Fitness Trackers: An Outsource for Mindfulness?

Ryan and I had a brief discussion about fitness trackers (i.e. FitBits) this evening. Since the weather is supposed to get nicer sometime this year, and nicer weather means we go cycling on the C&O Canal, he was interested in finding out if any of the models can track cycling movements. A very short search revealed that, no, none of the mainstream models track cycling movements but we can log the activity manually. So, we might start there.

On the drive home I started thinking about this new wave of fitness trackers. They track heart rate, sleep amount (and quality, apparently...), number of steps taken, number of calories burned, cardiac activity, some will even track your idle moments and give you a buzz when it is time to get off your duff and go for a walk. 

But can we not be our own fitness trackers? Instead of paying $99 or more, could we not instead pay attention? 

Meditation helps us re-learn how to pay attention to the breath. We can learn what a stressed breath feels like and what a relaxed breath feels like. In turn, we can learn what our body is telling us when we are experiencing those different breaths. 

As we practice paying attention, we will start to recognize when we are tired and we will go to bed. Our bodies will know when we've had enough sleep and we will wake up. We will be able to tell the difference between a good night's sleep and a restless night's sleep. 

We will start to pay attention to our bodies and know when we are hungry, when we are full, when certain foods agree with us and when certain foods do not. I am baffled by friends, colleagues, and family members whom I have heard say, "I sometimes forget to eat." How in the world does that happen? 

I think the fitness trackers of the world have tremendous possibility to engage us in becoming more aware of our bodies, of our natural cycles, of what works for us and what does not. But it is going to take some extra, non-machine-prompted effort on our parts to make the connection between the data being generated by the band around our wrists and the data being generated within our own bodies. 

Crazy Train on Auto-Pilot

Have you ever opened a pack of M&Ms, tossed a couple in your mouth, chewed happily and then went back for a few more only to find the pack empty? 

We think, "What the hell? Who ate all my M&Ms?!" In our saner moments we glance around and quickly realize that we're by ourselves and WE ate our M&Ms while WE weren't paying attention. In our less sane moments we may actually get up, walk over to our friend or colleague or sister and accusingly ask them, "DID YOU EAT ALL MY M&MS?!" 

New Bag = New Possibilities

This is a relatively harmless scenario, unless we actually get up and make irrational accusations, but in the big scheme of things, harmless. But our inattentiveness doesn't stop at the vending machine. How often these phrases come out of our mouths:

"What was I thinking?"

"I can't believe I said that."

"Was that Do Not Enter sign there before?"

"Did I have these wrinkles around my eyes yesterday?"

I've said every one of these - and others - on more than one occasion and that's ok because in most cases they can be remedied. But what we should be thinking about, in addition to these moments, is what we will say when we're at the end of our current life experience. Because at that point, we're kinda out of time for remedies. 

To stay on the positive side of things, let's consider what we would like to say. Personally, I want to be able to own my life as much as my death - if that's even possible. I want to be able to say, "I loved and was loved. I healed and was healed. I was compassionate and received compassion. I was peaceful and received peace. Let's do this."

But if we can't even pay attention to the M&Ms we eat, how can we get to the point where we are so attentive to each moment of our entire life experience that we're not caught off guard by that empty feeling, but rather can anticipate and accept it? 

I've got that empty feeling...

I think it starts by, 1) waking up, 2) intentionally turning off the auto-pilot, 3) listening to ourselves in order to know ourselves, and 4) making decisions for ourselves rather than getting swept up by the current of group think that is raging all around us. 

At least, I think this is how it's happening for me...how is it happening for you?

To be continued...

Why we're going off the rails on a crazy train (or, What Ozzy Osbourne can teach us about mindfulness & the Law of Attraction)

Whether we know it or not, most of us are on a crazy train, spiritually speaking. We might not be going off the rails yet but we are blindly and unconsciously putting our life experiences in the hands of an unknown Conductor.

But the joke's on us.

We're the Conductor.

Or, we're supposed to be. And yet here we sit in the passenger car, seat-belted into a worn yet still-plushy blue-gray seat, elbows atop on narrow, plastic arm rests, feet on the retractable foot-rest that's bolted into the base of the seat in front of us. Our eyes, two glazed orbs gazing out the window to a blurry, image stew causing our brains to behave haphazardly, unable to focus, thinking about anything and everything.

Sometimes the Conductor stops and opens the doors to experiences donning the costumes of whatever and whomever have made up our thoughts. Fortune, misfortune. Pleasure, displeasure. Ease, disease. Wellness, hellness.

We enjoy the company of fortune and pleasure and ease and wellness but we get rather upset with the Conductor when misfortune, displeasure, disease, and hellness respond to the, “All aboard!”

There comes a time when we get so upset about these miscreants sharing the same car as we that we unbuckle our seat belts, stand up confidently and stride, hands placed alternately on the tops of the seat-backs as we pass so as to steady our shaky convictions, up to the Conductor's door. We knock and slide the door open.

The Conductor is slumped its seat, unconscious, head resting slack against the window, blue-and-white-striped hat askew. Alarmed, we shake the Conductor's shoulder and groggily the head swivels toward us, revealing a bit of drool in the corner of the mouth and suddenly we are face-to-face with ourselves. With a start we back away because how.can.this.be.?

It's only then we notice the tennis ball-sized red light that's blinking on the dashboard. The white text on its surface reads, “Auto Pilot.”

To be continued...

Why the Dryer Shrinks My Clothes

I remember the first time I attended a book club discussion. 

It was about 4 years ago and I'm pretty sure we were discussing the book, Women, Food, and God.  At some point during the conversation we got on the topic of clothes not fitting. This was one of the first times I remember publicly coming to the realization that I don't think how most other women think - at least about my body.

I'll have to paraphrase because I surely can't remember who said what or how but someone at that book club discussion shared how she really did not enjoy wearing the pants she owned because they always fit tightly and that made her think she was gaining weight and that made her think that she'd have to go on a diet and exercise more...  I don't remember anyone at this gathering looking like she needed to shed a few pounds so, her comment seemed odd. Like, why would you think such a thing? But everyone else in the room shared her sentiments and I've come to learn that a lot of women have automatic thoughts like these.

At this point, I'm pretty sure I thought to myself, "Huh. This happens to me, too, but all this time I thought my pants were just shrinking in the dryer. I never suspected I might be gaining weight." 

I'm serious. Every time I put on a freshly pair of laundered pants I have to do stretch-out-squats so they don't look painted on to my ample thighs. After a couple of wearings - because I am not the type of person to wash a pair of pants after one wearing simply because I wore them - I no longer have to do squats anymore and they fit just fine. Never once did the thought occur to me, "Hmm, these are fitting pretty tightly; I better not go get that double fudge cookie dough blizzard from Dairy Queen." 

Cause I would never say that. Ever. 

I think I even shared my thought process with the group which lead into some interesting conversations about where we thought our perceptions came from, etc. I don't remember too much else from that gathering and it didn't become a regular thing for me but this awareness of these automatic thoughts we have stuck with me for a long time.

I think perception is a wonderful yet frustrating disability that we all live with and try to compensate for because if we were without perception, what would we be? 

So, maybe we can't not be perceptive but we can actively change our perceptions so, instead of automatically thinking that you've put on 5lbs, you could instead think, "I need to reduce the heat on my dryer settings." The last one is a lot easier to do and it doesn't make you feel bad about yourself. :) 

Have negative perceptions that you've turned upside down? Please share them with me!

Why We Live to Learn to Live

This essay addresses three points from the NPR article, In search of a science of consciousness” by Alva Noe which, in turn, includes pieces from Evan Thompson's book, Waking, Dreaming, Being.

1) Omniscient Consciousness

I am fascinated by the concept of consciousness and how it is reconciled with the concept of perception but I've never thought of it in terms of colors as Noe does in the article but what I have thought about is the popular belief that consciousness ends when we die. I don't believe it does. I believe consciousness lives in the formless and is ever-present regardless of our physical condition, although it may take on different states.

This analogy is old hat but consider the Sun. I like to think of consciousness as the Sun. Our perception of consciousness is how we experience the Sun on Earth. The Sun is always there, suspended in space, doing what it does but depending on where we are on Earth, we may not believe we are experiencing the Sun's presence. For example, when it's cloudy outside most of us would say that we aren't experiencing the Sun; we are experiencing the clouds obscuring the Sun but we don't say it that way. We just say that it's cloudy. A better example is when it's nighttime. Even with a clear sky, most of us would say that the Sun isn't present. But it is; it's just on the other side of the Earth. If it were totally 100% not present then we wouldn't survive.

I think our consciousness behaves the same way. Whether we're fully awake and lucid, or whether we're clouded by alcohol or mental illness, or whether our physical presence has ceased to be: our consciousness is still there.

Just because we aren't experiencing it doesn't mean it's not there.

2) The Meditation Irony

The article talks about Thompson's exploration into the meditative practices of certain Buddhist monks which is another fascinating concept for me. Although I don't practice strict Buddhist meditation – I don't really have a label for my practice - I found many of the statements to be true for me. That, “...focused attention practices...can be thought of as techniques for attending to features of experience to which we usually pay no attention...adept meditators can see and notice things we rarely ever do.”

However, I was disappointed that Noe didn't call attention to the ironic. What I find in strict, traditional meditation practices, is that we essentially deny our five physical senses their innate faculties. We close our eyes, we remove artificial sounds, we don't move and thus reduce our sense of touch, we aren't eating or drinking, and in most cases our sense of smell is dulled.

The ironic bottom line: the senses we use 99% of the time to perceive the world are actually impeding us from perceiving the truth.

Sensory Deprivation Tank: for those who want a taste but no committment

3) A Beautiful Idea

Noe ends the article with Thompson's notion that, in order for Western science to develop an “adequate phenomenology of experience” we need to collaborate with monks “to understand better the character of experience and, so, take the necessary preliminary steps toward a better science of consciousness.” Not having read Thompson's book yet, I am not sure how much he elaborates on what this collaboration would look like. I suspect, however, that it may be shortsighted for two reasons:

First, if Western science continues to perceive and label monks as 'special' then we'll never be on equal ground which I believe is essential to effective collaborations. In fact, I think monks would be the first ones to say that they aren't special. Anyone can do what they do. The difference is they are doing it while we stand around wishing we could do it rather than just sitting down and doing it.

Second, it's the fact that we aren't doing it (meditating) that I believe would be the largest impediment to a Western science collaboration with Buddhist monks. If we honestly want to take “the necessary preliminary steps toward a better science of consciousness” then Western scientists who want to study such a thing need to grab a cushion and sit the hell down and breathe. I've never had a conversation with a monk but I've had some pretty enlightening conversations with my teacher/mentor/master who is probably the next best thing to a monk and if anyone were to listen in on those conversations and they hadn't been meditating for a while, they would think we were talking gibberish. I think the same will hold true for the Western scientists who try to have these kinds of conversations with monks. There are just some concepts that require a different vocabulary and a different level of perspective. And if you don't have that vocabulary or experience, no one can impart them to you just by talking or coming up with clever metaphors. Yes, you may get the gist but you'll never know for sure.

It would be like learning a new language without ever reading, writing, or speaking it. Sure, you'd probably be able to recognize words when you heard them but could you truly communicate with another human being? At some point, in order to master a new language, you have to read, write it, speak it. Even then, some die-hard linguists would say that that's not even enough. You'd have to go even further and live it.

I think the same is true for what Western science is trying to learn from the monks. Until we live it, we won't learn it.