfortable and allows the beginner to go at the slow pace necessary to notice yourself intimately without getting distracted by other things that you’re doing. So if you’re a beginner to this kind of thing, you should definitely start slow, and be comfortable. But just be aware that you’re not limited to that.
Whatever you do, though, do it gently, and do it consistently. Externally-oriented awareness routines like the sit spot are crucial for rewilding and understanding the natural world, but if you study only those things without examining yourself, you’re leaving out a crucial piece, and possibly disrupting your own ability to remain outside. Watching yourself, you’ll begin to see that your own body and your own being are just as much a part of nature to be noticed and cared for as everything else.
Thanks! this Blog is really really great material! and makes me think about things a new way (yet again!). Keep up the great work you’re doing, know that it is much appreciated. thanks again!