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An old tai ji quan (tai chi) teacher of mine used to say, "Yi dao ... qi dao ... li dao," which roughly means the focus of your mind (yi dao) dictates the way your energy moves (qi dao) which dictates the expression of your power. (This utterance came mostly when he noticed that I was looking distracted.) In other words, the ability to effectively direct your power is founded in the ability to effectively focus your mind.
Mental focus, known as yi, is one of the five aspects of consciousness defined in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). Each of the five is considered to be associated with a particular part of the body, and the yi corresponds with the digestive system. In a way digestion is a kind of inner focus. When food enters the body, the digestive tract focuses its attention on it – breaking it down to its elemental parts, extracting what’s useful, and absorbing it. It makes sense that we use the word “digest” to speak about processing and assimilating a new or challenging idea or experience.
Disruption of the digestive system frequently goes hand in hand with poor mental focus. The most common example is Attention Deficit (Hyperactivity) Disorder in people who have a poor diet and/or erratic food intake and/or food sensitivities and/or gut imbalances.
There are two main patterns of digestive imbalance as it relates to mental function. The first is poor assimilation of the vital nutrients in our food, leading to a state of deficiency and a “malnourished mind.” The second is the development of phlegm, which makes us cloudy-headed and may further impede the assimilation of nutrients. The Chinese medical use of the word "phlegm" here denotes a much broader concept than simple mucus. Phlegm is anything that impedes our flow or accumulates in us but serves no functional purpose, such as plaques, cysts, excess body fat, or any other similarly tenacious “gunk” in our system. It may be tangible or intangible, and it doesn't go away easily.
Phlegm can form as a byproduct of impaired digestion. Sometimes it develops when we’re exposed to foods that irritate the body – similar to how an oyster secretes pearl material when it’s irritated by a grain of sand. Other times it develops because something else disturbs the digestive process (such as trying to digest too much mental material while trying to digest food, or eating while the eating, nervous system is activated by stress), leading to incomplete assimilation of nutrients and excretion of waste.
TCM’s notion of a digestive origin for mental disturbances is shared by Ayurveda, the traditional medical system of India, which goes so far as to say that all health problems originate in the gut. Recently these millennia-old concepts have been corroborated through our emerging understanding of the gut-brain axis – the complex interplay between the gastrointestinal tract, its microbial population, and the central nervous system.
Let’s look at some ways we can improve digestion for better mental health.
- Choose nutrient-dense foods. Support high-quality thinking with high-quality nourishment: fresh vegetables, nuts and seeds, clean proteins (free range omega-3 eggs, organic grass-fed dairy products, sustainably grown oily fish, small amounts of pasture raised meat), whole fruits, and a little whole grain. Limit your intake of fried foods, sweetened foods, and flour.
- Avoid foods you’re sensitive to. One of the most common symptoms of eating a food that’s incompatible with your system is lower energy and less-sharp thinking. Keep a food journal and track of any foods you don’t thrive on. If it’s hard to determine, consider doing an elimination diet or elemental diet (powdered, hypoallergenic meal replacement) to clean out and then systematically reintroduce foods.
- Eat in a slow, relaxed, conscious way. Unlike filling up your gas tank, which you want to be as fast as possible, eating isn’t merely a “fill up” – it’s also a way to tune in, to savor, to be grateful, and to consciously nourish your mind-body. There can be a vast qualitative difference between a rushed meal you barely pay attention to versus one you enjoy to the fullest. Get media out of the eating space. Set your stresses aside. Stay connected to the act of eating.
- Stop eating before you’re full. Stop eating before you’re full. Stop eating before you’re full.
- Try bitters. Bitter digestive-stimulating herbs have the dual effect of toning the digestive tract and clearing toxins and phlegm. Bitters as cocktail mixers are experiencing a surge of popularity, so there are more blends available than ever. I recommend a mixture of pure bitters such as gentian, rhubarb root, myrrh, Peruvian bark, goldenseal, yellow dock, barberry, or Oregon grape root with some aromatic carminative spices (promoting assimilation), such as citrus peel, anise, fennel, caraway, cardamom, or ginger. Take a squirt before and/or after each meal in a little water.
- Move a little after meals. A walk is perfect. This helps promote assimilation.
- If you need extra support, consider a good digestive enzyme blend. These supplement what your pancreas produces (and won’t cause your body to produce less) and help in the breakdown of food for better absorption. There are many good products out there. Two of my favorites are DigestZymes made by Designs for Health and Digest made by Transformation Enzymes. Take some at the beginning of each meal. Sometimes they make a remarkable difference.
Interestingly, the connection between digestion and mental function works both ways. Not only can impaired digestion contribute to diminished cognitive function, mental and emotional disturbances can also contribute to poor digestion. Worry, in particular, is considered taxing to the digestive mechanisms in TCM because it habitually engages the digestive mechanisms as you “chew” on problems. If you can make mealtimes a ritual in which you always take a break from thinking about stressful things, you’ll not only enjoy your food more, you’ll also derive greater benefit from it.
Be well,
Peter
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When I first delved into cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) as a psychology major, I remember thinking, “This is an evolution for humans.” CBT focuses on examining and challenging one’s thoughts and beliefs, changing related behaviors, and building coping skills and emotional regulation.
Of course, there is a long philosophical tradition of examining the nature of human thought and behavior, but the advent of cognitive and behavioral psychology in the past couple centuries infused these concepts into mainstream culture in a profound way. It’s now common for people to talk about their thoughts as something separate from themselves, and to routinely employ behavior modification techniques in all areas of life.
I had a mentor in my early 20s who was a big advocate of CBT, and at the time I told her I had been exploring methods for healing the memories of traumatic events. I felt both rebuffed and inspired when she said, “You’re wasting your time. We don’t need to go back and relive our childhood or spend the rest of our life lying on some shrink’s couch analyzing everything that ever happened to us! All that matters is, right now, are you going to be at the mercy of your thoughts and automatic behaviors, or are you going to manage whatever comes up in a conscious, intentional way?”
I’ve thought a lot about this in the decades since. My mentor was of the mind that we don’t need to figure out why these painful or dysfunctional patterns keep coming up, we just need to change our response to them, and eventually we’ll transform our psychological makeup in a permanent way. I believe there is real value to this approach, and also . . . sometimes I think we need to go back.
When it comes to our healing and growth, here are three good reasons to revisit your past:
(1) If you’re constantly managing your response to a recurrent pattern, it might be more efficient to get to the root of the pattern and dismantle it (or at least mitigate it) so that it doesn’t come up much, if at all. Of course, you can also use cognitive and behavioral strategies if it does arise.
(2) There is potential for deeper self-awareness, insight, and growth through visiting your past and coming to understand the factors that went into making you who you are. These are opportunities to forgive, correct misunderstandings, reframe our stories, and revise or erase beliefs. While it’s totally possible for many people to be happy without going there, it’s probably not possible to be self-actualized without making peace with your past.
There are some caveats. Analyzing your past can be taken to a self-indulgent degree. It can retrigger old trauma. And most common, it can make us feel worse as we work through it (and experience it without resistance, perhaps for the first time) – though this usually gives way to greater freedom. Thus, it’s important to do this work when you’re feeling relatively stable, with a clear sense of why (what you hope to accomplish), and with the tools and/or support to do it in a way that’s likely to turn out well.
(3) Finally, some people seek total liberation from our programming, i.e., the ego. Once this urge awakens in us, it often never goes fully back to sleep. If you’re in this boat, you may find value in recapitulation.
I read about recapitulation in a Carlos Castaneda book when I was 18 and it seemed unfathomable. Castaneda, a Peruvian anthropologist-turned-apprentice of shamanism, was instructed by his teacher to write down his entire life story, from his very earliest memories, including every person he had ever met. This process, he was told, was necessary to free him from his worldly attachments. It took him years. I remember thinking, “I could never do that.”
Since then, I’ve encountered various forms of recapitulation in my other studies of shamanism, and I now feel it’s more doable than I previously believed. Could it take years? Absolutely. But you’ve got time, and it’s not an all-or-nothing proposition. Every time we release some piece of baggage, it’s like dropping a sandbag from a hot air balloon. We’re that much lighter and freer – even if we’re not “done.”
As we go through our history, we find countless moments that have a certain weight or charge. They exist in a state of incomplete resolution. Taken together they have a powerful influence on how we show up in the present. They can make us dwell in the past and fear the future. They can cause us to live within a fraction of the spectrum of what’s possible. In short, they limit our freedom. As we loosen our history’s grip on us, we thus loosen the grip of our ego, and we more readily access our true essence and potential.
I stumbled upon my own recapitulation process while doing somatic releasing practices. In a nutshell, all our history with a charge – everything that doesn’t sit neutrally in us – can be experienced through the body. There is a physical expression and felt experience to all of it. And in willingly visiting it, experiencing it without resistance, and accepting it, we promote its resolution.
If this is unfamiliar territory for you, just try this: Bring up something about your current life or your past that you wish were different. While holding this in mind, expand your awareness to include what you feel in your body. You will perceive a certain unease. As you meet it and even invite it, the unease loosens. (Sometimes this takes a little practice, especially if you’re not accustomed to feeling your feelings. If you’re interested in diving deeper into this process, check out our workbook called Freedom.)
When we do this work we inevitably find layers of holding. We release one layer and discover another layer, and so on. In my case, I began to recognize the layers faster than I could process them, so I started writing them down. Hundreds of cords, linking me to my past, pulling on me, distorting my present self. The list grew at the same rate that I crossed things off it. I’m not nearly done, but I feel much lighter.
I’m not saying a person can’t show up in a clean and authentic way until they release every conflict or resentment they’ve ever had. What I mean is that a thorough recapitulation facilitates ego liberation – something that’s beyond the scope of CBT and, frankly, not of interest to most people.
In my own process, I found that I was sometimes inspired to move my body in certain ways to assist the release of a sticky pattern, which is an integral part of some somatic therapies. Interestingly, it’s also a technique used in shamanic recapitulation. As Sandra Ingerman and Hank Wesselman explain in their book, Awakening to the Spirit World, we can facilitate the “unraveling” of a memory (or the emotional charge attached to it) by spinning. This can also be accomplished by turning the head or twisting the body from side to side, and the authors say they believe this is also why EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) works. They recommend spinning or turning while breathing deep into the memory and its associated emotions, accepting it, and intending to release it.
I believe recapitulation also occurs to some extent automatically, especially when we’re ready for it: in dreaming; in meditation, when we are sometimes spontaneously presented with something from the past that needs to be “cleared”; in yoga and exercise; and very often under the influence of entheogenic (psychedelic) substances, especially when used intentionally as medicine. This is why psilocybin mushrooms are rapidly gaining a reputation as one of the most effective therapies for attaining peace at the end of life.
I’m curious to hear from readers about your experience with the different approaches I discussed. Have you used CBT, and did it help? Have you dug into your past to heal yourself? What methods did you use, and how did it go? Have you done a large scale recapitulation? What was the outcome? Please share.
Be well,
Peter
[post_title] => Are You Willing to Go All the Way Back?
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Of all the things one could do to be healthier and happier, I consider meditation to rank among the top practices on the list.
We spend most of our lives thinking . . . judging, worrying, processing, planning, pondering, analyzing, and rehashing. Most thinking isn’t bad, per se, but it’s an unconscious, incessant habit. We rarely recognize that there’s a difference between consciousness and thinking. Our minds are constantly trying to grab our attention and monopolize our awareness, and usually we give it away freely.
What’s the problem? Well, although we have some necessary functional thoughts – e.g., “I’m almost out of gas and need to refill the tank” or “I need medical attention for this severed limb” – most of our thinking is less intentional, and it tends to distance us from the here-and-now. When thinking becomes our default state, it’s no longer a choice. It’s like defaulting to being on your phone whenever possible.
The mind is constantly saying, “I have something important / tragic / interesting / worrisome / outrageous / unfair / juicy, etc. Give me your awareness!” Over decades of doing so, we forget who/what we really are; we most strongly identify with a collection of thoughts, beliefs, and memories. Further, in letting our thoughts define us, we impose tremendous limitations on ourselves.
In my opinion there are two fundamental points of meditation: (1) to take a break from the habit of thinking and doing (2) to experience awareness itself and remember what we are beyond our thoughts. This is the opposite of what most of us do all day.
Can we have awareness without thinking? Of course. As a short exercise, rest your gaze on something in the room or out the window. See it and experience it without talking about it to yourself (or talking to yourself about something unrelated). As soon as you feel your mind about to break through with a thought, pick up your attention and put it on something else. Do this for a minute or so, then come back here.
How was it? What did you notice? Could you feel the squirminess of your mind itching to get back in the spotlight? It’s almost like the feeling of being deprived of a drug. Why should it be so uncomfortable just to experience reality without thinking? That alone should tell us something is out of order.
While there are innumerable meditation techniques, I think it’s always worth coming back to the basics. We’re taking this time to experience awareness without thinking. We’re not trying to manipulate ourselves into a spiritual state or make something mystical happen. We’re just giving the mind a rest and basking in the space that opens. Even the psyche can eventually experience it as a great relief.
This form of meditation is a bit like putting a child to bed. You’re sitting next to their bed and they sit up and say, “I forgot my water bottle on the playground!”
You lovingly rest your hand on their chest and say, “It’s ok. You can rest now.”
A few seconds later they sit up again. “Guess what happened at lunch?”
You lovingly rest your hand on their chest and say, “You can tell me later. For now, you can just rest.”
A few seconds later they sit up again. “What if Mason tries to take my money again?”
You lovingly rest your hand on their chest and say, “Later we’ll make a plan. But right now, you can rest.”
This is what you’ll do every time your mind brings up a thought. Gently and firmly say, “No, thanks,” or “You can rest now,” or “Take a break,” or “There’s nothing to attend to” or, more simply choose not to give it your attention. Even when the thought is something like, “I haven’t had a thought in like two minutes!” Every thought stream starts with you latching onto it. Unlatch.
Over time, you may notice that giving your attention to a thought takes you out of a state of peaceful stillness. Or it’s like profoundly shrinking your focal point from a vast openness to a tiny idea. With practice and repeated recognition, you’ll start to loosen the habit of thought-dominated-awareness. Your perspective will broaden – even when you’re not meditating. Thoughts will arise and instead of instantly running away with you, you’ll witness them in a context of inner space where there’s more choice about how to respond.
Please give it a try, even if it’s just for one minute. And feel free to share your experience in the comments section below.
Be well,
Peter
[post_title] => Meditation: Keep it Simple
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An old tai ji quan (tai chi) teacher of mine used to say, "Yi dao ... qi dao ... li dao," which roughly means the focus of your mind (yi dao) dictates the way your energy moves (qi dao) which dictates the expression of your power. (This utterance came mostly when he noticed that I was looking distracted.) In other words, the ability to effectively direct your power is founded in the ability to effectively focus your mind.
Mental focus, known as yi, is one of the five aspects of consciousness defined in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). Each of the five is considered to be associated with a particular part of the body, and the yi corresponds with the digestive system. In a way digestion is a kind of inner focus. When food enters the body, the digestive tract focuses its attention on it – breaking it down to its elemental parts, extracting what’s useful, and absorbing it. It makes sense that we use the word “digest” to speak about processing and assimilating a new or challenging idea or experience.
Disruption of the digestive system frequently goes hand in hand with poor mental focus. The most common example is Attention Deficit (Hyperactivity) Disorder in people who have a poor diet and/or erratic food intake and/or food sensitivities and/or gut imbalances.
There are two main patterns of digestive imbalance as it relates to mental function. The first is poor assimilation of the vital nutrients in our food, leading to a state of deficiency and a “malnourished mind.” The second is the development of phlegm, which makes us cloudy-headed and may further impede the assimilation of nutrients. The Chinese medical use of the word "phlegm" here denotes a much broader concept than simple mucus. Phlegm is anything that impedes our flow or accumulates in us but serves no functional purpose, such as plaques, cysts, excess body fat, or any other similarly tenacious “gunk” in our system. It may be tangible or intangible, and it doesn't go away easily.
Phlegm can form as a byproduct of impaired digestion. Sometimes it develops when we’re exposed to foods that irritate the body – similar to how an oyster secretes pearl material when it’s irritated by a grain of sand. Other times it develops because something else disturbs the digestive process (such as trying to digest too much mental material while trying to digest food, or eating while the eating, nervous system is activated by stress), leading to incomplete assimilation of nutrients and excretion of waste.
TCM’s notion of a digestive origin for mental disturbances is shared by Ayurveda, the traditional medical system of India, which goes so far as to say that all health problems originate in the gut. Recently these millennia-old concepts have been corroborated through our emerging understanding of the gut-brain axis – the complex interplay between the gastrointestinal tract, its microbial population, and the central nervous system.
Let’s look at some ways we can improve digestion for better mental health.
- Choose nutrient-dense foods. Support high-quality thinking with high-quality nourishment: fresh vegetables, nuts and seeds, clean proteins (free range omega-3 eggs, organic grass-fed dairy products, sustainably grown oily fish, small amounts of pasture raised meat), whole fruits, and a little whole grain. Limit your intake of fried foods, sweetened foods, and flour.
- Avoid foods you’re sensitive to. One of the most common symptoms of eating a food that’s incompatible with your system is lower energy and less-sharp thinking. Keep a food journal and track of any foods you don’t thrive on. If it’s hard to determine, consider doing an elimination diet or elemental diet (powdered, hypoallergenic meal replacement) to clean out and then systematically reintroduce foods.
- Eat in a slow, relaxed, conscious way. Unlike filling up your gas tank, which you want to be as fast as possible, eating isn’t merely a “fill up” – it’s also a way to tune in, to savor, to be grateful, and to consciously nourish your mind-body. There can be a vast qualitative difference between a rushed meal you barely pay attention to versus one you enjoy to the fullest. Get media out of the eating space. Set your stresses aside. Stay connected to the act of eating.
- Stop eating before you’re full. Stop eating before you’re full. Stop eating before you’re full.
- Try bitters. Bitter digestive-stimulating herbs have the dual effect of toning the digestive tract and clearing toxins and phlegm. Bitters as cocktail mixers are experiencing a surge of popularity, so there are more blends available than ever. I recommend a mixture of pure bitters such as gentian, rhubarb root, myrrh, Peruvian bark, goldenseal, yellow dock, barberry, or Oregon grape root with some aromatic carminative spices (promoting assimilation), such as citrus peel, anise, fennel, caraway, cardamom, or ginger. Take a squirt before and/or after each meal in a little water.
- Move a little after meals. A walk is perfect. This helps promote assimilation.
- If you need extra support, consider a good digestive enzyme blend. These supplement what your pancreas produces (and won’t cause your body to produce less) and help in the breakdown of food for better absorption. There are many good products out there. Two of my favorites are DigestZymes made by Designs for Health and Digest made by Transformation Enzymes. Take some at the beginning of each meal. Sometimes they make a remarkable difference.
Interestingly, the connection between digestion and mental function works both ways. Not only can impaired digestion contribute to diminished cognitive function, mental and emotional disturbances can also contribute to poor digestion. Worry, in particular, is considered taxing to the digestive mechanisms in TCM because it habitually engages the digestive mechanisms as you “chew” on problems. If you can make mealtimes a ritual in which you always take a break from thinking about stressful things, you’ll not only enjoy your food more, you’ll also derive greater benefit from it.
Be well,
Peter
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