You're not going to like this answer, but, if you want to get out of your head, you need to get in to your body. Now, there is an inherent flaw in this advice because by suggesting that to get out of your head you need to get in to your body, I am creating a separation between the two and the reality is, your head and your body are one and the same.
But for me, during meditation, they feel like two different things: a head that just keeps making thoughts and a body that, even when I pay attention to it, still feels like it's being directed by the head.
I described this to Paul in dokusan. I explained that I could breathe from my gut and up to my lungs, but that my breath seemed to get caught there. I also said that the only way I could get my thoughts to stop was if I held my breath or concentrated really hard on my breathing.
Paul suggested that I just keep coming back to my breath, instead of trying to hold it. And we talked about me trying to feel what I was feeling during zazen, to focus on what my body felt like instead of thinking about breathing a certain way.
Now, if Paul had said this to me before I took his class, I woudn't have known what to do. I would have thought, "Feel? How do I feel my body?" And I would have used my brain and my thoughts to try to figure out how to feel my body during zazen.
Luckily, though, I had been taking Paul's class and he had taught us some things that helped me to follow this advice.
On the first day of class, he had us sit zazen and asked us to breathe out. And then, he told us to keep breathing out, to breathe out until your body took its next breath. I think he used the words "let your breath breathe you" but I don't remember. So I did this. It was scary at first, I was afraid I was going to die, that I would stop breathing if I didn't breathe. But it turns out, your body will breathe itself if you let it, it's got a pretty good survival mechanism going on.
It took me a while to make this part of my regular zazen practice but it's what I do when I just can't get my thoughts to stop: I breathe out and wait. In some ways, I'm making my head give in to my body but also, I'm bringing my attention to my body, and that gets me out of my head.
But there are some other asepcts about bringing your attention to the body that, well, I don't know, help you, like, manifest the other parts of this practice: being present to the moment, experiencing reality as it is, and a sense of awareness rather than judgment.
Here are some things that people have told me about the body (as opposed to our thoughts):
Your body... can only be present, your body doesn't feel the future, your body doesn't make plans for tomorrow, it just exists, right here, right now. And it doesn't feel the past either, it can't. Unlike your head, it let's go of those things. Once it's done feeling it, it moves on to the next feeling and only experiences that one while it's feeling it, and so on.
Your body... experiences reality just as it is, it doesn't add anything to it, it doesn't bring any stories to it, it just experiences it. When you are cutting carrots and cut your finger instead, your body just bleeds: the blood inside your veins comes out through your skin, that's all. You, however, your thoughts, they're the ones who see blood coming out of your skin as: "OMG I'm bleeding!" and brings up all kinds of associations with bleeding (dependent upon your own stories about blood and your body and what it needs...)
Now, it is true that your body feels pain when you get cut: your body sends a message through your nervous system that says: Hey... over here... attention needed...
But, and here's where I think the non-judgment piece comes in, really all your body is saying when it feels pain is "Hey, over here, look at this."
But we, because of our causes and conditioning, place a value judgment on pain. We interpret pain (which is just a message of 'hey look over here') as a negative thing, as something to avoid, as something that causes us displeasure. When really, the message of pain is just a message, it's the same as tickle or itch- it's a sensation. We've just associated it with 'ow!' for so long that we don't even see that we've added on this piece, that our thoughts turned pain into something negative.
So, just FYI, I am totally with you here. I'm pretty sure that you're thinking: "Seriously? You want me to say that pain isn't bad? That I'm supposed to just accept pain as the same as pleasure? Heh- you're funny."
Yeah, I said the exact same thing when I was taking Paul's class. When Paul suggested that drowning was a mental construct, I laughed out loud. "Tell that to the drowning man," I wanted to say, but I didn't, because it was Paul. Paul just took a deep breath, and went back to his teaching.
But it stuck with me, this idea that we value things as better or worse, as good or bad. It coincided with another practice Paul had asked us to try: getting things done. I had started to look at my work in terms of getting things done: not getting them done efficiently, not getting them done better or worse, just getting them done in the way they needed to be done in that moment. And it worked, I got things done. Actually, I felt like I got way more done than when I made a to-do list or started to worry about how much work I needed to get done. Honestly, the amount of work I did was probably the same but because the judgment aspect of it was gone, it felt like my work was done.
And this has started to carry over in to my zazen. I have started to get in to my body during zazen and that has helped me get out of my head.
I feel for my breath: I feel my shoulders relax, I feel my stomach muscles release, and I wait. When my body inhales, I feel that too.
I don't analyze my breathing: I try not to think about where my breath is, I try not to think about how much I have breathed before another thought comes in to my head, I try to just feel my breath move through my body.
I don't judge my zazen (well, okay, I try not to judge my zazen). Instead of asking myself "Where is my breath?" or "Am I breathing right?" I feel my shoulders, I feel my stomach, I feel my breath. I wait for all of them to exist on their own, to not be controlled by my head, and when I feel that feeling, I try to come back to it. That's all- to come back to it, not to get it right, not to make it be a certain way, just to feel for that feeling.
And so I think that's why there's all this focus on your breath- it gets you to get in to your body. And from everything I'm learning about the body, it's kind of the zen master. It can only be present to the moment, it doesn't come with any stories, and it accepts everything just as it is. Man, how I wish I could do that.
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