Tap, Tap, Tap

I bought the FitBit Charge HR primarily to track steps and sleep.  I've previously written about how pleased I was to discover it's phone call alert capability as well.  I thought I would share a few things that are extremely helpful (and NOT always easy to figure out) about it as well.

Let's start with the phone alerts I mentioned.  I'll describe that one in detail.  I have learned that the FitBit Aria will alert you to phone AND text messages, but the Charge HR currently only does calls.  This is a little silly, and clearly just a move by FitBit to promote the sale of different models.  While I'm not a fan of that kind of tactic, it is the world we live in.  So, if you have the HR, here's how to turn on those helpful phone call alerts.

Turn On Phone Call Alerts On Your FitBit Charge HR!

From the main screen of the FitBit iOS App:

• TAP on the device (Charge HR)
• TAP on NOTIFICATIONS
• TAP on the TOGGLE to turn on notifications

Sounds easy, but I had a hard time locating it.  Hope you find it helpful!

The other killer feature I found is the ability to map my walks, which includes the ability to control music on my phone from the FitBit! 

From the main screen of the FitBit iOS App:

Map Your Walks/Runs: First Turn On Location Tracking!

• First make sure you have location tracking on in settings.
• From the home screen of your iPhone, TAP on your Apple Settings (Gear icon)
• TAP on FitBit
• TAP on LOCATION
• TAP on whichever option you want (presumably ALWAYS)
• Be aware this will use more battery power due to the GPS usage!

Map Your Walks/Runs: Now Start A Map!

• TAP the HOME button on your iPhone
• TAP on the FitBit app icon
• TAP on TRACK EXERCISE
• TAP on the STOPWATCH icon in the top right corner
• And TAP the START button!  From that screen you can also control the ability to control your music.  This is a pretty cool feature, and allows you to delete one more app you don't need from your phone!

Another really valuable thing is to get the settings all correct.  Take some time, and review all your settings in the FitBit app.  Pay particular attention to the dominant arm or non-dominant arm.  Make sure your FitBit is set to the correct arm you are wearing it on.  This is how it knows to estimate your stride.  While this works pretty well, based on these settings and your height and age, etc, it's still very much an estimate.  A good thing to do is to take your wearable to the track.  One where you know the exact length, such as a football field track that you know has a set distance.  Literally walk the exact distance and COUNT your steps manually.  When you are done, divide the total distance by your number of steps. This gives you your stride length.  Once you have this figure, go to the FitBit Website - www.FitBit.com - and login.  Once there:

• CLICK on the SETTINGS GEAR in the top right corner
• Then CLICK on PERSONAL INFO from the menu on the left
• SCROLL down to BODY INFO
• ENTER the figure on STRIDE LENGTH
• SCROLL down and hit SAVE

Now your steps will be more accurate.  This is more important than you might think because I've checked mine and it's off by a pretty good clip.  My wife and I have noticed that our steps vary by quad digits, even though we walk the same distance roughly.  I checked last night, twice, and the steps it's counting are less than I'm taking.  For example, I counted 500 steps, and it showed 350 or so. I'll be taking this advice on mine very soon!

Lastly, be sure you save battery wherever possible.  Some of the items above may drain power more, so a good offset - if you care - is to turn off "ALL DAY SYNC".  The FitBit Charge HR will be set to this mode by default, and really you can leave as such if you don't mind charging every couple of days.

I have found that the promised "5 Days" of battery life is not realistic regardless of how you set things up.  And definitely syncing takes a toll.  At first, I combatted this by turning off bluetooth.  This means it only syncs when I turn on bluetooth.  This was very easy since you can just swipe up on your iOS screen and toggle Bluetooth from the dashboard.

Once I learned about All Day Sync, I went ahead and turned it off.  I just did this, so I'm not yet sure how it will affect things.  I'll get back to you on that.  Meanwhile, if you'd like to turn off All Day Sync, you can do so by going to the main screen of the FitBit app on your iOS device and:

• TAP on the device at the top of the screen "CHARGE HR"
• TAP on the TOGGLE switch for ALL-DAY SYNC so that it is in the off position.

DONE!

I hope these things will help you get more benefit out of your FitBit, and I hope it results in more health benefits for YOU!

When exercise doesn't seem like exercise

This week, I went on a brief mid-week vacation with my wife.  It was a great trip for many, many reasons but one nice aspect was that I did about 27,000 steps in two days - well above the 10,000 per day I shoot for - without ever attempting to exercise!

The first, and critical, part of this was booking a hotel close to the event we were attending.  Like really close.  Just a few blocks walk.  I only did this for simplicity's sake and had no idea at the time what it would mean for my step goal.

Since our event was only a few blocks, we walked to and from it.  And since we were staying in an interesting town, which we had visited previously but never explored, we decided to go out and do so.  Once again, because we were staying right in the center of things, we didn't drive anywhere, but walked instead.  We found all sorts of interesting sites to enjoy!

We walked around the city, enjoyed the local culture, checked out a museum, walked to a restaurant, and much more.  That evening was the show we were attending, and we walked throughout that.  Because we were walking everywhere, we didn't eat meals but rather stopped here and there for healthy local snacks. Because of the geography of the city, we climbed lots of stairways, and up more than a few hills.

All of this created the perfect recipe for a healthy couple of days:

• Eating lighter and healthier because of walking a lot
• Walking a lot because of being centrally located 
• Exploration as exercise (which saves time in the day as well!)
• Lots of stairs, and hills, due to location

None of this was done on purpose, and it's not a revelation of any kind, but I loved the fact that what seemed like a decadent vacation to us actually provided us with 50% more than our goal steps, with 100% more fun getting them!  I'm definitely going to do this with more volition in the future!

Bonus - Lost a few pounds in the last few days as well!

BAM!

Breathing in, I know that I am walking in the park,

Breathing out, I know that I am walking in the park.

I rounded the corner of the paved walking path of my local park, and noticed how they had recently trimmed back the undergrowth on the sides of the trail.  They cleared everything to the ground for six feet or so back from the path.  It's spring time, and this is something they do.  I immediately thought of all the rabbits, birds, and other creatures I see in this protective overgrowth while walking.  I wondered how this change would affect them.  I wondered how it would affect predators in their ecosystem.

And BAM! My brain suddenly did that thing where it connects seemingly random processes it was running in the background together and provides a solution or insight.

I realized that is just like any ecosystem, it's a balance.  One change to a factor in that system such as clearing the undergrowth, can - does - ripple across the entirety of it causing change.  Sometimes positive, other times negative, sometimes negligible.  But always change. If the change is minor, the ecosystem adjusts.  If the change is dramatic, it can cause collapse. And sometimes, even if the change is minor, collapse can happen!

The "BAM!" moment happened when my brain connected this thought stream to my health.  I had recently been pondering how - for the last several years - I had created and maintained a nicely balanced group of factors which made up my health/wellbeing.  When one of those factors was neglected (my exercise) for a year, things began getting all wibbly-wobbly in other areas. I gained some weight, started having trouble with sleep, and various other areas of my life.   

And walking in the park, on a lovely afternoon, I suddenly realized that my body is an ecosystem.  My mind is an ecosystem.  My body/mind is an ecosystem!  And when I let my exercise falter, I caused a ripple effect on my ecosystem.  It made me realize what I already knew.  Balance is a requirement for a stable ecosystem.  Balance is a requirement for my health to be good.  Balance is a requirement for my mind to be strong.  And balance is a requirement for my Body/Mind to be well. 

How many of my meditator friends out there have fallen off of a regular meditation practice, and suddenly found that things just weren't quite right? You're a little less patient, a little more edgy, or a little less mindful and you don't know why?  Then you meditate, and you think "That's what I was missing!"

And you think about that and then you think "How did I let this slip in the first place?!  I know better!"  And yet we do.  As I did with my exercise. Transforming energy, typically, is the primary function in an ecosystem.  If one aspect is out of balance, this transformation is also out of balance. Whether we are trying to break addiction, improve relationships, or improve our health the energy we are trying to transform is that of suffering.  

In a typical ecosystem, such as a lake in a park, your input is sunlight.  This grows plants, which feed animals, and so on, until we get the output which is life energy.  That's simplistic, I know, but it was a real eye opener for me related to health and practice.  If we are a practitioner of the Eightfold Path, and we let one spoke on the wheel atrophy, then the whole is weaker for it.  If we focus on one too strongly, and the others only get standard attention, the result is similar.  Only through balance, do we achieve optimal transformation of energy like a stable ecosystem!  

NET CHANGE = INPUT + OUTPUT + INTERNAL CHANGE

I realize I'm not discovering a cure for a disease here, but rather just making it easier to understand for myself and, hopefully, for you the reader.  It's these kinds of realizations that help us deepen our practices and pursuits.  This metaphor may not be the one that does so for you, but perhaps it will.  I know it widened the door of understanding for me, regarding my need to be consistent and persistent with my health efforts, as well as practice. 

So next time the path is feeling a little bumpy, stop and run a quick check.  See if there's any aspect of your ecosystem that is out of balance.  

One Week, Five Pounds, Sixteen Ounces

I've had my FitBit Charge HR for a little more than one week now and I have to report that I am SOLD! The web interface is just packed with information, the app is handy and easy to use, the device itself works extremely well.  It's all pretty simple and seamless. Best of all, it's working!

To my utter surprise, I'm stunned to say that the thing is actually motivating me in ways I wouldn't have believed.  First off, I've not missed wearing a watch in all the years since I started using a smartphone.  Now that I have the FitBit on, I expected to be annoyed.  Instead, I'm pleasantly surprised at how often I'm grateful to not have to fish out my phone just to see the time.  It fixed an annoyance I wasn't aware was there until it was gone! :)

Then there's the alarms and alerts.  The alarm is nice, because it's silent.  I can wake myself, without waking others which is very handy.  Moreover, I find I can use the alarms in other ways too such as reminding me to get up and move now and then when I'm working in my office, or to make sure I drink my recommended 16 ounces of water. The best alert of all has been the phone call alerts! I very often miss calls because my phone is in my pocket. It was a little difficult to find and activate, but once I did the FitBit Charge HR now buzzes and displays the CallerID info.  It doesn't sound like a big deal, but boy has it been helpful.

Most importantly of all having the ability to see my steps, and all of the other features, is keeping my goal of exercise front and center to my day.  It must be working too, because I'm eating better, drinking more water, and exercising daily again.  I've struggled to get that last one back for some time, so I'm grateful for this effect. In the last week I've started losing weight again, where I've been plateaued lately. Five pounds so far!

If there's any downside, I would say the cleaning of it is annoying but necessary.  The other is the very real dark side of seeing your steps all the time.  Before, I would always walk a distance or time.  Now I'm shooting for steps.  This sounds like no big deal, but it means that previously I wasn't worried about steps, and typically got in more than needed.  Now that I have it on my wrist and I'm seeing it real-time, I find there's a big desire to stop walking once I hit my goal, and be all "Well, I did it!" when I could easily walk a little longer or farther.  This isn't huge and is only a mind-game, and so far I've not let it happen.  I suspect the easy way around this would be to set a higher goal.

So, that's it.  A couple of weeks in and I'm already a huge FitBit fan!  I definitely recommend it if you're considering it and you're on the fence.

::Check, Check...check 1...1,2,3....is this thing on?::

I'm baaaaaaa-ack!

So, it's been just over two years since I felt compelled to write here. Up until a year ago, I was doing excellent work to my ongoing health.  Keeping all the weight off, still effortless. I was eating healthy and exercising.

Then my truck broke down. Returning to being a one car family, my exercise immediately suffered. It became sporadic. My eating continued very well, but as anyone who ever tried to lose weight has heard, you have to "eat right, AND exercise!"

As my exercise tapered off, my weight crept on. Not a lot, but more than I wanted. Slowly it climbed and recently it started to bother me.  Not the weight, actually, but the desire to maintain my health and the seemingly endless failures at trying to do so. I kept promising myself I was back at it, then slept in instead of walking. I swore I would go after work, and even packed clothing and changed for a walk, only to find myself at home not having gone to the park.

My view of all this has really been receiving a lot of my attention this last year as I've worked and practiced in the Refuge Recovery community.  I've definitely come to understand addiction much better, and how my food habits always have been tied to this.  But that's a lengthier topic for another day.

Today, I just wanted to post that I recently bought a Fitbit Charge HR and, thinking I was going to find it useless, I have been pleasantly surprised by the enjoyment, utility, and reinvigorating energy it has summoned in me.  Tonight, for the first time in too long I went for a good long walk, MINDFULLY. I've been walking sporadically as mentioned above, but this was the first time I revisited my old practice to the letter. I "invited my ancestors" as TNH says. I used it as a meditation, and I reveled in it.  And I asked myself..."How did I ever let this slip?"

I'll ponder the answer another day. Tonight I'm enjoying the rediscovery.

Finally, some good news about nutrition labels?

Well, I'm not sure if it will actually happen, but from the looks of things, the FDA is set to approve the first overhaul of the food label system in about 20 years!  This would mean several good things such as indicating added sugars, LARGE print for the critical info such as calories, and things like soda being sold in single serving sizes.

I would maintain that the best way to avoid concerns about labeling is to eat mostly whole foods and as little pre-packaged foods as you can get away with.  Failing that, this will be a nice change.

It's not a done deal, but they expect that it will be so.  By the end of the year, then two years to implement.  Very good news though, from what I can see.

CNN Article: Nutrition Labels Getting A Makeover

Zombie Processes And Navel Gazing

While holding and gazing at the slice of organic navel orange, yesterday, I tried to take my time and focus on how the thin skin of the slice felt.  It reminded me of when I was a kid and used to peel that skin off and eat the pulp like individual fruits, themselves.  I contemplated the smell, and the mist of juice, when I bit into it.  I chewed slowly and enjoyed the experience in a way I realized I don’t do as often as I did a few years ago.

As mindful eating went from being a new thing, to being a part of my daily routine, I realize that I started getting mindless about my mindfulness.  Being a techie, it makes me think of the unix world, where a process on your computer is satisfied but still persists on being there, it’s called a Zombie Process.  That’s kind of how we get with our eating habits sometimes.  We finish what we need to eat, but we don’t stop there.  We just keep eating.  We’re on auto-pilot.

It made me realize I was still being more mindful of my eating choices and habits than I used to be, but less present in the actual eating of the food than I was at first.  I realize I needed to get back the old “Beginners Mind” outlook.

This “Orange Meditation” was performed as part of our first M.E.A.L.S. (Mindful Eating And Living Sangha) group.  I read from “The Apple Meditation” in Savor, and then joined in the mindful eating afterward.  While the above description sounds nice, rest assured that just as often as I was enjoying the Orange mindfully, I caught myself chewing and swallowing mindlessly.  BUT, the important thing is that I kept coming back.  That’s where the magic is, after all.  In that moment we wander, we gain the opportunity to come back again as well.

I recognized, in this first M.E.A.L.S. meeting, that I consider myself to always eat mindfully, but I really haven’t been.  Or, more accurately, while I almost always choose my food mindfully, and even eat with a degree of mindfulness, there is nothing quite like truly eating with full mindfulness of the experience.  I’m really, deeply, grateful that people expressed an interest in starting a group such as this, and I look forward to seeing how it brings me back to a deeper focus on my health again.  While I haven’t drifted far, it’s great to be re-energized around health matters again!

The Apple Meditation

Need a good reason to stop eating meat?

I try not to beat the vegetarian drum too much, but jeez.  Just read this article...If you need a good jumping of point to go vegetarian this is as good a starting point as you're likely to find.  There's lots of other great reasons too.  I apologize if you just ate lunch...

CNN Eatocracy Article: "What Is 'Adulterated' Meat?"

I don't think you can push someone in to being a vegetarian.  It's a personal choice.  But I do honestly believe that if you start eating mindfully, and really work with compassion in your practice, I think eventually you will choose to cut out meat (for any one of dozens of great reasons).  And if not, I don't judge you for it, but I definitely appreciate your effort to at least explore it.  Best wishes whichever path you choose.

_/\_






photo credit: Alex E. Proimos via photopin cc

So, Men DO Lose Weight Faster Than Women...Sorta.

This article from CNN today is VERY timely for me.  As I'm headed in to the weekend, and the first meeting with the M.E.A.L.S. group, I've had this very topic on my mind.  So far, most of the people interested are female.  I have always heard, but never verified, that women lose weight slower than men.  I've seen this *fact* dishearten a lot of ladies early on.  In fact, part of yesterdays post was me lamenting that I worry about the people in this group having the same success I had.  So, today, when I saw this CNN article, it caught my attention.

CNN Article:  Do Men Lose Weight Faster Than Women?

So, the article confirmed what I felt when I pondered this:  Whether they do or do not, everyone's experience is unique and should not be judged against someone else's.  So don't worry about it! Just show up for them and yourself.

Anyhow, the article is well worth the read.

_/\_







photo credit: Arya Ziai via photopin cc

Looking back, I see you Mara!

I am definitely a story teller, as any of my friends would attest, but while I retell the past often, I don’t think I tend to live in it. At least not in a harmful manner or magnitude. Perhaps that’s a thin line. I’m not really sure. BUT, I am purposely taking a look back right now at this blog.

It’s very interesting to me, with the M.E.A.L.S. group starting up this Sunday, to look back at when I started the blog and review how I did it, why I did it, what I did, why it was easy for me, and most of all to me is how interesting it is to see how different a person I was then.

Those early posts bring up clear memories of the pain I was in, and the fear I was suffering from. I distinctly recall the embarrassment I felt on that flight to Canada I described. The utter shame at having to go in to the bathroom at the bookstore in Canada and dry off because I was quite literally soaked with sweat. (Also interesting is why that was embarrassing to me.  It was all in my mind...all had to do with how I saw myself, and fear of how others saw me.  If the same thing happened today, I wouldn't be embarrassed because I see myself differently now.  That's perhaps a whole other blog post one day!)

I marvel, still, at how easily I managed to lose weight. I had lost nearly half the weight just in the first few months, which is both testament to how large I was (I think you tend to notice faster loss when you are larger), and to how fast your body responds when you stop filling it with toxins. And make no mistake…fast food, candy, and soda are TOXIC.

But the most interesting thing to me is seeing where I was at mentally, as opposed to now. It’s hard not to chuckle at myself. I read posts where I talked about some of the self-helpy books I was reading, or a couple of the apps I was using, and I’m aware of how silly they seem to me now. This isn’t to say that self-help books and apps are silly…I think they serve a valuable purpose, and for sure were a huge part of what led me to where I am today. What I mean is….well, it’s kind of like an analogy I use quite a lot about the knowledge of a house.

When you walk up to the front gate of a house you've never visited, you can see the front yard. And that’s the only knowledge of that house that you might have. Then once you walk in the front door you become familiar with the foyer. You still know what the front yard was like, but now have knowledge of the foyer. And eventually you are familiar with the rooms of the first floor, but you still haven’t explored the second floor. If you never venture upstairs, you don't even know it's there.  Your scope of understanding is limited.

It’s like that. I look back now at what I believed in and thought I knew about life back then, and I’m amazed at how differently I view things now that I’m familiar with other parts of the house. And who knows…presumably, as times go on, I will look back and be similarly surprised at what I understand now, when I’m looking back at it from down the road. 

My deepest wish for the Mindful Eating And Living Sangha is that I will be able to help someone else explore parts of their “house” that they weren’t yet familiar with. Help them reach a vantage point that allows them to look back and see that when they thought they couldn’t do it, they just hadn’t “explored the house” enough to learn that they could!

I live and eat mindfully every day now, sometimes more so than others.  But, too, even as I undertake this re-dedication to mindful eating, I see that little shadow of fear that it won’t work for them as it did for me. To that little fear…I invite you in. I see you. I welcome you here and care about you. But please stay seated over there, out of my way, while I do this. And, whenever you're ready, I invite you to leave.  I’m watching you, Mara!

M.E.A.L.S. - Mindful Eating And Living Sangha

In 2010 I started this blog to capture my process of learning about Mindful Eating and Mindful Living (from the book Savor - Mindful Eating, Mindful Living by Dr. Lilian Cheung and Thich Nhat Hanh).  I lost over a hundred pounds, and became a vegetarian, and a Buddhist.  All of which have dramatically enhanced my life and, hopefully, some of the lives I touch.

Once the weight came off, and stayed that way, I kind of drifted away from this blog.  That’s mainly because I had written primarily about my weight loss and not so much about Buddhism.  When my life focus turned from weight loss to maintaining weight and exploring buddhism, I didn’t feel I had as much to write about.  Or, more accurately, I didn’t feel qualified to write about the things I was deeply experiencing at the time.  I was in a deep period of learning and exploration (and I still am) but over these past few years I’ve started a couple of Buddhist Sangha’s and participated or helped run several other groups of various kinds and I’m sort of feeling like I’ve come a bit full circle in a way.  I feel like if I re-read Savor (this will be something like my 4th time) I’ll get a whole different perspective on it now that I’ve been a Buddhist practitioner for a handful of years and because I learn best when I'm explaining or teaching others.

This time, I’m not only practicing the teachings from the book, but I’m helping others do the same.  I’m starting a group, local to me, that will study the book.  Sort of like a book club, but deeper than that.

I'm calling it M.E.A.L.S. - Mindful Eating And Living Sangha.  And I’m extremely pleased to have the support of Dr. Cheung as I launch this effort.  She’s always been supportive of my efforts personally, and when she heard that I was thinking of this, she offered some guidance and some incredibly kind words of support.

The year-long group will meet every other week and will:

• Recite the Five Contemplations
• Share a Mindful Eating Experience
• Read and discuss the book Savor
• Practice Mindful Movement

My hope is that this year-long grassroots-group exploration will deepen my own practice further, help others establish mindfulness as a way of healthy living, and - hopefully - encourage them to go out and spread the practice through starting similar groups the following year, and so on.  If successful, it could see a viral growth since those who complete the year, may hopefully create groups of their own and repeat the process, again and again.

I’ll try to get back to posting here along the way to track the progress of this endeavor.  When it’s done, I hope that this blog can serve as a blueprint for those who wish to replicate this process.

Best wishes!
_/|\_

ONE

What I want to write about here is so big and so complex, yet so simple that I don't know where to begin.  I think I'll start by saying that if you close your eyes, and sit quietly, bring your attention to your internal and away from the external...it is my hope that you will see - sooner rather than later - what I have seen.  That we are all connected, that there is no us or them, and that we are all ONE!

A beautiful human being that I am blessed to know gave me a journal.  It's one of several copies of the same journal.  Each has a piece she wrote at the beginning that explains how to utilize this journal.  It's far too involved to state the whole thing here, but her eloquent and wonderful idea boils down to having people pass these journals all over the world to friends near and far.  Each person writing a few pages on their idea of our Oneness.  Her idea is far more complex and beautiful that what I've just said, but that's the part that is important here.

So, with this in mind, I'm going to make an attempt to write my draft here, and then put it in her book and get it on it's way to another person.  I've been dodging this honor for well over a year because every time I try to think of what I want to say, my mind spirals out of control.  They say the mark of a great teacher is the capacity to express a deep teaching in a simple way, so that you understand it without an excess of explanation.  Thich Nhat Hanh is a master of this.  And so I will quote him here, and then go on to discuss the idea, thereby proving - I suppose - that I am not yet a great teacher.

No Mud, No Lotus.

When I first heard this, I loved it so much I bought the T-Shirt.  Really.

I also first understood it to mean something loosely like "You can't have good without bad."  And of course, this is exactly what it means.  But it also means far more than this.  Far more.  And nothing more.  See?  It's already beginning to spiral out of control with cryptic explanations that sound contradictory, but I assure you they are not.

A couple of years ago, after I had been practicing meditation for a year or so, I had an intellectual understanding of what you hear expressed in Buddhism as "Form is Emptiness, Emptiness is Form".  I understood this teaching of how there is no this, without that. How everything is in everything else, and yet it isn't.  Or how, as Thich Nhat Hanh would put it, when you look at a flower deeply you see that the flower is made up only of non-flower elements.  The flower is not a flower.  And yet it is a flower.  If you broke it down, you couldn't find the flower in the flower.  But about this time, I was walking one day for exercise, which doubled as walking meditation for me, when out of nowhere and for no particular reason I can point to, I stopped dead in my tracks staring at the sky like a dummy.

I had been struck, quite suddenly, with a deep insight or understanding BEYOND the intellectual, of what this means.  I can't even begin to explain this.  Better writers and authors than I have tried and not done a great job either.  The best I've read so far, is Brad Warner in his new book "There Is No God, And He Is Always With You."

I'll try feebly, here, to express it...but not too hard.  I simply can't.  I was walking, and practicing a nice teaching by TNH where he says to invite your ancestors (parents) to walk with you.  My Dad was a jazz musician and when I would do this, I would listen for the jazz in nature.  Not the regular sounds, the rhythmic sounds, but the irregular improvisational sounds.  The jazz.  The random dog barks.  The wind gusting.  The little kid screaming at her sibling.  Once I picked up on the music of non-music, I would invite my dad to hold my hand and walk beside me. I was listening for this biological jazz, when it hit me!

Jazz music, or actually all music, was a great way of expressing Form Is Emptiness, Emptiness Is Form.  Without the silence, notes would be noise.  Without the notes, silence would be noise.  Music is silence, silence is music!  Form is Emptiness, Emptiness is Form.

The moment I made this connection, the rest happened.  Like some kind of Hollywood special effect, but that only my mind was aware of (not something I could actually see), it was suddenly like a ripple went out from a stone dropped in a still pool of water.  As that ring expanded away from me, so did my clarity and understanding of No Mud, No Lotus.  Of our TRUE interconnected nature.

It is my direct experience that we are all connected to each other, to everything, everywhere, all at once, infinitely.  That's the most direct way I can say it, and I couldn't  have said that without hours of discussion with my best Kalyanamitra (spiritual friend) Kayla.  Without many dharma discussions in my Sangha.  Without countless podcasts, books and study.  And most recently without Brad Warner's best book to date.

The bottom line: As I stated at the beginning, if you slow down, sit quietly, and turn your focus to your internal experience - MEDITATE - I believe you will likely arrive at this same understanding.  You will likely see sooner or later that we can not afford, as a species, to continue living our lives as if our own endeavors are the only things that matter.  As if we have unlimited resources.  As if we do not need others to help us.  As if "we" are different from "them". As if, as if, as if.

We simply must awaken to this reality of Interbeing....return to our own TRUE experience...and begin living our lives according to the most basic truth of our existence.  That we are not "WE"....we are ONE.  If we do that, there is still hope for this world, and I fully believe that we will.

I hope that at the very least, this writing - feeble as it may be - will encourage you to think about this.  Encourage you to sit, maybe meditate, and to have faith, hope and love in the true nature of life as we know it.  ONENESS.

With the deepest respect for the meaning of the word, I say to you with absolute conviction - Namaste!

I love you,

GB

Did Nikola Tesla Eat Mindfully?

It's been a while since I felt moved to write a post on mindful eating, but this week I had a great visit with one of my favorite Sangha's and enjoyed a great reminder of the value of mindful eating WITH people, AS a Sangha (community).

As I'm coming up on the end of three years since I discovered "Savor" by Dr. Lilian Cheung and Thich Nhat Hanh, mindful eating is a part of my daily life.  I'm far from perfect, and too often find myself wolfing down my lunch because I'm in a rush, or buying a sweet dessert treat when I don't even want one, but these moments are rare indeed, and only ever when I'm not being mindful.  All in all, the 110 pounds I lost has stayed off, and the lifestyle (both around food, and my Buddhist path) have stuck.  Big time.  So I'm very pleased.  I eat mindfully daily but, due to the nature of my job and life, I often eat alone.  Eating mindfully - WITH - a community of other people also observing mindful eating practice, is something I rarely get the opportunity to do.

So, this past week, I found myself once again in the fine company of the Honey Locust Sangha of Omaha, Nebraska.  When I visited them about a year or so ago, I was welcomed warmly and made friends with Mike McMahon who leads the group.  Mike was very willing and helpful to me with advice on how to run a Sangha, and my own Sangha at that time was probably brand new, or perhaps hadn't fully started up yet.  I can't recall.  True to his, and the Honey Locust Sangha's, history they welcomed me warmly in to their group.

By sheer luck I happened to be working in town the week that they had their teacher, Brother Chan Huy, with them from Canada to lead their annual retreat.  The retreat was coming up this weekend (as I write this) and during the week leading up to it they had a public Dharma talk which fell on the night I arrived in town.  That Dharma talk was wonderful, and even gave me a really great insight, or better way of understanding, Emptiness.  I'll save that, perhaps, for another post as it's not related to mindful eating.

Anyhow, on the second night I was in town the Sangha had a Pot Luck Dinner at one member's home.  They graciously invited me to join them and I was so deeply honored, I was beside myself.  Visiting a Sangha's meditation night is one thing, being invited to their private dinner with their teacher is quite another. It's this very quality that makes them so special and which makes Mike such a good example of how to facilitate a Sangha.

I arrived just in time for everyone to plate up and have a seat.  They announced that we would have a 10 minute "Noble Silence" period during which we would eat mindfully, then we would go around and share some discussion (we shared stories from a member who had recently visited and worked with an orphanage in India, stories from the travels and teachings of Brother Chan Huy and his trip to Vietnam, and they kindly asked me to share some about my own Sangha).  A timer was set, a bell invited to ring, and the mindful eating began.

I bowed, and took a moment to breathe in, and out, and check in with my body.  I sat at the end of the table, between the fireplace and the door to the outside deck.  Each was a few feet to either side of me.  A wintry mix had been falling and the deck was rapidly collecting an inch or two.  Taking stock of my body, I felt the cool left side in contrast to the toasty, wonderfully-warm, right side near the fire.  I felt my feet firmly on the floor. I gained that whole-body-at-once sense that one sometimes gets where I could feel everything all at once.  Then I brought my focus to my breathing.  I breathed in and out a few times, and raised my fork.

All of this had taken place in the space of a few moments, and already the present moment awareness was so clear and intense as to be dazzling.  I think I was the only one who brought a dish not home-made, as I was staying in a hotel and had no time or facility for cooking.  I brought a pretty nice Tabbouleh from Whole Foods, and it was good, but lacked that home-made-quality that the other dishes had.  The other dishes were each amazing!  I didn't get to try everything, but I had a spinach salad that was spectacular, some amazing asparagus with roasted potatoes, some sort of delicious tomato soup I think.  And several other items. Each of them were wonderful.

Even with the concentrated effort at slowing my body and mind down before starting, I found I was eating quickly at first.  I slowed more.  I took a bite, placed the fork down, chewed mindfully tasting the flavors of each of these dishes.  Sometimes I was aware of the overall flavor, at other times I was keenly aware of the flavors individually.  I was aware of the textures.  I was aware of all of the elements and human effort that was contained within each bite.  The ten minutes seemed to last for hours, and I mean that in a good way.  Hours of delicious awareness.

I was aware of the room.  The other practitioners eating at their various rhythms.  The sounds in the house.  The sounds from outside, though muffled by the slushy mix, were present.  My favorite part was the ever present contrast of temperatures between the left and right sides of my body due to my fortunate seat by the fire.  There was the low hiss of the fire.  The feeling of the fork in my hand and the fabric of my jeans in the absence of the fork, as I placed my hand on my knee.

All of this, and much more. And it was beautiful.  Over all of that, like the snow covering the deck outside, was a sense of deep gratitude for being invited and welcomed by this lovely Sangha, also a sense of gratitude for this practice that has so altered my life. And, over the top of even those feelings, another feeling that is more difficult to describe.  I can only best describe it as a connecting energy of some sort.  You often get this feeling when you meditate with a group, I think.  I do anyhow.  This energy is one of the many reasons, and certainly - in my mind - the primary one, which makes a true live Sangha so valuable.

There is a quality to mindfulness as a group of human beings, side by side, that creates a sort of feedback loop.  A sort of humanity fueled Tesla Coil, or Resonant Transformer, that electrifies, intensifies and transforms the energy one cultivates on one's own.

"Tesla Coil (Resonant Transformer): the near field wireless transmission of electrical energy between two coils that are tuned to resonate at the same frequency. The equipment to do this is sometimes called a resonant or resonance transformer."

I think, if you wanted to sound just a little sappy, you could label this poorly with a single word.

Love.

Every Body Needs A Second Body

Thich Nhat Hanh often talks about how a monk or nun has a second body.  Another monk or nun they are responsible for helping and keeping track of.  He says just as we must always take care of our own body, help it, love it, care for it when it needs attention....we must also have a second body in the Sangha to watch after and care for as if it were our own.  In this way the monks and nuns of plum village never have to worry that they will go unnoticed or be forgotten when they forget to take care of themselves, or when they need attention and cannot, or don't know how to, ask for it.

The first time I read this I thought "What a beautiful idea!" That's such a sweet and thoughtful thing in a Sangha.

In my own Sangha(s), particularly in the various virtual Sanghas, I quite often see people who,  for one reason or another, will lapse in to some type of shame or depression and then withdraw from the community.  In the simplest terms, it goes like this....they fall in to a depression (sometimes because of a relapse of whatever suffering they live with or just because), they stop posting to social media, they stop texting their friends, they stop chatting and so forth.  The less they chat and communicate with friends, the more they feel bad about themselves.  The more they feel bad about themselves, the more shame they heap on top of themselves.  The more shame they heap on top of themselves, the harder it is for them to re-establish communication because they are afraid of the shame and embarrassment.  Next thing you know, weeks or months have gone by and people start noticing "hey, I haven't seen so and so post in ages, I wonder if they are OK."

In the world of social media such comings and goings are so common and frequent that they aren't noticed that much.   Eventually, the person snaps out of it, if we're lucky, and they suddenly resurface. Things go back to normal.  Until the next time.

When I see these people come back, I often ask what happened.  The answer is always the same, or at least a variation on the theme.  See above.

Not suffering from depression myself, I have always had difficulty understanding it.  But I've seen it happen so often to so many of my dear friends whom I love very much, that it bothers me greatly.  I always want to help.  I want to fix it. But I can't.  The one thing I do know about depression is that there isn't much that I can do for someone who suffers from it.

I've spoken to several teachers about it, and the answer has been pretty much the same every time.  Just be there waiting for them when they return, with open arms and an open heart.  Accepting of them and of what they have gone through.  Don't try to push them to fix it....just show them that you love them and welcome them back.  When they show back up, it means that they are already fixing it.  They've already began the climb out again.  All you have to do....heck, all you CAN do....is show them through your actions that you were there for them the whole time.  Welcome them back to the world, as it is.  Allow them to return and not walk in to the arms of more shame and embarrassment.  Welcome them back to your heart, open and beaming with happiness to have them.  It may seem like inaction on your part, but it's actually the greatest action you can commit on their behalf.  Acceptance.

This is great advice, and really the only option that I know of.  But I think that there is one more thing we can do for one another in these situations,  I think that if we each have a second body, then there would be no being left behind, so to speak.  Take a look at your own Sangha and make sure everyone has a second body.

This isn't new...if you've ever dealt with recovery circles then you now that this sounds a lot like a sponsor.  If you have Joe, Sally, Bob, and Sue in your Sangha then it might look like this:

• You look after Joe
• Joe looks after Sally
• Sally looks after Bob
• Bob looks after Sue
• Sue looks after you.  
• When a new member comes in to the Sangha, Sue shifts to looking after that person and that person starts looking after you.  

In this way, everyone always has someone in the community who knows how they are doing that week or that day.  Knows where they are, what they are going though, how they are feeling.  It's not a difficult task, you just check in on them with a quick call or text now and then and see how they are feeling, catch up,  see how they've been.

When you do this regularly, you will kind of get a feel for whether they are having troubles or not and whether they are being open about it.  Remember that it's not your job to prevent them from having troubles, or to fix them.  It's not your job to do anything at all.  It's your privilege to care about them.  To know when they are having challenges and just be there for them so that they KNOW you are there for them.  And the greatest gift for them will be that you don't judge them for their suffering.

This won't solve the problem.  I don't know that it is a problem that can be solved,  I do know that it's a beautiful practice that can only bring about good in a community.  And it doesn't have to be limited to your Buddhist Sangha....this can be expanded to include all people.  In the end, after all, we are one big Sangha.

_/\_

Quantify Your Mindful Eating with HAPIfork!

THIS has potential, in at least a few ways I can think of, to be VERY cool and useful!

Hapilabs announced their new HAPIfork device to help with Mindful Eating at CES this week.  There's nothing I like more than when technology comes to us in a way as to truly benefit us. I promise I will do my very best to review this when its available!

www.hapilabs.com

_/\_

Let's go!

Hello, and Happy New Year! 2013 is upon us now, and I woke with all the hope and possibility of a new year on my mind, rather than a day, so here's my little twist on a favorite old Thich Nhat Hanh quote that accurately reflects my mood when I woke today:

“Waking up this morning, I smile. Twelve brand new months are before me. I vow to live fully in each moment and to look at all beings with eyes of compassion.” ~ TNH (sorta)

Starting off 2013, I'm beginning the last month of a four month dedicated practice session (that i started with my best bud Kayla) focused on the Four Foundations of Mindfulness and using the book by Bhante Gunaratana "The Four Foundations of Mindfulness in Plain English".

October was easy for me with Mindfulness of the Body.  November was insightful with Mindfulness of Feeling Tone. In December I really got benefit from the third foundation practice, Mindfulness of Mind.  I broke with my dedicated practice only once, to practice Metta, the day that the teachers of Sandy Hook Elementary became heroes in the face of tragedy and saved so many little kids lives. And today, January 1, begins the final month on the fourth foundation, Mindfulness of Dhamma!  So I'm looking forward to reading the final part of the Bhante G book and practicing with that all month.

I addition to that, Kayla's Buddha Book Club I participate in is reading Tara Brach's book Radical Acceptance.  I've read it before, and loved it.  I'll be re-reading that and participating with the group discussing it on the Facebook page.

I'm also doing some dharma study to help a friend stay on track with their studies and benefiting from  that myself as well.  Mostly I'm just supporting and discussing those teachings as a sounding board to assist them in their efforts and treating it as a foundation for my own future studies.

I rang in the new year with family at my home, and then promptly sat for 30 minutes with some of my #OMCru community.  I took refuge, and renewed my precepts, to mark the beginning of our Buddha Heart - A Yearlong Dedicated Practitioner Group.  We'll be reading the TNH classic Heart of the Buddhas Teaching and studying it together over the course of the next year, and I couldn't be more excited about that.

Lastly, I have my own ever growing stack of dharma books to read.  So while that all may sound like a lot, it's really mostly slow paced reading with lots of practice.  The goal is to study the dharma, but more so to implement it fully in to our lives off the cushion.  And I fully intend to do that as much as possible in 2013.

Please contact me if you're interested in participating in any of the above resources.  They are all full of the warmest, most helpful and friendly members.  It's a great virtual sangha.

And speaking of virtual sangha, I just want to thank all the twitter friends, Facebook friends, sangha members in all the countless Sanghas I have been privileged to visit all over this country. You all have gone from online "friends" to true meaningful friendships in both virtual and real life and I'm so very very grateful that I have that in my life.  It's been amazing to be a part of and I have seen that it is so sorely needed for so many people out there.

So, to wrap this post up, I thought I would highlight of few of my intentions that I'll be focusing on this year in various areas of my life:

New Year intentions with family:

• Show by being.
• Continue my healthy path.
• Continue to teach my child compassion is the key.
• Work on small things now that will aid long term plans. 
• Make big effort to be more fully present with my family as my travel increases. 

New Year intentions with practice:

• Focus it.
• Retreat more, to...
• Deepen it, so I can...
• Implement it more fully and...
• Continue working toward facilitator training.
• Start second sangha group which is open to all.
• Take steps toward my goal of a local dharma center.

Thank you and please have a safe, happy, and compassionate new year!

_/\_

Buddha Heart - A Yearlong Dedicated Practice & Study Group

My dear friend DharmaApple wrote a great post about a project we are starting in January.  She wrote it so well that I'm massively plagiarizing her - with her permission - here! So here goes...her post, slightly modified!

Starting January 1, 2013 my friend DharmaApple and I will begin a new dedicated practice period (Similar to our current Four Foundations practice) called "Buddha Heart - A Yearlong Dedicated Practice & Study Group" based upon Thich Nhat Hanh’s "The Heart of the Buddha’s Teachings" as the practice/study guideline.

We have set up a Facebook page for participants to post guided meditations, talks, articles (etc.) related to whichever aspect of the book we are focused on. This will assist in understanding and deepening our practice together. There is a lot of value in learning from one another.

In addition to the Facebook page, we would like to have monthly Skype discussions where we will have a guided meditation and discussions together.

Unlike her wonderful book club (BuddhaBkClb) this is not just about reading and discussing a book. It’s about really making the effort and applying these practices into our daily life in an organized and systematic manner with support of virtual Sangha.

If you ever find yourself confused over what tradition you are interested in or turned off by the dogma of some of them, or if you are just trying to get back to the basics, then this year of core practices might be perfect for you.

The structure we will follow can be seen in the Table of Contents of The Heart of the Buddha’s Teachings. The time structure for the year will be as follows:

• Part One (The Four Noble Truths): January 1- 31 (1 month)
• Part Two (The Eightfold Path): February 1 – September 30 (8 months)
• Part Three (Other Basic Buddhist Teachings): October 1 – November 31 (2 months)
• Part Four (Discourses): December 1 - 31

We have many reasons that all sort of came together at once to generate this idea for us, but for me one of the main reasons is that the Three Gems, The Four Noble Truths and The Eightfold Path are the very core of my path.  When I get distracted, or confused, or have doubt, these teachings always are there for me - rock solid, and dogma free.  It is these basic teachings that Thich Nhat Hanh manages to share in both his lovely and simple way, yet with very organized and logical clarity.

We hope you'll join in the fun!

_/\_

#4Foundations of Mindfulness Dedicated Practice starts today! First up - #Body

Hey, hey! It's October 1st!  We start TODAY!  Remember....there's not much to this...trying to keep it super simple and stress free.  The only thing that matters is that WHEN you practice during the month of October you only focus on the FIRST of the #4Foundations which will be #Body.

If you want to take it up a notch, you can further read the book with us.  We will read The Four Foundations of Mindfulness in Plain English by Bhante Gunaratana and will focus on only one foundation per month in the book as well.  The idea is to take it nice and slow, and the only thing that matters is the dedication to this one practice for this one month.  Check in on Twitter with the hashtags you see here and #OMCru if you want company when you sit.

PLEASE relax, enjoy, and join us!  I really hope we all get what we most need out of this effort!  Be well! _/\_

Dedicated Practice Group on the Four Foundations of Mindfulness

My dear friend @DharmaApple from Edge Meditation Calgary and I have been discussing focus.  It's a long story (for both of us) as to what led us to this idea, and I recommend reading her post about her need for it.  For my part, I was listening to an Against The Stream PodCast by Noah Levine about The Seventh Factor of Awakening.  Some of the things he was saying about Mindfulness, and about sticking with practices for long periods really struck a chord with me.  I started focusing on some of this that day.  Meanwhile, Kayla (@DharmaApple) posted about feeling scattered.  All of these, and other things, were swirling around our heads and an idea formed.  When we discussed it, we decided to try something out. 

She already wrote up a blog post about the details if you want to see that here, but the nuts and bolts of it are as follows:

Four Months of Dedicated Practice on The Four Foundations of Mindfulness.  

• Starting on October 1st, One Foundation per Month for four months.
• Read only the section pertaining to that month of practice from The Four Foundations of Mindfulness in Plain English by Bhante Gunaratana.
• Devote your sitting meditation to only that ONE practice for that Month of Practice.
• Post your comments or thoughts regarding your experience in the Meditation Mob Facebook Group in the related thread or on Twitter using #4Foundations and whichever hashtag fits the month (#Body, #Feelings, #Mind, #Dhamma)
• No expectations (other than to devote to this practice) and just see how it goes!

Our hope is that this structured, dedicated practice of the basics will help us sort of free up from whatever habits we've gotten in to with our practice of trying to force things, or expectations of results.  Also, it's just a nice exploration of longer periods of dedicated practice.  It's a small time frame (in terms of dedicated practice), and will give us a taste of a longer such times.  Ultimately, for me, I'm viewing it as a reboot of my sitting.

We'd love to have you join us!  Please let me know if I can assist.

_/\_

So tell me, who aren't you?

So, as I continue to publish my thoughts, efforts and experimentation with Phillip Moffitt's "From Emotional Chaos to Clarity" book (as part of the Buddha Book Club) here, I'm now covering the exercises at the end of Chapter 2 - "Getting To Know The Real You".

Moffitt states at the beginning of this chapter:

"Your movement from emotional chaos to clarity begins with answering the question, "Who am I?"  

Should be a snap, right? :-)

The fundamental point here is, I think, that most people go through life without any real understanding that "The mind" is not "themselves".  With a daily meditation practice, we start to notice that the mind is, indeed, not who we are.  As we meditate, we gain a spaciousness from our thoughts.  This space gives us the ability to understand that our thoughts don't have to rule our behavior.  For many people, especially anyone with some form of addiction, this realization can be life altering.  It can be the first time this idea was ever thought possible!

To do the exercise in Chapter Two of FEC2C (From Emotional Chaos to Clarity), Mr. Moffitt asks us to spend time reflecting, not on who we are but, on who we are not!  One word of caution here...this is, as he states in the book, not a one time thing.  This is a practice you want to incorporate in to your daily life.  Essentially it should become part of your overall practice.  A good tool to check in with on an ongoing basis, I think.

He says:

"The following suggestions can help you cease being trapped in a false identity and begin to open up to new possibilities."  

I will post short versions of the exercises and some thoughts here, but I encourage you to read them at length in the book and practice them as such.

• Which type of "mistaken identity" best describes the way you tend to think? (referring to several types of behavior he reviews in the chapter.)  For me it was the "You are not your responsibilities and habits" type.  He talks about how "You can fall quite literally in to believing your identity is the sum of your duties and habits."  Any parent out there probably has some experience with this.  I can easily find myself living a routine and mundane daily set of tasks.  I have to make an effort not to.  So I definitely identified with this.  The old cliche "Variety is the spice of life." takes on a whole new meaning when you get stuck in this mindset!

• Which type has caused you the most suffering in the past? For me it was "You are not your history."  He says "Your history is simply an accumulation of actions and events that characterizes you at a particular moment in your life; it does not define your essence."  I used to, long ago, always blame my parents or other factors - but mostly my parents - for a lot of things in my life.  I let go of that a long time ago, but it used to cause me a lot of suffering.

• Become a careful observer of your behavior and the mind states underlying that behavior.  I've been trying to make an effort to do this more.  We have a tendency, I think, to see a certain mind state and say to ourselves "aha! I am behaving like this!" and then we identify with that, say this is who we are, and move on.  I think the goal here, or certainly a more skillful goal, is to remember that he says "be an OBSERVER" not a JUDGE!  Don't use any judgement as you notice these things, and don't notice it once and consider that you are that observation.  Just routinely observe, without judgement, these states of mind and be aware of it.  Then do it again. And again.  You get the picture.

• Begin to notice the difference between the experience you are having and your awareness of the experience.  He gives the example of noticing that you are hungry, but shifting  your attention from the feeling to the awareness of the feeling.  Ask yourself how it is different.  For me, this was a good example because my issues tend to be around food.  Not so much anymore, but still an area of interest for me.  So, using that exact example, I noticed that when I identify with "feeling" hungry I'm anxious and sort of driven to act.  When I shift to the awareness of that feeling, the drive seems to recede and eventually the feeling passes.  When I observed this often enough, I started to notice (and I've been doing this for a couple of years now, so it was much easier for me I think) that often the "feeling" of hunger is just a thought that sets off a chain of other thoughts that imitate a true feeling of hunger.  In other words, my mind says "Man, some dark chocolate would be good right now, with my coffee." and then there is this cascade of thoughts that happens very rapidly, almost undetectably.  "Oooh that sounds great. I love dark chocolate with coffee.  What time is it? Two more hours to lunch. How many calories have I had today? Is it raining? No. Good.  I can walk tonight.  That means I can walk extra and burn off some more calories.  That means I could eat that dark chocolate if I wanted to.  I don't need it.  I do want it.  I'm gonna have it.  Nah, I won't.  Man, I'm REALLY hungry though." and on and on.  Somewhere in there, it's as though the collection of thoughts is dropped in to a bucket that adds up to a single over-riding thought of "I'M HUNGRY".  If I shift from that to just observing that, then I start to see it riding off in to the sunset, very slowly, and I start to notice, I'm really NOT hungry.  I'm fine.  THAT, I think, is the key to this exercise.  Shifting from believing whatever your mind tells you, to letting it believe whatever it wants, while you wave goodbye to it and go about your day.

The example I gave above was a lot longer than I meant to make it, and it also kind of covers the rest of the exercise in chapter two, so I'll let it go at that.  This is a sampling of my work with chapter two, and I hope to hear from some of you as to your experiences with it.

Keep reading!
_/\_