We had our Sunday Introduction to Meditation Class at Yoga Bliss. We practiced a guided meditation called Befriending Your Body from The Buddha’s Brain: the Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love and Wisdom. Neuropsychologist, author and instructor, Rick Hanson, suggests this practice to help build the neural circuitry of self compassion.
Rick observes how we commonly push our bodies and ignore their needs until they get intense. We get disappointed, frustrated, impatient or even hostile toward our bodies. As if aging, illness and perceived imperfections were a matter of choice. He warns of the big price we pay for these attitudes and behaviors since we’re not separate from our bodies. Their needs and pleasures are our own. He suggests that if we treat our bodies like good friends, we’ll feel better, have more energy, be more resilient and probably live longer. Why live longer? This is a question you’ve probably considered more deeply after experiencing a serious illness or the loss of a loved one. I find motivational energy in this question. It gives me a willingness to explore the mystery of life beyond the limiting attitudes of my fixed beliefs.
Rick’s book examines the “evolution of suffering”. He observes that a lot of our suffering is mild but chronic – we experience it as a background sense of anxiety or lack of fulfillment. He believes that we can understand the nature of our suffering in light of evolution by examining its sources in the brain. With understanding we can lessen the power of difficult feelings like anxiety and dependency. We can also use our brain’s capacity to continue the evolution of our miraculous prefrontal cortex improving our abilities to parent, bond, communicate, cooperate and love.
He describes three survival strategies that enabled us to survive but often lead to suffering in our modern age. These mechanisms are wired into our brains and nervous systems. They’re expressed throughout our bodies’ endocrine systems. The first strategy involves the tendency to create boundaries. Our brains create the illusion that we’re separate from the world and that our mental states are distinct. Yet we’re actually interdependent with the world. We come to know ourselves in relation to others; language and culture pattern our minds from birth. We grow with attunement and empathy. Our attempts to separate are routinely frustrated. In fact, when we perceive the world as “not me” at all we feel our vulnerability more acutely.
The second strategy involves our never ending attempts to maintain stability by keeping our physical and mental states in balance. He describes how our bodies, brains and minds contain vast numbers of systems designed to maintain equilibrium. Yet since the world is always changing there are endless disturbances in our bodies, minds and relationships. Each imbalance signals us to act consciously or most often unconsciously.
The third strategy involves approaching opportunities and avoiding threats in order to pass on our genes. As most of us know, “chasing carrots” can lead to a vicious cycle of disappointment. Even fulfilled desires can be unsatisfying, come at a high price and almost always come to an end.
Rick observes that our brains are built more for avoiding threats than pursuing rewards. Our built-in “negativity bias” is operating when our lightening fast limbic system perceives a snake on the trail before our prefrontal cortex realizes it’s really a stick. That same bias maintains a state of vigilance and sensitivity. We recognize fearful faces before happy or neutral ones. It’s as if this bias carries a weight. Rick sites research that indicates how negative events have more impact than positive ones. It’s easy for us to acquire feelings of learned helplessness and it’s harder to undo these feelings. In relationships it generally takes five positive interactions to overcome the effects of one negative one. It’s not hard to imagine that a negative regard toward our own bodies is potentially damaging and hard, but not impossible, to overcome.
Rick relates these strategies to the Buddhist teachings on suffering described as the Three Poisons of greed, hatred and delusion. Greed manifests as chasing rewards, grasping for carrots. Hatred is our avoidance or aversion. We want more pleasure and less pain. Delusion is our tendency to see ourselves as separate and try to hold onto to things that are always changing. In these conditions, our brains are always simulating “reality”. While our simulations help us survive, at some point in struggle we return to the question – what are we surviving for?
The promise of contemplative practice is the true happiness, love and wisdom that can arise in the present moment. When we can abide in the present moment we can recognize many of our self-limiting behaviors and beliefs. We can resolve to disengage from the thoughts, words and actions that keep us merely surviving, perhaps at a high cost. The pillars of contemplative practice, virtue, mindfulness and wisdom, are forged with practice. It takes resolve to swim against the currents of our survival mechanisms which seem so much more natural.
Rick states that we can nurture and strengthen the neural circuits of compassion. We can practice alone and together. Self compassion begins at home, in our relationships with our bodies. My body is aging and breaking, restoring and renewing as I write this. It has enacted my will faithfully for fifty five years. I think of it as mine – but really it’s part of the vaster web of life. So much of the “me” I perceive today has been developed in relationship with my loved ones. My partner has enabled me to grow in the generous conditions of acceptance and love we create together – life worth living.
You can find this week’s homework and other resources at:
Sunday Meditation Class 12 Homework