Going Up
I. As is true with many people, lifting my mood is synonymous with exercise. The endorphins high and the sense of well-being that I get from taking care of my body through running, biking, weights, basketball, rock-climbing and swimming are essential for my sanity—especially during winter in the Northwest.
Lately, my core practice has been jogging in the morning. I often wake up in a fog, and don’t want to even think about doing anything, so therefore I have learned to completely disregard what my mind tells me as I come to grips with daylight. Instead I go into this autopilot mode where, I pop out of bed throw on my maroon shorts, grab my headphones and dash outside into the brisk near freezing air the other part of me has time to protest.
These morning jogs put some hair on my hairless back. I tend to listen to aggressive “GO GET SOME” 90’s alternative bands like Smashing Pumpkins, The Offspring or whatever else is on my mp3 player. This driving music has a profound empowering effect on my consciousness. It gets me in touch with the archetypal warrior inside of me, which gets me to push myself hard, and ensures that I come back to my apartment exhausted but invigorated. This is a very dynamic feeling. I notice that when I honor this morning ritual that by and large I am more effective and efficient throughout my day.
II. My other main mood lifting activity is playing guitar and making music with my roommate Lane. Objectively speaking, in terms of skill I am a certifiable amateur, having just barely have crossed the threshold into the category of “decent.” Lane is a lot better than me, he plays the lead riffs and I keep the rhythm.
What I really appreciate about Lane is that he inspite of his superior talent, he always is listening me, incorporating my strumming and like Magic Johnson for the Lakers, making me sound better than I actually am. There is that special chemistry and synergy between us; every now and then our eyes will lock and we will both be wearing the same slightly devilish, foolish grin on our faces. Such are moments of total ecstasy. It makes music a lot of fun and inspires me to do more practice on the side.
Coming Down
I. Mindfulness Meditation (often referred to as “Sitting Practice” or vipassana) is a main pillar of my life. Sitting practice is about being open, aware, relaxed and receptive with whatever thoughts, emotions or sensations are arising in one’s consciousness. It is the practice of seeing clearly and staying connected with the moment even when feeling of pain, anger, sadness, knee pain or frustration is present (when otherwise the mind’s inclination would be to dive head first into distraction).
Of the many benefits of this practice one of the main ones for me is that the more that I sit, the more I realize that the afflictive emotional states are just as transient as the moments of bliss and ecstasy. So experiencing this first hand helped me to let go of agonizing about causes or conditions that are beyond my control. As a result of this perspective, I notice this translates into more spaceousness, flow and ease in going about my daily activities.
One of my favorite quotes regarding meditation practice is by a famous Thai Meditation teacher, Ajahn Chah. He says,
“A little practice, a little peace. A lot of practice, a lot of peace.”
For me, that pretty much sums it all up.
II. The other main meditation practice of mine is taking baths. In life I’ve found that few things can satisfy my soul and ease the weight of the world like a good soak in the tub. At the end of the day, to soak in darkness and allow for relaxation to arise naturally goes beyond words. For me, the main difficulty is remembering to do it. Sometimes stress can make me believe that I don’t have time to relax, when in fact the opposite is true. When I see reality clearly, I know that in consideration of this finite lifespan, I don’t have time not to relax.
Activity 2: Do Unto Others
Aside from being a student, one of the main things that I do is work as a massage therapist. Working out of a home studio (Berkeley, CA) this summer I was making around $70-80 for an for an 60-90 minute bodywork sessions, which was quite a lot of cash, relative to other hourly wages of people my age (I’m 21 years old). In recent times however, I haven’t been getting a lot of paid work, and as a result I didn’t practice much bodywork for awhile.
Not being engaged in massage had a drastic negative effect on my overall level of happiness. In reflecting on all of this I realized that somewhere along the line—probably when I started to view myself as a professional—my ego got involved, and the money started to become an important part of the equation. Thus there was the sense that I had gotten out of touch with my deeper, original motivation, which was being able to help facilitate healing and people feel good in their bodies.
So with this as a premise, I decided to give my close friend a free 90 minute massage and I really put my full presence and heart into it.
As expected, this was a wonderful experience because I was able to express my love and truly be carried by the spirit of generosity. Specifically, it was such a relief to leave the pettiness of the money issue behind and really be able to devote my full psychic attention on the massage.
In thinking about it, the feeling that I felt reminds me a lot of the term “selfish altruism” that the Dalai Lama sometimes uses. This is supposed to point to the fact that in the act of giving is actually very pleasurable to the self, because we are taking delight in another person’s happiness. During these moments it seems that our self-concepts have merely expanded to include the “other.” Thus, it makes me wonder, is truly such a thing as a “selfless act”?
Regardless of the answer, thinking about generosity makes me realize that I want so to be acting from this place so much more. One of the ways that I plan to implement this change is simply to continue doing more pro bono massages for my friends.
It really makes me happy to benefit people in this way.
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