The Dalai Lama says a disciplined mind leads to happiness. He also says the opposite is true: “An undisciplined mind leads to suffering.”
We know this.
We know how our minds wander and ruminate and hunker down on negativity. This comes naturally. It doesn’t take any effort to be critical and judgmental, to overlay the past onto the present, to absorb ourselves in useless mental narratives and minutia. But this default doesn’t align with satisfaction and wellbeing. Those things take some effort and discipline.
That effort toward mental discipline doesn’t necessarily start in our noggins. Rather than thinking our way toward a brighter headspace, I’ve found it helps to begin by feeling.
I mean that in a physical way – feeling physical sensation. Getting into our bodies. When you think about it, our minds often aren’t really there.
I could be driving the car, but my mind is rehashing a previous conversation. Or maybe I’m in the shower, but I’m not standing there feeling the water hit my skin. I’m off somewhere else, in my head.
Feeling is different from thinking. To be able to tap into physical sensation requires stepping out of thinking. It’s a different gear, and it’s a useful and powerful one to switch into. Feeling takes us out of our heads and grounds us in the here and now. It gives us a different kind of clarity and allows us to notice thoughts and do that mental training.
The most transformative moment of my life came from shifting into feeling. I think of my life as having two distinct parts. Before that moment, and after… which is way better.
The moment came during a yoga class, at the end of a long day, during an intensive training. As the teacher guided us to breathe deeply and feel the shaky discomfort of a long hold in warrior one, I fully arrived in my body, in the moment, and I buckled.
At that point, I was 10 years into a relationship that started out wonderfully but had increasingly grown darker and darker. It had become toxic and dangerous, but I was holding on for dear life.
I didn’t want to lose him, and I didn’t want to be alone. So, I carried a heavy load of heartache and low-level misery–for years–as I tried to make the relationship work.
It all came to a head in that warrior one.
Somehow in that moment, everything came together in such a way that when I got out of my head and switched into feeling, my body gave me the visceral answer: No. I could not keep it all together. I could not carry what I had been carrying. I dropped to the floor, sobbing, and suddenly clear. I knew what I needed to do.
From there, everything changed. My life now is unrecognizable. My career is better, my relationship is better, I’m healthier, I have more fulfilling friendships, a nicer car…
For sure, a moment like the one I’m describing doesn’t happen every day and all those changes didn’t come from that one event. Developing a more conscious connection with our bodies might occasionally produce a profound “aha,” but more often, it’s a building block. A precursory step that makes mental discipline possible.
I first started tuning into physical sensation more consciously when I began meditating. Body scan meditations are the best way I know to tune into our bodies and feeling (You can sign up for Mini-meditation Monday sessions on marcisharif.com to get them in your inbox each week). Practicing yoga helps with this, too. But I think isolating the practice in meditation is critical. Then, it helps to start pausing regularly throughout the day to check in and feel.
You might even start right now by just taking a beat or two to tap into the sensation in your hands. Notice how to really be able to feel it, you have to get out of your head – out of your thoughts.
Turns out being out of our minds is the best place to start working on what goes on inside them.
I’ll share more on the rest of that effort next week.