The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning. Today’s class focused on bringing a compassionate and non-harming approach to mindfulness practice. We reflected on how fear and stress can actually change our brains and incline us toward aggression. Given the right conditions – including a little help from our friends – we can cultivate peaceful, compassionate mind states. As Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer writes:
Every day,
with every small kindness,
with every generous act,
we strengthen [the safety net]. Notice,
even now, how
as the whole world
seems to be falling, it
is there for us as we
walk the day’s tightrope,
how every tie matters.
Today’s practice was informed by the behavioral similarities between chimpanzees and humans. The recent docuseries, Chimp Empire, intimately portrays tender moments of social bonding. It also shows aggressive in-group behavior as members vie for status and violent inter-group clashes over territory. I could see a reflection of human dramas playing out in the world today.
In contemplating these similarities I listened to an informative interview with Prof. Robert Sapolsky entitled Primate and Human Wars. What’s Behind Our Aggression? I learned that the oldest part of chimp and human brains are exactly alike. Our survival programming centers around fear and an imperative to pass on our genes. We humans have the ability to create new meanings by inference and theory of mind. We can imagine and create, plan and remember. In the right social environments we humans can develop to become nonviolent. We can become kinder and more compassionate.
Some of us can engage in creative acts such as writing a poem like Rosemerry Whatola Trommer’s Safety Net. There is a magical alchemy in which Rosemerry’s creative feeling conjures words that travel to my heart and stir feeling. This human experience is one that I cherish.
