Meditation for the Mentally Interesting

Well, the grand experiment with the diabetes drug Rybelsus is over.  I was in the middle of trying yet another workaround when I suddenly asked myself why I was trying to work around what was essentially the problem instead of just, you know, solving the fucking problem.  And it in no small way helped that the wife, the good friends and the psychiatrist had all said essentially the same thing.  So I quit taking it, but I still had to break the news to my Regular Doc.

For reasons I'm a little fuzzy on, my Regular Doc seems to think that this medication and the others in this family hung the moon and the stars.  She wants all her diabetic patients on this stuff.  And once in a while I do something smart, like take my wife to my doctors' appointments.  I think if Joan hadn't been sitting right there, she would have tried everything I could think of to keep me on it.  I was actually prepared to go in there and fire her, if necessary.  But that didn't happen, though she did sigh rather theatrically and say, "Well, at least we tried."

Yes, and we also managed to upend every facet of my life, almost get me fired, and make me mildly crazy.  But sure. We tried. Heck, maybe I'm the only one who even noticed.  

Anyway, there are lots of diabetes meds and they make new ones every day.  The latest is called Januvia and it seems to be mostly harmless. I think it maybe does make me a little sleepy, and the weird vivid dreams are a new thing.  I can't find anything about vivid dreams in the literature, though, so maybe that's Just Me.  My other meds are slowly starting to work again.  (It takes any semaglutide drug about 5-6 weeks to work your way out of your system, so I won't be normal until like mid-to-late April.) And as long as nobody sneezes or anything, everything should be fine.

Which brings me back to the whole point of this blog: Buddhism.  Or at least Buddhism with a sense of humor.  I don't exactly advertise that I'm a Buddhist, since it's not an evangelical kind of thing, but some people do know this.  And I get this a lot:

"You meditate, right?"

Right.  I'm a Buddhist.  We do that.

"Well, like how? Because I've tried it and I can't sit still and my brain is racing around from one thought to the next and I can't focus on anything."

Oh, honey.  I have three (count them, three) neurological pathologies, for which I'm medicated.  A lot.  My brain acts like a highly emotional cocaine-crazed weasel at a rave.  

Now, in most blog posts, the author would say, "And if I can do it, anyone can do it" but this is not most blog posts and I try not to say stuff like that. The older I get, the more I see that however typical you think your experience is, it's really not typical at all.  It's a big mistake to think that "everybody" knows about the Constitution or continental drift or evolution, or believes in science or vaccines or even that the President of the United States should maybe not be a raving criminal madman with advanced dementia who's ready to sell nuclear secrets to anybody who'll pay his legal bills.  It's too big a world and there are too many of us.  Besides, not all of us grew up bipolar/ADHD in a Scandinavian Lutheran family in Salt Lake City in the 1970s.  (And if you did, my sympathies, and we should really compare notes.)

That said, however, most people can learn to meditate, one way or another.  And did you know there's more than one way to meditate?  You don't have to sit crosslegged on the floor and chant om mani padme hum for an hour.  You can even get up and move around.  Yes, I'm serious.  Read on.

Really quickly, the benefits of meditation:

• Reduces stress
• Helps concentration
• Helps with depression and anxiety
• Bolsters self-confidence
• Improves sleep and brain health
• Helps with pain
• Helps with addiction issues and cravings
• Decreases blood pressure
• Makes you look cool 
• Helps you pick up girls

Okay, I'm not sure about those last two.  The rest are backed up by science, though.  Here's a nifty Web site from the National Institutes of Health that links to some of the major studies.  

Now, for most people, meditation does mean sitting on a cushion or a chair, getting comfortable, and focusing your consciousness on a single point.  That's usually a chant, like om mani padme hum, or if you're Christian, maybe Christus mecum est or even Jesus loves me.  If you realize you've drifted away and are lost in thought, you just gently come back to your point.  Yes, you will do this over and over again.  But over time, like a long time, like probably a year, it does get better.  Your mind will be quieter and the other benefits of meditation will start to appear, too.

But: A lot of people don't like sitting still.  Or they can't sit still.  Or they maybe could sit still, but they'd be basically forcing themselves to sit still, and kind of the point of meditation is that it's supposed to be gentle and not forced.  (Which is why I can't figure out in some of those kung fu movies why the meditation master whacks you with a stick when you start falling asleep.  I mean, that's kind of the antithesis of meditation.)  So here's something else:  Walking meditation.

In walking meditation, you walk a slow path from one side of the room to the other, or one side of the yard or the other, and back.  If possible, go in a circle.  If also possible, take your shoes off so you can feel the earth beneath your feet.  (Please don't do this if you might step on an ant hill or a Lego.  Being in pain or needing an Epi-Pen is not conducive to meditation.)  Take slow steps, not fast ones, and take the time to actually feel the earth under your foot.  What does it feel like?  Is it cool? Warm? Hard or kinda soft?  How does it press into your foot?  How does your foot feel after touching it?  What's the space like between one footfall and the next?  Hopefully you are getting the idea.  The meditation focus in this case is not the chant but the sensation of your feet touching the earth. 

Thich Nhat Hanh, who was my guy, once wrote that he practices walking meditation in airports.  Yep, he said airports.  Speaking of antitheses to meditation.  Airports are full of stressed-out people having the worst days of their lives trying to get from one point to another point, sometimes for fun but sometimes also for really icky reasons. Anybody who can practice walking mediation in an airport is definitely a Zen master.  (Did I mention Thich Nhat Hanh was a Zen master?) I'm not saying you should try meditating in an airport, especially if you're new to it, but maybe, if you are not late, you could try not walking as fast.  Taking a little more time to appreciate all the different people and the stuff that goes on.  Look at the colors and the different kinds of lights and especially the kids.  The great thing about kids is that they always are who they are no matter where they are, at least until they turn five and have to start being like all the other kids.  In I think 2002 I was at an airport in New York City to catch a flight to London and there was this advertisement that was shining colored lights all over the floor.  This three-year-old boy from I think China chased the lights around and stepped on them for like forty-five minutes.  This still makes me smile.  Especially since his parents didn't grab him and say (in Chinese) "Come on, we're going to be late" but just let him keep doing it until he got tired.

Another way to practice meditation is by doing yoga.  Yoga gets a lot of press and it's sometimes kind of pricey, but check out your local Y or LA Fitness or equivalent.  What yoga basically is, is stretching exercises, but they are exercises done mindfully, with all of your focus.  In this case you'd be focusing on the particular body part you're stretching, how that feels, how to push the stretch a little bit farther if it doesn't feel right or rein it back in if it's gone too far.  Disclaimer: I can't stand yoga.  Too slow-moving, too much holding still and I can't get into a lot of the positions because of my knees.  That said, though, I know people who swear by it.  And I will grudgingly admit that I've had some success at chair yoga or yoga classes for disabled folks.    

Other forms of kinetic meditation include things like doing the dishes meditation, or if you like, sewing or knitting meditation.  Any simple activity that you can put your whole mind into works great for this sort of thing.  Knitting and sewing are particularly good because the repetitive hand movements are very soothing.  (I'll bet you didn't know your grandma was a Zen master.)  Doing the dishes meditation is also good, and it gets the dishes clean too.

Sports meditation is something I do when I'm swimming.  (I haven't talked about swimming much in a while but I swim.  A lot.  I used to be a marathon swimmer, and who knows, maybe I can be again.)  I put the focus on the swimming muscles, usually one at a time because there are a lot of them and I can't concentrate on all of them at once.  Maybe for the first lap I'll focus on how my shoulders come around.  Then next time the leg muscles and the extension of the feet.  Then the third time maybe hand position or head position or something like that.  Not only is this meditative, it makes me a better swimmer, too.  I've also heard of runners, cyclists and other kinds of athletes talk about doing this sort of thing.  I mean, I guess you could go out there and just, you know, let your mind drift around, too, but if you're working on your focus, it's gonna help you in every area of life.  And it's not like there's plenty of time to drift around later.  You know, like during that 9 am meeting.  

The point of meditation, though, is that it's a practice.  If it's something you do every day, for ten minutes a day, you're going to have a better experience than if you do it once a week for an hour.  But hey, if all you have is once a week for an hour, do it then.  All meditation is good meditation.  Bad meditation is good meditation.  Once, manic as hell, I went bouncing into a retreat led by the late great Brother ChiSing.  I boinged down the aisle of this church like a grasshopper, dropped onto one of the cushions, and said, "Hi!!" I could see him trying really hard not to roll his eyes.  Believe me, there was no good meditation that day.  But because bad meditation is good meditation, I got something out of it anyway.  

This I promise you:  If you meditate every day for a year, even if it's only for ten or twenty minutes, you will be a different person at the end of that year.  Fewer things will bother you.  Your stress will be lower.  You won't freak out so much about small things.  People around you will notice that you are nicer to other people. That you will do weird things like ask them how they're feeling.  I know this is true because I've seen it happen, both to myself and other people.  

So, anyway, I'm going to send you to Thich Nhat Hanh's how to page.  There are plenty of other ones if this one doesn't do it for you.  There are also some apps.  My favorite is Insight Timer, but there are also calm, Ten Percent Happier and many others. It doesn't really matter where you go or what kind of instruction you get, though I do think instruction is a good thing.  What's important is that you do it at all.  Yes, even if you are mentally interesting.  Cheers!