Listening

Listen to your body, your breath and your nature;
Release blockages and transform unnecessary tension into vitality.

How do we learn to give the appropriate attention to what our body wants to communicate with us and listen to what it wants to do and has to “say”?

It begins when we step away from intending to do anything and almost casually pay attention to how our body breathes us when we’re not mentally interfering. Often we will follow the air going in and out and not notice the most basic elements involved when we’re simply sitting and breathing gently, through the nose. (There’s a brief and basic guide to this meditation exercise at the end of this article).

This form of meditation can start to develop into the form of an honest communication with our innate nature. Then we can start the process of emptying, which is a way of changing the perceived location of ourselves that influences our decision making.

The unconscious mind is based on our accumulated personality traits which are created by bias, memories, judgemental or emotional experiences that we have stored in our cerebral cortex and pass down to our nervous system, our muscle memory, our fascia and our breathing. By learning how to recognise and release the sympathetic nervous system’s fight or flight responses we can begin to transform the retention in our minds and the corresponding tension in our muscular systems.

Some scientists are beginning recognise and research ancient practices like Qi gong, yoga, dao yin, nei gong etc. Methods developed over millennia to help bridge the mind, body, breath/spirit existence, and are a lifestyle away from the Cartesian model of Western medicine and acknowledge an holistic approach.

Looking after our bodies is, of course, of major importance and the benefits are obvious. However there are thousands of apps and programmes to help us exercise our bodies that are still built on the dualist model of body or mind. What are our reasons for the physical activity? To be fitter, stronger, more flexible, lose weight, perform better, hopefully live longer? There are other, perhaps more vanity-based, goals too that make us feel more confident about our physical presence:

- getting that six pack,

- looking good on the beach,

- feeling unabashed in the bedroom,

- looking better in the clothes we might desire.

Sports men and women are also result driven: to go faster and win the race, score more tries, goals or points; and so on and so on. There are some people who have, through exercise, gained relief from their mental health problems; however, a comprehensive mental health framework for elite athletes has only entered serious consideration over the last decade or so as they are as prone to ignoring the mind body connection as anyone else.

Lots of people - including me in the past - put on headphones and listen to music or podcasts to motivate themselves, or even relieve boredom during a run or workout for example; but why the distraction? Not only can this lack of mindfulness lead to injury, but the question is why are we divorcing our bodies and our breath from our minds? What are we exercising?

Then there’s diet; there are plans and systems everywhere that are marketed as being the “comprehensive weight loss program “or the “ultimate health diet”- methods with a “guarantee “ to change your life in x number of ways and weeks. The trouble is that these solutions are advertised without us really knowing if they will suit our needs or not.

The vast array of choices can catapult us into either a dystopian or utopian realm of dietary practices and division: don’t drink or drink less alcohol, avoid caffeine or tea, avoid carbs, sugar; fruits and vegetables, or meat, are your friends or your enemies! Take or avoid supplements, consume more water, consume less… the possibilities seem infinite.

What or who to follow, what to eat and drink and why? There are certain food and drink choices that are deemed taboo for discussion, as they have religious connotations or origins, while others are based on secular or moral beliefs, and some are driven by allergies.

Our bodies and minds are loaded with so much fantastic valuable information that now we have companies asking us to pay them to decipher our DNA so that they can tell us (or advise us) what we should or should not be eating and drinking, what diseases we are perhaps prone to… the list goes on. However, it is our information - have we forgotten how to interpret it?

As we are led more and more by so much visual stimulation we are cajoled into a quagmire of information and background noise. Have we perhaps stopped listening, or have we forgotten how to listen to our own existence outside of our minds?

Perhaps a melodramatic but simple analogy is this; think about a conversation you’ve tried to have in a noisy restaurant where the visual bustle and ambient noise is so overwhelming that you can’t pay attention to the person opposite you. That person could be someone you care for deeply, i.e. a close friend or a loved one, or someone who is mutually interesting or attractive. The conscious and unconscious mind is over stimulated, over stretched and over stretching.

Our minds and personalities that “manage” us proceed to command the body as to what “it” should do, or even what we’re told to do by others. Our bodies and our breathing can be overwhelmed over time and become an unwitting victim of this dictatorship! (and as singers so can our vocal apparatus and speech)

“The whole organism is perverse because the brain is split from the belly and the head unconscious of its union with the tail.”

Alan Watts , “The Wisdom of Insecurity”

An introduction to a listening meditation exercise:

Sit comfortably in a chair, upright with your feet flat on the floor, if you are practised at sitting on the floor then do so if you wish.

Place your hands on your knees, palms down or in your lap. Gently close your lips with a slight smile and let the front part of your tongue rest behind the ridge behind your top teeth. Softly close your eyes. Allow everything behind your nose, nostrils and your eyes to soften. See how soft you can let everything inside go whilst the spine and head are upright. Breathe gently through your nose.

Don’t force the breath in nor push the breath out; hand the breathing over to your body and don’t try to cultivate the air going in and out.

At the beginning take two minutes or so to notice each part individually: first your nostrils for two minutes then the sinuses for two minutes then join them for two minutes. After that pay attention to your throat for two minutes and then join the throat with the nostrils and sinuses. Carry on this cycle with your chest, ribs, diaphragm and abdomen until you reach the pelvic floor (perineum). Once you’ve started to join all the parts together sit for as long as you like, casually noticing your body breathing you. Allow distractions to come and go and don’t play any music etc.

With practice you should begin to notice the small movements each part makes, pretty soon after that stage you might notice that they all move at the same time. This sort of feeling or listening to the synchronicity of your body can be defined as “ting”.

The essence of this specific exercise can start to evaporate if you bring in a visualisation of the parts, as this is when imagination kicks in, which is a form of intention, and then the action of “doing” will lead you away from the attention side of things.

Health and happiness,

Darren