The relationship between the darkness we face in both life and meditation, and the light we all so fervently seek.

When I saw these little meditating skeletons ornate with a Santa hat, a whole slew of complex feelings and ideas came to mind, inspiring me to use them for a Christmas blog. I wondered how Coca Cola, Santa, skeletons, meditation, Christ and festivals of light such as Christmas, Hanukkah and Diwali are all connected? Sit down with a tea as I did, as we embark together in reflection, leaving entrenched belief systems you may have at the door waiting.

We all live in this world:

At least in North America, our imagination of the archetype of a saint named Nicholas being kind to children and bring them gifts is inextricably shaped by Coca-Cola. “The Santa Claus we all know and love — that big, jolly man in the red suit with a white beard — didn’t always look that way. In fact, many people are surprised to learn that prior to 1931, Santa was depicted as everything from a tall gaunt man to a spooky-looking elf. He has donned a bishop’s robe and a Norse huntsman’s animal skin .” It was Coca Cola’s involvement that shaped our present North American Santa.

By all accounts, St. Nick’s story begins in the fourth century AD in what is now modern-day Turkey. A man named Nicholas became the bishop of a village called Myra. He was later canonized, and soon became one of the most popular saints in Christianity. That’s about all we know for sure, but much of the folklore surrounding Saint Nick speaks of his kindness and generosity toward children, in a world where those attitudes weren’t easy to find.

Present-day secular and commercial cultural phenomena are all inextricably interwoven into our tens of thousands of years old imagination, and deeply influence our neurofiring patterns and how our brains get shaped and our minds conditioned. Coca Cola represents the multitude of daily concerns and influences that tend to flood our consciousness, get us lost in making mountains out of molehills, and causes us to lose track of what is really important.

Christmas at the time of the winter solstice:

The winter solstice has captured the human imagination throughout the ages and inspired festivities, rituals and religious beliefs across cultural boundaries everywhere. Christmas is just one of those celebrations. History books can easily tell us all about how people’s imagination has digested this time of year with pomp and circumstance of various kinds.

This is the time around the longest night and shortest day, the time when one movement ends and a contrary one begins, where metaphorically new light is born into the darkness. Christ symbolizes not just new hope in a world of suffering, but the new spark of awareness lighting up the darkness of our ignorant autopilot mindless ways of living. We also find this theme of new light illuminating human darkness in Hanukkah and Diwali.

You can find the embodied form of this celebration right now in your breath. Release your tensions down into the earth in the following out-breath, and let go as best you can of all of you into the surrender of the long pause at the end of the out-breath. Remember that one day, on the last day of the form your energy flow took during this lifetime, you will expire one last time before the major transformation of ‘your’ energy flow into new flow patterns. Stay in this pause at the end of the out-breath for as long as it lasts. During those moments of absence of breathing movement, explore with your attention the vast darkness and spaciousness within the grain of sand of just those few moments, having given away all of you as best you could. Lightly rest in this deep stillness of Being that neither calls, regrets nor promises anything. For those few moments, if you have really surrendered all of you to this space where nothing seems to happen anymore, and you don’t need to go anywhere, achieve anything or improve anything anymore, the past and future have both vanished and you can rest in the timeless emptiness you may never have paid attention to before. Wishes, expectations, regrets, and all resistances are gone, and you wait for nothing while being everything. Suddenly, without your doing or planning anything, without a past or cause, from seemingly nowhere, a new impulse emerges from the unfathomable depths of darkness, a new arising from the open and vast potential of emptiness, lighting up your consciousness with a new inbreath, a new form that will unfold through endless cycles of becoming and disappearing, as it has done so countless times before. And time is born again, not for long, even if for an eternity until the next out-breath has expired, for eternity is still imprisoned in time. Thing is – all you need to do is be available for the ride, which means you need to be aware, and when you are aware, you wake up out of time into the timelessness of Being.

We are not of this world:

Not being of this world requires a bit of explanation: It means that we are not who we think we are and what our deluded belief systems want us to see. And so the skeletons are far from macabre!

We are very solidly wired for survival, and evolution has proven how powerful we are in ensuring the survival of our species – so far. Nature and evolution are mainly concerned about creating organisms that can make duplicates of themselves in the most predictably efficient way. Survival of as many specimens as possible under any, even if terrible circumstance, is the name of the game. That should not surprise you: Look around and make an educated guess about what percentage of people live a content, peaceful and serene life without undue worry, unhappiness or suffering; not many! The good life we all so passionately strive for is of no evolutionary concern. For such survival to be ensured, the organism has to be wired in a way as to not be able to interfere with whatever mechanisms it needs to survive. How does nature do that? By wiring organisms as sophisticated automatons with incredible capabilities for adaptation, and in our human case, what is included in the automatism is most of consciousness. Humans are thus automatons believing they make free decisions, when in fact most of their decisions is automatically wired into the system. There is a scientific word for this, and what I am about to tell you is by now recognized scientific knowledge: Human beings are algorithms, and the vast majority of all decisions we make, including what car we buy or what mate we chose, are automatically decided by the algorithm and not by ‘us’. Algorithms are methodical sets of steps that can be used to make calculations, resolve problems and reach decisions. A cooking recipe is an algorithm: You follow the steps and always come up with the same dish. Humans with their thoughts and emotions are just such algorithms – complex calculation automatons that ensure their reproduction and survival. It is both astonishing and humbling to realize how little say we have in ‘our decisions’.

You may now wonder where awareness, liberation, free will and the possibility to reduce suffering come in! Humans are also wired for the capacity to be aware of being aware, or the ability to reflect upon their own experience. However, this capacity is by far not as accessible as you may think, and as I mentioned above, also largely subject to the automatic algorithmic organization of our organism. What this means is that even when you think you are making decisions based on free will, they are mostly not. The decisions we believe we freely make are far more automatic and conditioned by evolutionary wiring and past experience than we ever imagine, and because algorithmic survival mechanisms only afford us a short-term view of reality (how to get food for tomorrow and escape the lion today), our decisions are short-sited and at this stage in our evolution woefully inadequate to ensure the species’ survival. All is not lost though. Through a particular attentional training that leads to the development of mindful states, we can mobilize a potential we are also wired for, and that we did not need with the same urgency when we were roaming the forests and savannas during our hunter-gatherer times. This potential allows us at least to some degree to liberate ourselves from the shackles of the algorithm and make more authentically free decisions with an expanded consciousness that allows us to have an overarching long-term view of the whole. In doing so, we actually broaden the contexts within which we understand reality, and with each broader context we situate ourselves in, reality looks much different than what it looked like when we were imprisoned by a narrow view. We realize we are not of this world, because who we really are transcends our limited view of ourselves as physical organisms.

The skeletons are thus far from macabre! At first blush they are symbols of death reminding us of our mortality. That is only true from the narrow perspective of having identified ourselves with the body as who we are. Who we really are is far more complex than that and transcends this narrow view as I have shown elsewhere. Contemplating our physical mortality has a great silver lining: We tend to take life for granted as we mindlessly sail through its circumstances, as if they were determined, certain and predictable. Reminding ourselves that nothing lasts helps wake up our middle prefrontal cortex for reflection and a more present life. When we look more closely, we are much more than our bodies, and the skeletons become a symbol of timeless being beyond what our blinders allow us to see.

So yes, we are both in this world, but not of this world, as Jesus is supposed to have said, and our skeleton sitting in contemplation during this holiday time of winter solstice is a perfect opportunity to reflect on our lives.

Light and shadow:

Light and Shadow by Franklin Carmichael

This picture of Franklin Carmichael hangs on the wall in our office. It has always inspired me to think about the relationship between the darkness we face in both life and meditation, and the light we all so fervently seek. What is so fascinating to me is how in our attempts at decreasing suffering, we search, strive and struggle to find peace, happiness, liberation or whatever we call God, not noticing that it all is already so naturally there, ready for the taking. When the days get shorter to approach the fall equinox, we mourn the summer; when they get really short to approach the winter solstice, we dread the winter. When they get longer to approach the spring equinox, we pine for spring; and when they get really much longer to approach the summer solstice, we rejoice and forget it will not last. Never are we there where the action is, always wanting something else than what we have or what is.

Now is the time to let nature inspire our fundamental mindfulness principle: Embrace the darkness. Darkness is not the absence of light, but the chrysalis stage of transformation from one energy pattern to another. Darkness means creative fermentation below the visible surface, while everything on the surface seems frozen. Darkness is the lively activity of growth inside the grass we watch and can’t see growing. Darkness is the recognition of blindness before anything else can pierce through it. Like the pause at the end of the outbreath, surrender to it completely. Relinquish all grasping to an old, well worn and familiar view of who you are, and embrace the transformative chaos of the dark. Only then can what’s really novel be recreated and resurrected into a new form, a new temporary identity, like the phoenix rising from the ashes or Christ from the cross. This universal archetypal theme of rebirth is found cross-culturally in many traditions. When we embrace it, learning to ride the phases of transformation from caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly over and over again without resistance, our transcendent, timeless and nameless Being beyond all cycles of becoming and vanishing radiates through the cloud cover of our ignorance and illusions, as it always has beyond time immemorial.

Much suffering starts with the abhorrence of the darkness, which takes many forms in everyday life. But without honoring the darkness, no breakthrough ever leads to transformation. There is no light without the shadows of its source. The darkness is the fermenting potential, where everything begins, unseen within its protective womb. The deep meditative path is a training in recognizing the call of the dark, and join its source for renewal and transformation. This time of year inspires this introverted orientation towards the stillness of Being.

Copyright © 2018 by Dr. Stéphane Treyvaud. All rights reserved.

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Managing anxiety and mindfulness principles

For anonymity’s sake let’s call my student Sean. For years his anxiety was debilitating! He has struggled with it for about 30 years and sought help in many different ways, including counselling and medication treatment. After a course of individual psychotherapy with me, as well as intense involvement in the practice of mindfulness meditation, he eventually got to the point of being able to live without medication, most of the time symptom-free. Maybe once or twice a year he experiences a very manageable recurrence of the anxiety, which he meets with his mindfulness skills.

This article is not about the successful treatment of anxiety disorders through mindfulness meditation. Instead, I want to show how a mindfulness practitioner with quite considerable long-term meditation experience deals with the occasional recurrence of symptoms, particularly when they are extreme. I also want to highlight the mindfulness principles involved in this process.

Sean came to see me recently, because at the beginning of September his anxiety started to reemerge after having been anxiety-free for some time. Nothing unusual had happened and there was no external reason for the recurrence of his anxiety. His anxiety was very bad this time around; it worsened to the point of being almost intolerable and lasted an unusually long time of approximately two months. At its worst, he couldn’t stand it anymore and two things happened: He began to consider the possibility of going back on Cipralex, an antidepressant with a strong anti-anxiety component he is familiar with, which worked well for him in the past. At approximately the same time, he called my office to make an appointment, with the intention of exploring with me anything he might possibly overlook in his psychological approach to his anxiety. Unexpectedly, these two actions of booking an appointment and intending to go back on Cipralex caused the symptoms to vanish. By the time I recently saw him, he almost wondered why he was there with me.

We first talked a bit about how he was managing his anxiety and what mindfulness principles he was applying to deal with it. What he told me was very revealing of quite a skilled mind working with the adversity of an affliction. With many of the principles of meditation that he had learned, such as the recognition that thoughts are not facts, giving emotions a wide spaciousness through allowing and letting be, and sheer tenacity and perseverance, he maintained a deep curiosity about how far this ‘internal catastrophe’ can go. As if he was watching a storm pass by, he simply allowed the inner storm to unfold with as little resistance and as much awareness as possible. Over the years of meeting these symptoms in this fashion, he discovered that nothing more catastrophic happens than an enormous feeling of unpleasantness washing over him, including at times the very unpleasant experience of feeling he is going to die. He discovered a sense of pride and strength in his ability to look the monster directly into the eyes, realizing that the only thing he had to fear is fear itself. Unlike years ago, when such anxiety would have caused him to be out of commission and unable to function normally, he can now continue to go about his life’s business as usual.

He also has access to Ativan, a minor tranquilizer with specific anti-anxiety properties. This is not the kind of medication that would be wise to take on any regular basis, which is why he uses it only very rarely if there’s really no other option, at most maybe one minimal dose tablet once a month if he is really very anxious. He explained to me that he always waits until the storm is over and the anxiety subsides, because it helps him disidentify from the experience, find strength in not allowing the anxiety to control him and significantly decrease the impact the anxiety has on his life. After the worst of the storm is over, he sometimes feels quite exhausted, at which point he may take an Ativan tablet to give himself a good rest. This approach to his anxiety is wise, because while he prevents himself from backing down when the anxiety is at its worst, and instead continues to hone his mindfulness skills to change his relationship to the anxiety, he effectively engages the brain cells in a massive rewiring process that leads to greater integration of his organism, a decrease of symptom strength and the hold it has on him, and therefore longer periods of symptom-free health.

Anyone with some therapeutic experience reading this may wonder, whether he does not actually traumatize himself by doing what he does. The answer is an emphatic no, as long as one important condition is fulfilled: Throughout this process he needs to feel that he is in the driver’s seat, that in other words he remains within his window of tolerance for stress. If during the storm he was to lose his capacity to be aware and apply his mindfulness meditation tools, and instead fell into an unmanageable panic, then yes, it would not make sense to try to be heroic; there would be a real danger of causing more harm than good. After many years of intense mindfulness meditation training, this is clearly not his situation anymore.

A few questions remained: Why did the symptoms disappear the moment he made an appointment and considered taking Cipralex, why did the symptoms start in September when his children are now grown and independent, and there is no back to school stress anymore, and is it wise to go back on Cipralex, which is the kind of medication he would have to take daily for at least a 2 to 3 months period? My answers were not pronouncements written in stone, but hypotheses Sean will have to examine as he continues to develop his expertise in dealing with his anxiety.

The moment he decided he might go back on Cipralex at the height of his anxiety, could in fact psychologically be the moment he surrendered his left brain’s compulsion to solve the problem. Although he was using some cognitive tools to remind him that his thoughts were not reality, this whole anxiety phenomenon can never be resolved with his left brain function alone. It requires an integration of the left brain with the contextual, nonverbal right brain. By surrendering to the possibility that he psychologically may not be able to overcome his anxiety, he relinquished in fact deeper resistances to experiencing these anxious energy flows. The result is an even greater spaciousness with which he relates to his own anxious experience, accompanied by a decrease or even disappearance of the symptom.

Booking an appointment with me would have been an act of faith by hoping I may have some answers up my sleeves that could help him. This could be called a placebo effect, which in fact is not anything negative, but a powerful psychological force that helps us tap into the unknown potential of the organism that we are. Metaphorically speaking, by calling me he actually reached out to his own internal unknown potential for healing. It is not surprising that this would mobilize healing energies that at least temporarily would make the symptoms go away.

With regards to the symptoms appearing in September, I reminded him of all the years his children were growing up and the busyness of life resumed in the fall after a quiet summer. I pointed out the possibility that after many years of conditioning, September has now the symbolic meaning of back-to-school stress, despite the fact that his children are gone and there is no back-to-school stress anymore. Whenever September approaches, his unconscious implicit memories of years of stress, now deeply embodied in his brain’s neurofiring patterns, get activated . This idea struck him as very resonant, causing an immediate additional sense of relief while we were talking. Knowing about this possibility will make it possible for him during the end of summer when fall approaches, to pay particular attention to the fine somatic sensations in his body and whatever faint memories of past years they cause. This may allow him to recognize the mechanism, by which implicitly encoded stress signals from previous years begin to stir in his body when the fall approaches and eventually lead to the development of anxiety.

We can ask an even more radical question: Why bother with such intensive mindfulness meditation training, when one could just take Cipralex and presumably live effortlessly happily ever after? The answer is simple (not simplistic), complex (has many facets) and compelling. On medication people often feel numb or not quite themselves, and they don’t like the side effects. Even with medication the symptoms often don’t disappear and are more likely to be just mitigated. If they do disappear, it is usually time-limited, and over time they tend to return, at which point other medications need to be tried or the dose has to be increased, causing an increase in side effects. Last but not least, the person learns nothing about the psychodynamic meaning of their symptoms, causing unresolved or psychological conflicts to continue to feed the tendency to develop such symptoms and stress, and thus interfere with the overall integration of the organism that promotes the person’s health.

When I talk about these things, highlighting the psychological mechanisms involved in psychiatric symptoms and trying to elucidate the complex decisions that have to be made between psychological and psychodynamic growth and medication treatment, people sometimes come to the wrong conclusion that I am against medication. Far from it. Medication is one of our tools in our toolbox, which wisely used can be extremely beneficial. The problem nowadays lies in the fact that biological advances in medicine have been so spectacular as to eclipse the importance of the mind in our human lives. Whether we like it or not, the mind is still the most important organ we have, and without paying attention to, training and respecting the mind, our attempts at curing illnesses, maintain function and healing fall far short of what is potentially possible.

Copyright © 2018 by Dr. Stéphane Treyvaud. All rights reserved.

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Energy Patterns, physical sensations, and the complexity of the body-mind

I recently received the following question from a mindsight student:

“I was wondering if you could address something that has been capturing my awareness almost since I started meditating three years ago. I have brought to your attention several times, either through email or through direct conversation, several physical sensations that I have experienced during formal practice. These sensations often become borderline intolerable, (albeit they have lessened in frequency during recent months).

The following are examples of the physical sensations that I have experienced during formal practice:
1). Extreme hot sensations shooting through my body as if it’s on fire.
2). Loud humming sound in my ears.
3). The need to constantly swallow.
4). Severe chest pain, as if I’m having a heart attack.
5). Elevated blood pressure. (240/200)
6). Heaviness in hands and feet, as if I can’t move them.
7). Itchy face and scalp as if bugs are crawling all over them.
8). Feeling of deep lows and despondency.

Your response to some of these symptoms seemed to suggest that they are probably unrelated to meditation and are most likely a medical issue.

I happened to be reading a book by Jack Kornfield (Bringing The Dharma Home) last spring when I came across something very interesting that seemed to explain these very symptoms that I had been experiencing. He calls it, “a series of powerful energetic phenomena, sometimes called the awakening of the ‘kundalini’.” He basically suggests that energy centres and chakras are going through a profound opening, hence the intolerable and quite frightening symptoms. Almost all the symptoms that I have experienced, (including the feeling of heart attack), was mentioned. I must say, it was some relief for me to have an explanation come forth at what seemed to be a critical phase in my practice.

Going forward, it would be helpful for me to understand more about these symptoms (other than just reading about them in a random book), as well as gain some understanding with respect to how seriously I should take them if and when they occur again.

Would you be able to give me some deeper insight into what would be considered the non-pleasant symptoms associated with formal practice and if there is any validity in the “kundalini” that Jack Kornfield writes about?

This is indeed a very central question in meditation, which requires a cogent and differentiated response, not only because we are dealing with significant complexity, but also because the meditator’s progress, health and safety are at stake.

Historically, different names have been used to describe these patterns, Kundalini being one of them. In the Chinese tradition, you have Qi energy. Trying to find correspondence between our western notions of different energy patterns and those ancient notions is somewhat of a futile endeavor, as different traditions and cultures have different maps with which to map the same territory of reality. Let’s thus simply establish that no matter how you look at it, we are energy flowing in different patterns that require regulation.

The Kundalini energy is symbolized by a snake lying dormant like a coil at the base of the spine. As the practitioner cultivates consciousness and develops ever-higher levels of awareness, the snake uncoils itself, moving up the spine through several energy centers called chakras, all the way to the pineal gland and then forward to the region of the medial prefrontal cortex, at which point the adept reaches enlightenment. Kundalini energy flow thus manifests in different forms depending on the level of integration. You may realize the resonant echo with the biblical snake. Unlike popular misunderstanding, the snake is not a symbol of evil, but of fertility, creative life force, continual renewal of life, rebirth, transformation, immortality, and healing.

Let’s remind ourselves that we are open complex systems of different kinds of energy flow patterns. These include energy flowing in the form of physical structures such as our organs, in the form of mental patterns such as emotions, thoughts, and the way we relate to others and the world around us, as well as awareness energy patterns within consciousness. Not only that, but the non-living elements we are made of, such as subatomic particles, atoms, and molecules have their own energy patterns we are part of. Each energy pattern has a unique feel to it (to the extent that it can actually be felt) and requires unique methods of regulation.

It is a hallmark of open complex systems to self-organize and self-regulate. When our natural tendencies of energy flow patterns can freely unfold on both the body- and the mind-level of processing, our energy flow is integrated and we feel at ease and healthy. When on the contrary these energy flow patterns are interfered with, and the organism’s self-regulating mechanisms become overwhelmed, our energy flow patterns fall into chaos and/or rigidity, which we experience as symptoms and disease. Symptoms can be a sign of disease, meaning that the chaos or rigidity is a consequence of dysregulation and will require regulation back to balance and integration, or they can be a transitional stage from chronic dysregulation to integration, meaning that they are the consequence of regulation and require patient perseverance on the path.

Different symptoms are different kinds of energy flow with different causes and have therefore different meanings. They can’t be lumped together into one soup. When the student mentions that I apparently said her symptoms were unrelated to meditation, it would have been within a very specific context of a specific question about one or a few specific symptoms. What I said could never be true as a general statement, since meditation practice can worsen, improve or be unrelated to specific symptoms.

Another historical point has to be clearly made. In comparison to today, during the times those notions of Kundalini and Qi energy emerged, scientific medical knowledge was rudimentary. Although these ancient cultures were very advanced in the way they knew how to help people regulate their energy flow, there were also a huge number of diseases beyond their reach of influence, which we can nowadays treat or cure. Let’s take the example of coronary artery blockage. Someone with angina can today be diagnosed with coronary artery blockage, stents can be put in and the person’s life span with a high quality of life can be prolonged by many years. What 2500 years ago would have just been part of the course – having severe chest pain on exercise, shortly after being bedridden by pain and end up dying within a relatively short period of time – would in today’s climate be completely unacceptable and preventable. In other words, we have to approach symptoms much differently today than one would have 2500 years ago, because we have so many more treatment options available to us.

When we examine symptoms during meditation practice, looking at their patterns is important. Do they only appear during practice and disappear the moment we stop? Do preexisting symptoms get worse during practice but then improve significantly after it? Or do the same preexisting symptoms stay the same or get worse? Are the symptoms of the kind that suggests a possible treatable illness or even danger, or are they a functional part of meditation practice? These questions may start to give you the feeling that there is no way you will ever be able to find clear answers. Welcome to the meditator’s club! These are not easy questions to answer, even though there is a very simple principle that should be followed to get to the bottom of these questions: Always make sure to exclude a physical cause of such symptoms by involving a physician. This does not mean that medicine knows everything or that calamities can always be avoided, but it does mean that you will reduce to a minimum the chance of mishandling what’s going on with your organism. As a physician, there are many symptoms that instinctively raise a red flag. This is not the case for laypeople, and I can therefore not stress the importance enough of following the outlined principle.

To make the point here is just one of many examples I encountered in my practice. A patient was referred to me for mindfulness training because she was diagnosed with a panic disorder. As she walked in through the door of my office, she tripped slightly. I casually commented on it and wondered why she tripped, to which she responded by telling me that this happens very occasionally as she felt she was getting clumsier with age. We then started the interview, and she told me that she was intermittently tired for no reason, intermittently felt light-headed and weak, combined with tingling and numbness in her fingers. When I asked her whether she felt anxious, she said that she felt a bit anxious when the symptoms appeared. She was told these symptoms were typical of panic attacks. She had already been treated by a psychotherapist for panic attacks and a naturopath was prescribing stress-reducing remedies. Nothing helped. Life history was rather unremarkable with regards to any psychopathology. She came from attuned family circumstances and lead an overall successful life. She described some stress at work, which had been worrying her for about six months. In my mind, the clinical picture did not add up to a panic disorder, and her tripping as she came into my office became an increasingly bright shining red light as I was sitting there listening to her. I told her that the evidence for a panic disorder was very tenuous and that I was thinking about some neurological problem, for which I wanted her to get a consultation by a neurologist. It turned out she had an early stage of MS. Had the neurological findings come back negative, I would have had more freedom to help her explore her mind.

The moral of the story is that we are naturally scared to discover we have an illness, and it can appear like a soothing proposition to interpret symptoms within an energetic framework such as Kundalini energy that gives us a sense of being in control. Unfortunately, our ability to regulate energy flow has its limits as we all are inexorably vanishing and our bodies inevitably break down as part of the great law of impermanence. Coming to terms with that is one of the major goals of mindfulness practice.

Let’s now address one by one the symptoms this student presents:

1. Extreme hot sensations shooting through my body as if it’s on fire: Meditation practice has a profound impact on many physiological functions, including hormonal regulation and metabolism, which may explain the sensation of heat (I am foregoing details on the possible physiology of this mechanism). In isolation, this is not an uncommon symptom during meditation and therefore not necessarily one to be worried about. It can indeed be explored and understood as part of a new energy flow regulation within the context of moving towards greater integration. Should the symptom persist over a longer time frame and get worse, a visit to the doctor may end up not being a luxury.

2. Loud humming sound in my ears: Same as number 1., as long as it is not accompanied by other symptoms like hearing loss or ear pressure, in which case consultation with an ENT specialist would be indicated.

3. The need to constantly swallow: This is a very common symptom during meditation, which may be connected to increased vagal activity during the stress-reducing process of meditating. It can be quite a nuisance and therefore an opportunity to bring kind acceptance to what’s going on. When it occasionally happened to me during a teaching situation with students, I noticed a sense of embarrassment arising, accompanied by the narrative that ‘as a teacher, I should be much more advanced than that!’ – actually quite hilarious when you think about it. In my experience, this symptom arises particularly when the meditator is stressed, in the process of relaxing and releasing stress, or deeply settled in peaceful awareness as an unexpected internal conflict arises. It can also arise without an identifiable cause.

4. Severe chest pain, as if I’m having a heart attack: This symptom is potentially concerning, and I would not hesitate to suggest having the heart checked out by a cardiologist. If it turns out that physically the heart is fine, it could be a symptom of high anxiety, even if the person does not experience it as such. Furthermore, it can be the activation of painful or traumatic implicit memories that are starting to come to the surface because of the meditation practice. Continuing to deepen the practice with an emphasis on somatic attention, and observing what kind of memories and stories appear on the cognitive level, would then be the way to go.

5. Elevated blood pressure (240/200): I’m not sure how this student measures her blood pressure while she meditates, but assuming that these numbers are correct, I would immediately send her to a specialist for diagnosis and treatment. These numbers are outside the realm of primary energy and information flow discussions. Because of the enormous likelihood of all kinds of nasty health consequences such high blood pressure is not worth the risk for, it would be unconscionable not to have this medically looked at and treated. Both numbers are very concerning, but the second diastolic pressure particularly so, suggesting there may be a chronic problem that requires medication treatment. This is not to say that once proper medical treatment has been sought, meditation cannot positively influence the long-term evolution of the problem – it can. However, we always have to respect the hierarchy of needs, and as Meister Eckhart (German philosopher, theologian and mystic – 1260-1328) used to say: “If a hungry beggar comes your way while you are in a rapture of enlightenment, stop your rapture and feed the beggar.” If there is a physical problem of such magnitude, it has to be dealt with first before we can then involve the mind. Even if this blood pressure is intermittent, these numbers are extremely high, dangerous and in need of immediate medical attention.

6. Heaviness in hands and feet, as if I can’t move them: This is a common symptom, and again, as long as there is no other evidence of neurological problems, not one to be concerned about. I would have to explore this experience in more detail with the student in question, but this symptom may be connected to either of two things, deep relaxation and letting go, or a form of psychological dissociation.

7. Itchy face and scalp as if bugs are crawling all over them: Again, assuming no other neurological or dermatological problem exists, when tensions come to the surface and subside during meditation, itching, and tingling can become very prominent. Continue with somatic attention and releasing tensions down into the earth.

8. Feeling of deep lows and despondency: This is a huge topic with many facets, which would require a closer examination of this student’s particular circumstances. Maybe the student does not apply meditation techniques properly and therefore unwittingly causes energy and information flow dysregulation. Maybe implicit memory material arises and meditation alone will not be enough to integrate all the domains of integration; in this case, adding psychotherapy would be required to address domains of integration meditation cannot directly deal with. The student may also have touched the existential level of having to confront the radical impermanence of existence and all the illusions we create not to have to deal with it. Recognizing this situation and embracing impermanence would be the way to work through and transcend this stage of consciousness evolution.

In short, the kinds of intolerable and frightening symptoms Jack Kornfield talks about within the context of awakening are not associated with dangerous chronic physical conditions requiring medical treatment. It is important to recognize the difference between these two sets of symptoms, which is not an easy task by any means.

I am very thankful to this student for bringing up this question. It has given me an opportunity to show the complexity of the body-mind, and how in this business there is no room for facile cookie-cutter responses that feed our narcissistic need for always wanting to be somewhere more glamorous than where we are. The body has its limitations and we are not omnipotent. We always have to remember the difference between healing (finding a new mental equilibrium around the body’s limitations) and curing (getting the body back to its pre-injury state). The body inevitably breaks down and the mind does not have the power to stop or prevent that. Cures become increasingly rare beyond child- and middle adulthood as healing and maintaining functionality becomes increasingly important. This question also gave us the opportunity to realize that meditating today is not the same as meditating 2500 years ago and that our scientific and technological advances, not to speak of our cultural socio-political changes, require new mind maps and new ways of seeing reality and the world, while we can still preserve ancient wisdom and experience that is still relevant today.

Copyright © 2018 by Dr. Stéphane Treyvaud. All rights reserved.

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Meditation invites us to explore how thoughts are not facts

This topic was recently discussed in the Mindfulness Community Group (MCG) as one some people have trouble with. A few participants offered helpful clarifications to help understand what is meant. I remained unclear about whether the discussion really went far enough, as it seemed to stop short of the core issue at stake. Here is a short synopsis to shed light on what I mean.

In a simplified way, thoughts can be seen as left-brain re-presentations of right-brain direct experience presentations. The left brain brings us the menu about living that describes reality in the form of thoughts, while the right brain serves us the meal of directly experienced reality in the form of direct experience of living. That’s in short how we can cursorily conceptualize the relationship between thoughts and direct sensory experience. Thoughts are the map or menu about the territory or meal of facts.

Thoughts are a form of highly and complexly processed energy flow that is at once embodied in the brain as neuro firing patterns and relationally emergent in the mind as virtual aboutness. Said more simply, they are secretions of the brain that carry a meaning beyond themselves. My thought ‘tree’ is a secretion in my brain in the form of neuron firings with movements of neurotransmitters and electricity, which has been processed by the brain to such complexity that it has ended up taking on a meaning that points to, but is not the same as, this large living object 100 yards from me sticking out of the ground with a brown stem, brown branches and green leaves.

Refraining from getting too philosophical about it, we can now introduce facts as something that is, that exists. If it rains, the falling water that gets you wet is a fact. If your mother is diseased, her not being among us anymore is a fact. If you have been fired, you cannot go back to the office and you don’t make money anymore, that is another fact. Reality can be said to be what is the case, and all that is the case can be seen as facts, particularly if they can be independently verified by different people. Even matters of belief or art can be seen as facts: If I see fairies bringing me my breakfast in the morning, for me the fairies are a fact; for you the fairies themselves are not a fact, but my telling you about fairies bringing breakfast is also a fact. Needless to say, the world is full of facts.

The first level of approaching the meditation ‘thoughts are not facts’ was addressed by participants of the MCG: This concerns the relationship between thoughts and facts and belongs to the psychological level of inquiry psychotherapy is particularly concerned with. In short, some thoughts correspond to and point to facts, in which case they are healthy to cultivate, while others don’t, in which case we don’t want to invest energy in them. The thought ‘the earth is a round globe moving through space’ corresponds to or points to (but is not the same as) a measurable and provable fact. The thought is an accurate map of facts in reality. The thought accurately reflects that the earth is indeed a globe-shaped mass hurling through space. This thought is the menu or the map, which helps me directly experience the meal or territory of this reality it maps. Conversely, the statement ‘the earth is a flat disc swimming in an endless ocean’ does not correspond to any fact. The thought is an inaccurate map of reality facts. In the group’s exchange, the point was then made that for the cultivation of health it is important to distinguish between thoughts that point to facts and those that don’t, and that mindfulness practice reveals how extensive our tendency is to not recognize so many thoughts we believe in, even though they do not point to facts. It was noted that distinguishing accurate from inaccurate thoughts is important for health and wellbeing. So far so good.

Meditation invites us though to explore a second level of inquiry I found was not fleshed out enough. On this level, we explore how thoughts are not facts, period – not whether they correspond to facts or not. In other words, we explore how maps are never the territory, menus never the meal, whether the maps or the menus are accurate or not. We investigate the phenomena of maps or menus arising in our brains and minds, not the territory or the meal they point to, and we also don’t focus on whether these maps and menus are accurate or not. We can also say that thoughts are internal brain/mind phenomena we examine as such, without getting diverted into what they mean in the external world. As you can see, on this level we do not concern ourselves with the relationship of thoughts to facts. Whether accurate or false, every thought is still a thought with the same energetic characteristics as any other thought, and it is this ‘thoughtness’, this energy flow with a particular characteristic that feels virtual we are interested in. We deeply penetrate the nature of thoughts as this dual manifestation of physiological energy flow giving rise to a different flavor of energy flow consisting of a virtual meaning in the mind, whether the thought is accurate or not. On this level, our work is utterly unconcerned about meaning. Instead, we examine the direct experience of this virtual phenomenon called meaning and thought as it flows by, like all other kinds of energy flowing by. In this way, we end up penetrating beyond mind and meaning the vast emptiness of nameless Being.

Copyright © 2018 by Dr. Stéphane Treyvaud. All rights reserved.

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Through mindfulness, we realize the potential for creative expansion

The feel of the Mindsight Intensive program is exploratory and experiential. Many participants are familiar with many of the principles of Dynamic Mindfulness and Interpersonal Neurobiology. What we focus on is learning to play and be creative with this knowledge, so that it becomes life-transforming and integrative. In each session we practice meditation, interact as a group, and digest new nuggets of knowledge I present.

The flow and content of this program correlate as closely as possible with the neuroplastic and networking functions of the brain. The way we use our minds to make sense of our lives is far from linear and logical. Instead, the entirety of our subjective experiences, from physical sensations to emotions, thoughts, and actions, result from a vast information processing network with nodes of energy flow, able to connect in many different ways at any one time.

We are driven by certain energy processing highways that tend to keep us locked in routines, but with awareness and training, we are also able to leave those highways at any time and forge new paths into the wilderness of the human potential. Bits of information clusters and small units of meaning combine freely in associative ways and create unstable narrative chains of knowledge we temporarily work with. We say a sentence or express an idea, followed by another sentence and another idea, not noticing that the move from the first set of expressions to the second is arbitrary and that we could have moved into a completely different direction. Through mindfulness, we realize this multidirectional potential for creative expansion and become more willing to constantly review the apparently seamless bodies of knowledge we create and modify them under the influence of life’s ever-changing circumstances and experiences. What was true yesterday becomes false today, and that is how life really is.

I want to convey to my students a sense of ease with the flexibility of mind to roam freely through all its registers of knowing, including its potential to free itself from well-worn highways of habits. We will work on deconstructing the stories we tell ourselves and believe in, and begin to connect their elements together in new ways. The same basic units of knowledge combined in new ways give rise to new insights we never thought possible before. Saying the same thing in a different way and in new contexts opens the door to new insights that are only accessible through the creative flexibility of linking known elements in new ways and new elements in familiar ways.

Riding the wave of avant-garde and evolving with the leading edge of knowledge, has always been one of my central teaching missions. What this means is that my themes quite often appear foreign to many, until I start to appear like a dinosaur by the time they become mainstream. When I started to engage in mindfulness meditation over 48 years ago, I was regarded as a far-out anomaly, and when I started to teach it over 20 years ago, it was suspiciously regarded as something very new in medicine, despite the fact that it had already started to establish itself in certain centers in the United States and Europe. Enriching the MBSR curriculum with new insights of Interpersonal Neurobiology is still a novelty only practiced at our Centre. Now, a ‘new’ very old topic is being resurrected again after having gone extinct during the 19th century – a topic I believe to have profound adaptive value and be essential for human survival. It disappeared from public discourse 150 years ago, in part because it was only associated with philosophy and religion while social evolution took a major turn into science and technology, and in part because of the empirically minded direction psychology took, culminating in behaviorism’s 20th-century abhorrence of having anything to do with the notion that humans have minds.

Imagine then a lost civilization. All that is left for you to understand that civilization is archaeological artifacts – nobody around to teach you the language, the customs, and traditions that defined that civilization. How are you going to revive it? Today we find ourselves in a similarly difficult situation with this central, yet to be named old, new topic. Fortunately, late 20th-century psychology seems to have relaxed a bit, and specific schools of thought within psychology have lost their dominance. In fact, greater openness of mind, globalization of different knowledge modes, and further advances in science have produced encompassing ways of knowing, such as Interpersonal Neurobiology, which have allowed scientific inquiries into the nature of the mind to mushroom into many unexpected directions. The topic in need of resurrection I am referring to is central to the human mind and to our ability to lead the good life with minimal suffering  – wisdom.

Because of its intrinsic value for healthy human adaptation, in the last 30 years or so wisdom has begun to interest scholars, philosophers, and scientists again, and is now resurrecting in scientific and philosophical discourse. Yes, wisdom is starting to pique people’s curiosity again, because it might well be one of the most central factors giving humanity hope for survival. We can now find a handful of researchers taking this topic seriously as a central human concern, and beginning to revive this once dead phoenix with serious scientific, philosophical, and practical approaches.

What better position to tap into what wisdom is all about, learn to develop it, and apply it in our daily lives, than from our mindsight perspective. Wisdom will be the background theme this year, imbuing our traditional work of deepening expertise in mindfulness and mindsight with new contexts and vistas.

The Mindsight Intensive is designed to not only provide the necessary tools for short-term success in the conscious regulation of energy and information flow but also inspire you to explore the contextual backdrop of life that makes long-term growth towards wisdom possible. As I wrote in a recent blog, the exploration of black holes does not seem to have much relevance for daily living, and yet it belongs to the foundation for all the practical knowledge we have acquired, which improves practical living. The same applies to our Mindsight Intensive, which is only partly a ‘how-to’ program; it is also designed to give you the kind of foundation that at first blush does not seem to have immediate relevance for daily living, and yet over time profoundly changes your life’s direction and purpose.

Copyright © 2019 by Dr. Stéphane Treyvaud. All rights reserved.

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Through wisdom we grow and find peace, to access the full potential of human consciousness.

What I teach can sometimes feel daunting, first and foremost because the brain is the most complex object in the known universe, the mind even more so, and there is no way around complexity in teaching and learning about the mind. I also consider my students’ experts in their own subjective experience of being alive. This does not mean they are experts in harnessing their full mindfulness potential, but if they come to my programs, I assume they are serious about wanting to penetrate the depths of their minds, and I owe them the most expert and advanced knowledge and experience I can muster. One of my students, who like many others struggled with the complexity of the material, once wrote the following after having been frustrated by a ‘dumbed down’ lecture she heard elsewhere: “I was wrong about ‘dumbing it down’ … and you were right not to. Should I just get used to saying that?”

I admit, my language used to be quite atrocious and unnecessarily convoluted, and I hope the rich feedback I received from many dedicated students and team members has improved this situation. However, there is no way around the challenge of having to create new categories, concepts, and sometimes words, when we penetrate new knowledge spaces that were not accessible before. You just cannot use the same vocabulary to describe and convey information about the mind as you do in daily life when you go shopping or picking up the kids from school. Having to invest effort in learning new concepts is therefore an inevitable part of the process of deep learning in any field imaginable.

If we want to learn, we just established that we have to get used to reading without the expectation of immediate understanding, and that is the easy part. What’s more difficult is to rein in impatience and desperation for immediate results. The point I want to make here is the distinction between basic and applied mindfulness, the same distinction science makes between the basic (pure) and applied sciences. Some of what I have been exploring in blogs and courses belongs to the reflective dimension of basic mindfulness that does not provide direct and immediate benefits in any technical or practical way, and yet is fundamental to the cause and intrinsically rewarding.

For the most part, people come to mindfulness with a significant degree of suffering, and they understandably hope for results. The fact that mindfulness has now penetrated the hallowed walls of medicine mobilized additional scrutiny regarding the efficacy and scientific rigor. ‘Evidence-based’ is the new buzzword, and when it comes to people’s health, one sure does not want to mess around with quackery. These expectations for evidence-based results are the ones inspiring applied mindfulness and everything that is written in this scientific stream. Applied mindfulness is practical and generally quite accessible, therefore also most sought after. It is about the exploration of what works within the boundaries of what we already know, and there are clear expectations of results. This is no different from the applied sciences, where strange, far-out concepts are used to put a working cell phone into your hand. Applied specialized knowledge tends to yield immediate effects and get expressed in declarative certitudes. Look at any advertisement for mindfulness or any invitations to engage in it – it all sounds very characteristically practical and results-oriented: ‘How to …. bring peace into your life; 10 tips for ….; immediate results with ….; here is what works: ….’.

With basic science, we enter a very different mindset. Scientists would be unlikely to argue against the importance of basic science; it provides the necessary knowledge for a better understanding of reality and all the material applied science needs to advance technology. But most people have no interest nor any relationship to basic science. Basic science usually has no direct relationship to and no direct impact on everyday life. It tends to be seen as an indulgent luxury to be pursued when you have nothing better to do. Why care about black holes other than for curiosity? Humanity has survived over 100,000 years without knowledge of them, so the argument goes. And yet, our civilization would not be where it is without the kind of inquisitive mindset that fuels basic science.

We can apply a similar distinction in our field; basic mindfulness as it would be called is equally important as its practical cousin. Its hallmark of reflection for reflection’s sake is profound, provides the kind of interdisciplinary knowledge we need to thrive, and informs the mindfulness journey at its very core. I am wondering whether in our mindfulness field we may be encountering similar challenges as the basic sciences do? Like the basic sciences, basic mindfulness does not show immediate results, and its benefits are slower to appear and less obvious. It raises more questions than answers and suggests restraint towards practical expectations. Hence, unlike applied mindfulness, basic mindfulness may as yet not get the same respect and be as popular, because it is about the exploration of elusive truths and of virtue in decision-making within the boundaries of the unknown, without any expectations of results or certainties about where we are going. Without it, though, none of the goods of applied mindfulness would be accessible. Besides, its engagement affords us an intrinsic sense of reward through peace and serenity.

Basic mindfulness may in fact be nothing more than the process by which we develop a human trait that only fairly recently has begun to find interest within the scientific community at large and psychology more specifically: Wisdom. Through wisdom, we grow and find peace, because through wisdom we refine our capacity to access the full potential of human consciousness.

Copyright © 2018 by Dr. Stéphane Treyvaud. All rights reserved.