Emotion: the Fifth Circle

Posted on June 19, 2013 by circleofpractice

You may not think of your emotions as a domain of practice. I know I didn’t. I just thought life sucked.

But experience has taught me that emotions aren’t just experienced. They are influenced by practice over time.

I haven’t always believed this. For most of my life I believed my emotions were beyond my control.

I’ve seen psychologists and psychiatrists since college. I’ve memorized scripture about the peace of God that passes understanding. I’ve prayed. If there’s a self help book, I’ve read it. These all helped in their way, but there didn’t seem to be a “cure.”

I struggled with anxiety in particular. There always seemed to be some general nonspecific anxiety in my body whether I had anything to worry about or not. Nothing seemed to turn it off, not medicine, not scripture, not prayer.

Finally a friend referred me to an Emotional Polar Therapist. The practice seemed strange to me, but has proven effective. In addition to the office visits, she gave me various meditation and yoga exercises to do at home.

The short of it is I’ve finally found an off button to that anxiety. And I no longer take medication.

But we all are different. What worked for me may not work for you. But then again, it might. The idea behind a practice group is that we can learn from each other, from our mistakes and our successes.

Some questions for discussion might be:

How do I feel? Where in my body am I feeling my emotions?
How are my emotions affected by my diet?
What am I feeding my head? How does this affect what I feel?
What am I specifically practicing to improve my emotional health?

Body: the Fifth Circle

Posted on June 17, 2013 by circleofpractice

There’s a deep connection between the motions of the body and the development of the brain.

In the book Spark, John Ratey asserts that the brain developed as a result of motion or the need to move. He gives the example of a sea squirt, which has a rudimentary brain it uses to permanently attach itself to coral, and then promptly eats its brain.

It seems body comes before mind, at least developmentally. The mind functions best in the vessel of a healthy, moving body. Maybe the circles should be ordered as body, mind, and spirit.

In any case, our health and happiness is to a large extent dependent upon the health of our bodies.

Body, the fifth circle of practice, tries to answer these questions:

What am I eating and drinking? How much? Are they healthy? Am I temperate?
How can I keep body fit? How can I leverage my personality in choosing my exercise?
How can I leverage the mind/body connection?

Oftentimes those things that taste best act like slow poison in the body. They may have high concentrations of fat or sugar. Not coincidentally these are often “foods” that take little or no time to prepare; “processed” foods that are ready to eat, but have had all the life processed out of them. One of the best things we can put in our bodies is water; and most of us don’t drink nearly enough of it.

How can we exercise enough without eating too much? How can we wire the brain with the body in ways that promote a healthy symbiosis? How can we detox, de-stress, and renew our bodies and our minds? Are we competitive? Do we enjoy athletic competition, or avoid it?

Let motivation be your guide. If something turns you on and tones your body, pursue it. A competitive person might choose something like tennis over yoga, and vice-versa for a non-competitive person. Do what you enjoy, and you will look forward to it. Nerves that fire together wire together.

Mind: the Fourth Circle

Posted on June 13, 2013 by circleofpractice

Mind, the fourth circle of practice, tries to answer these questions:

What am I interested in, or curious about? What holds my attention?
What is good, or true? How can I increase my knowledge and understanding of the world?
How can I appreciate or create what is beautiful?

Once we begin to find our answers to the questions of the spiritual domain, we naturally begin to raise these questions of the mind. We want to spend our time, and find purpose and meaning in, those things that interest us, that pique our curiosity, and that fully engage our attention.

We want to pursue those things we perceive to be good, and believe those things we know to be true. It brings pleasure to the mind to grow in knowledge and understanding. It also gives opportunity to apply that knowledge and understanding in the world around us, from which come reputation, compensation, and power.

Beauty arrests our attention, whether by symmetry, or rhythm, harmony, or melody; whether visually, aurally, tactilely, or fragrantly. In some respects it is subjective; in others objective. We know it when we experience it. It fills us with awe, with longing, with desire. To appreciate it is to grow, like a plant toward the sun. To create it is to bear fruit that blesses the world, like an apple that falls ripe from the tree.

When we can answer these questions with clarity and confidence, then we have marked out an intellectual path before us as plain as the yellow brick road. To read about and apply those ideas which fully engage us, to grow in knowledge and understanding, to appreciate and create beauty, is to walk the Elysian Fields crowned with laurel.

Spirit: the Third Circle

Posted on June 12, 2013 by circleofpractice

I’ve written about building a practice group, beginning with the first circle of talk dancing and the conversational space, and answering the second circle question of why you have come to the group.

I start with the premise that everyone lives in the “domains” of spirit, mind, body, emotion, community, household, vocation, and finance. And while we may not have the same amount of focus or interest in any one of them, none of us can avoid living in any of them.

I believe the domain of spirit seeks to answer three questions:

Who am I?
How am I connected with other human beings, with life, and the cosmos itself?
How can I create a meaningful life for myself, and bless those I care about?

I think it’s important to answer these questions as best you can before moving on to the other domains, because it is easy to get lost in those other domains only to “wake up” one day and realize you don’t know who you are, or how you are connected with the cosmos, or whether your life has any meaning. Having no answer to these questions is almost the very definition of an existential crisis.

Notice that while I’ve said nothing about a person’s “faith,” it is faith that attempts to answer these questions. Our faith consists of the assumptions our life is predicated of; of our self-awareness; of our experience of connectedness or isolation, whether with God, or nature, or with other human beings; of whether our lives have any meaning.

The practice group can help us draw out answers to these questions from ourselves and from one another. We don’t need to be of the same faith, but we do need to respect one another’s faith. We don’t need to have the same answers but we need to try to understand each other’s answers, and challenge each other to formulate the best answers we can.

Begin the Adventure

Posted on June 6, 2013 by circleofpractice

An adventure takes us out of ourselves. It removes us from who we thought we were, and places us in situations we didn’t expect to face; demands from us a strength we didn’t think we possessed; gives us wounds we didn’t expect to receive, or thought we could recover from.

An adventure changes us.

How does a person with a day to day job have an adventure? We think of Jason and the Argonauts, or the Odyssey, not Bill at his 9 to 5 desk job.

To some extent, Harry Potter and his buds are in a situation like this. They go to school every day. They have homework. They play sports. Sure, they’re magical, but even the magic is routine in the sense that they have to learn and practice to be able to use it.

Harry had Voldemort and the Death Eaters to contend with. But our lives aren’t without fears or monsters, or even forces seemingly out to destroy the world. Our life is an adventure too, if we can only see it that way.

Our practice is preparation, an initiation to our own adventure. To some extent our adventure chooses us, but we also choose it. Each of us has that dragon in our minds that we need to face and subdue in order to move forward, to get past that gatekeeper and move on to the next level.

We each of us know what that obstacle is that is holding us back, that makes us afraid, or that keeps us from doing our work. The adventure begins when we start to practice, when we learn discipline, and endure the pain of facing our fears.

Children as Practice

Posted on June 3, 2013 by circleofpractice

Maybe nothing in life is more painful or rewarding than raising children.

As a parent, I wanted to teach my children all the things I had learned from life. Instead, my children taught me all the things I had yet to learn about it.

I acted as if my children were lumps of clay I could fashion into my own idea of beauty, of character, and of excellence. They acted as if I knew nothing of beauty, of character, or of excellence. They seemed to think my ignorance was only exceeded by my arrogance.

Nothing has humbled me more than being a parent. Nothing has taught me patience like being a parent.

Perhaps the most important lesson I’ve learned from being a parent is when to bite my tongue, which is often. When it comes to words, less is more. There is no quicksand like that created by an exchange of angry words. What started out as a misdemeanor is quickly turned into a felony; what was at first a consequence is shortly made into a bombing run; what was a life lesson becomes a lifelong scar.

The other important lesson I’ve learned is to accept who my children are, and not try to turn them into who I think they ought to be. This is a hard lesson, one I am constantly in the process of learning.

Sometimes it is hard to separate “the good,” “the beautiful,” and “the true” from our opinion of what those are vis-a-vis our children. The best I have been able to do is to model what I believe the “three verities” are, and to discuss them with our children when I have the chance.

Our children are a constant source of feedback to us, as we are to them. If we keep that channel of communication open, we can all grow as individuals, and grow as a family. But if that channel is closed, we lose the feedback, lose the connection, lose eventually our sense of family altogether.

Pain and Practice

Posted on June 1, 2013 by circleofpractice

Industry need not wish, as Poor Richard says, and he that lives upon hope will die fasting. There are no gains, without pains…(Benjamin Franklin)

Pain is an indicator. It warns us of disease. It tells us when we’re hurting ourselves or being damaged in some way.

It can also signal when our practice is leading to growth and when it is not. Muscle growth results from microscopic muscle tears that cause pain, but also result in muscle tissue that is rebuilt with greater density. We get stronger.

Deliberate practice focuses on those aspects of our work where we fall short, that we don’t do well, that are hard. This in turn creates frustration, a kind of psychic pain, or anxiety that we won’t accomplish the goal our practice is meant to accomplish.

Mastery is learning to stay with the pain long enough to achieve breakthrough to the next level. It’s learning to continually work the edge between growth and damage, between faith and discouragement, between where we are and where we want to be.

Working that edge is always hard, is always painful, because there is always a gap between where we are and where we are going. And working the edge means working on that part we haven’t yet learned to do, lifting a weight we haven’t lifted; working till the pain is nearly unendurable, but not quite.

That is hard to do alone. The experts nearly always have a mentor, a coach, someone to push and pull them along, to encourage them when they get discouraged, to build faith in them that they can accomplish their goal, to point out the best steps to take along the way.

But no one can do the work for us. No one can take away the pain for us. Pain is the price of breakthrough, of transformation.

Circling Domains of Wisdom

Posted on May 30, 2013 by circleofpractice

Have you ever wondered where wisdom is found?

Where are you and your group of seekers going to look for wisdom?

I’ve come to believe wisdom dwells nearly everywhere and nowhere; kind of like the idea of quality in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

There’s a scene in The Last Samurai where Tom Cruise describes with awe these Japanese people who have turned nearly every aspect of life into an art form; whether it’s arranging flowers, drinking tea, writing, fighting, or planting, everything is done with discipline and an eye toward beauty and simplicity.

I want my life to be like that.

I tend to think of my own life in terms of domains: spirit, mind, body, and emotion; social, vocational, financial, and household. I have “practices” I associate with each. I would like to discuss each of these in the context of a “practice group.” But how?

Consider for a moment the scope of these domains:

Spirit: scripture, prayer, service, worship, vision, planning
Mind: reading, writing, art, math, and science
Body: athletics, fine arts, martial arts, yoga
Emotion: meditation, aerobics, therapy
Social: family, friends, acquaintances, and affiliations
Vocational: formal education, certifications, continuing education
Financial: budgeting, financial statements, investing
Household: meals, organizing, cleaning, and maintaining the home

The point is, I think wisdom is present in each of these, but perhaps isn’t necessarily predicated of any one of them. Do you discuss all of these under the auspices of one group, or many?

The idea of having one group address all these ideas appeals to me, because I think one circle informs all the others. Franklin’s Junto addressed many of these, and was very active in the community. The goal is for the group to act on these conversations.