Buddha as a Psychologist, Buddha as a Somatic Therapist

 

Breathing. We do it 22,000 times every day, and yet we have little to no awareness that this action that provides the most important fuel to maintain life is happening. While this unconscious pattern of breath provides enough oxygen to keep our body alive, it doesn’t provide anywhere nearly enough to heal the body of its chronic aches and numbness, or elevate consciousness to the level that the historical Buddha told us was all of our birthrights.

  The consciousness that passes as normal in the world at large is largely disembodied. We spend much of our time lost in random and unbidden thought, and out of touch with the feeling presence of the body. Try this: hold your right hand out in front of you for a moment with the palm facing up. How do you describe what’s happening in your hand? While most people will first comment on feeling the warmth or cooling of the air around their hand, go deeper. Go right inside your hand. What’s happening there? Gradually, you will start feeling millions of tiny pin-prick blips of sensation that are oscillating, vibrating, percolating. Some people refer to this vibratory dance as the feeling presence of life energy. Whatever you call it, it only appears when you shift your consciousness away from being lost in thought to being present in the body, and one of the most powerful ways to enact this shift is to start bringing the mostly unconscious pattern of breathing to conscious awareness. The Buddha’s path of awakening from loss in thought to present in body starts with acknowledging that, lost in thought, we hardly breathe at all. Become aware of the breath as it passes in and out, and over time consciousness changes. It’s that simple. In the Satipatthana Sutta, the Buddha outlines a three-step practice of breathing that offers anyone the ability to come out of the sleepy dreams of the mind into the vibrant awakening of felt presence. Step one is simply to start bringing the largely unconscious way in which we breathe to awareness. Become aware of the breath as it enters and exits the nostrils or causes the front belly wall to expand and contract. Through this application of simple awareness, a mental activity, breath becomes smoother and more regular, and this simple shift in how you breathe generates a dramatic physiological effect in your body and psychological shift in your mind. If unconscious breathing creates a consciousness of being lost in thought, conscious breathing creates a consciousness of mindful awareness. The practices of mindful breathing coming over from Asia are a great gift to the Western world, and most Buddhist schools that focus on breathing both begin and end with this initial instruction. The problem, however, is that this isn’t where the instructions end. Step two is to become more refined in your awareness of each breath which naturally leads to the altogether remarkable suggestion not just to remain aware of the breath at the front of your body but to ‘breathe through the whole body’. Even though this is the culminating instruction that the Buddha gave us, with very few exceptions, virtually no-one in the Buddhist world goes anywhere near exploring what breathing through the whole body might actually be like. It’s no longer just about becoming ever more aware. It’s about the evolution into an altogether natural awakening referred to as enlightenment. Ironically, by not exploring the culminating instruction, the Buddhist world is holding itself back from embodying the fullness of the teachings. To breathe through the whole body, two things need to be present. First, you need to experience the whole of the body as a field of shimmering, vibratory sensation (just as you experienced your outstretched palm) – for how could you breathe through the whole body if you’re unable to feel it? Second, you need to allow breath to make unhindered, transmitted motions throughout the entire body so breath can be felt making its way through the body, not unlike how a wave moves through a body of water. Learning how to breathe through the whole body generates a remarkable effect on the physiology of the body. In much the same way as the tiniest breath is necessary for the consciousness of lost in thought and a smoother, more regular breath creates the consciousness of mindful awareness, the breath that breathes through the whole body creates the awakening. The Buddha starts out as a psychologist: use your mind and focus your awareness on just remaining aware of breath as it comes in and goes out. This is the very beautiful work of mindfulness practice. But the Buddha ends as a somatic therapist: as you breathe in, breathe in through the whole body; as you breathe out, breathe out through the whole body. Notice that in the culminating instruction, the word awareness is not even mentioned. It’sno longer a practice of mental focusing and concentration. It’s entirely a somatic practice. Just figure out how to breathe in this way, and the awakening shows up. In the Hollow Bamboo Dharma that I teach, we focus more on the Buddha’s culminating instruction on breathing than his initial instruction. Bring the body alive. Liberate breath from its imprisonment in unnecessarily held, frozen, inert flesh. The seminal Mahamudra teacher Tilopa tells us to do nothing but relax, and breathing through the whole body is the natural breath of anyone who has learned how to deeply relax. It is how to let go of unnecessary tension and holding in the body that both causes physical pain and limits breath to its smallest passage. To breathe through the whole body is to allow movement to occur everywhere. Like a row of billiard balls, one striking into the next and then the next, the force of breath generates transmitted motion at every joint of a relaxed body. Such a breath is completely delicious, and through that deliciousness, awakened presence simply appears.   You may also like this article: Zen Techniques to Practice when Defusing Stressed Situations.