This exercise explores different ways of experiencing feelings, ways that reflect different levels of understanding and relaxation. It also builds confidence, concentration, and awareness.
Make sure you have at least ten minutes when you won't be interrupted or distracted, five minutes for the standing exercise and five minutes for thinking and writing.
Simply stand with your feet somewhat apart, and hold your arms straight out to your sides at shoulder height. Breathe easily, gently, and smoothly through both nose and mouth, with the tip of your tongue on the upper palate just in back of your front teeth. (See Breathing Exercise.) Relax all the muscles you don't need to use to hold the posture.
As you continue, see if the breath becomes ever more even, smooth, and slow.
If you have discomfort or negative feeling other than sharp pain, see whether you can continue a while--experiment as Michael did in the excerpt below from Results in No Time. You can breathe into the sensation, find the center of the feeling, and so on. If at some point you have very sharp pain, you might want to end the exercise, possibly trying it again after the pain subsides.
After doing the exercise, make some notes about your experience.
Note: If you have questions or comments about these exercises or readings, please send email to or call Steve Randall at 510-690-0490.
From Chapter 8 of Results in No Time:
Michael finally found the department store among all the other stores in the shopping center. Ten minutes later he was in Ms. Kumar's section of the store. He walked over to an employee.
"Hi. Could you tell me where I can find Jyothi Kumar?"
"Yes, she's in the office over there."
"Thanks." Michael wended his way among clothing racks. At the door he knocked, then listened.
"Come in, please."
Michael entered the office.
"I'm sorry but it's difficult for me to greet you at the door," said the woman in the wheelchair. "Please come in."
"It's nice to meet you, Ms. Kumar. Thank you for meeting with me. Dr. Couvier told me you're an expert on critical points and how they can be used to increase productivity and satisfaction."
"Well, she is very generous. I would be happy to discuss critical points with you, but I think it would be more direct if you do an exercise as a basis for our exploration. It may be seem rather abrupt, but would you like to start off with an exercise?"
A Critical Exploration
"What kind of exercise?"
"Just stand and put your arms straight out to the sides at shoulder height." (This is the "Heart Gold Thread" exercise. See Tarthang Tulku's Kum Nye Relaxation, Part II (Berkeley, CA: Dharma Publishing, 1978), pp. 374-6.)
"Like this?"
"That's it. This exercise is excellent for showing what goes on with us at critical points. Tell me what you're experiencing."
"Well," said Michael, "I'm just standing with my arms out to the side, wondering what this exercise is about."
"Okay. I appreciate your willingness to do the exercise. I know it must seem a little strange."
"Well . . . yes. It does."
"From the look on your face it seems like something has changed."
"Yes, my shoulders are a little tired."
"Okay," said Jyothi. "See if you can just let the tiredness be there and continue the exercise."
"My arms are getting heavy. And my right shoulder is beginning to hurt a little. Can I stop now? What's the purpose of this?"
"Please, don't put your arms down. Stay there a while longer. You may be at a critical point now, a point where the scenario suggests a choice of whether to continue with things as they are or do something else. How do you feel?"
"Awful. My shoulder hurts a lot. This is dumb. I'm putting my arms down."
"Please, Mr. Stewart, stay there a little longer. This is another aspect of a critical point, having a feeling that we consider negative. The negative feeling tends to fragment one's awareness and cause a lot of thinking about how to get away from the feeling. Try to focus lightly on the 'center of the pain'."
"What do you mean by 'the center of the pain'?"
"Be aware of the pain as if you were a spot of awareness inside the pain itself--rather than the way you've probably been feeling it, as an observer inside your head, and therefore outside of, or separate from the pain."
"I'll try it."
"While being aware of the pain, breathe lightly through your mouth and nose, inhaling and exhaling gently and evenly. . . ."
Michael started the breathing that he was quite familiar with now.
Jyothi watched as Michael's expression changed dramatically. "What happened?"
"That was interesting. For a short time there, when I went inside the pain, its quality changed. Or maybe I should say that for a while it wasn't painful."
"Was there still sensation there?"
"Yes, it was as if the same kind of sensation was there, but it just wasn't painful any more."
"You might want to let your arms down now."
"That was a real breakthrough--almost literally like breaking through something. I think I'll stay with it a while longer. It doesn't hurt, and it's interesting; something's still shifting."
Where Is the Self?
"When you are inside the pain, where is the sense of self?"
"That's a good question," Michael answered. "I'm not sure. Maybe the usual feeling of self isn't there. When 'I' look in a certain way, there is only sensation. . . . I guess it wouldn't be accurate to say that 'I' am aware of sensation, because the normal self isn't part of the experience. . . . The quality of the sensation is continuing to change. Now there's just some tingling and flowing energy. It's like a stream of energy flowing where the pain used to be. As if a dam across a stream had broken, and the water is flowing more freely."
"Is it still hard to hold up your arms?"
"It's actually easier to hold up my arms than it was when I first started. In fact, it's pretty effortless, as if they stay up by themselves--I don't feel like I'm holding them up."
"Sounds like you've gone through what we call the critical point, and the energy is flowing more freely."
"I'm noticing that I'm aware of more of my body now, several areas at once. And I feel much clearer than before, as if someone had turned up the lights a bit."
"Great. The primary purpose of this exercise is to develop concentration and build awareness."
Wholeness Happens
"Perhaps we could review what happened at the critical point," Jyothi said as Michael still stood with his arms out to the sides. "First you became aware of the negativity of the pain, and then you noticed that your thoughts were going in a couple of different directions. One direction went toward putting your arms down and ending the suffering. The other direction went toward continuing the exercise, not knowing what was in store for you."
"Right. Does a critical point always involve some kind of negative feeling as well as a kind of mental crossroads?"
"It seems to. What happened next?"
"Well, because you seemed to think there was some benefit in the exercise, I stayed with it. I started breathing through my mouth and nose, as you suggested, and I looked for something that might be called the 'center of the pain'. I guess at some point I relaxed somehow, and the sensation of pain changed. I don't know whether I found the center of the pain, but I no longer felt like a suffering observer outside the pain."
"And the negative, painful aspect of the sensation changed."
"Right. And the sense of self changed with it. There was only some sensation that seemed in a way like it was underneath the original pain."
"Can you describe the change in the experience of self a little further?"
"I realize now that before I got into the pain, I felt separate from it without knowing it. I was more like an outside observer, as you said, even though it was in another part of my body."
"Have you heard of the principle 'Your SOTP (sense of time passing) measures your separation from whatever you're doing'?"
"Yes, Jed Adams introduced me to it. I guess I confirmed it again. When the pain was really strong, I felt really separate from it, and time was really dragging."
"Was the sensation still painful when you were not feeling separate from the pain?"
"No! It was kind of neutral."
"Do you think it's accurate to call the pain a 'negative feeling'?"
"It felt negative in the beginning, but when I got into it, it didn't really have any negative quality."
"And when you were really absorbed in the experience, you said the energy started flowing, leading to a heightened awareness of what was going on?"
"Right. It felt like the energy broke through some kind of blockage in my shoulder. Afterwards my arm and trunk felt more integrated, there were fewer thoughts, and my sense of time flowing lessened. I felt a whole lot better--and more whole." Michael very slowly and sensitively lowered his arms. "What an amazing change that was!"
"Can you recall any example from your everyday work life that was similar to this change?"
"Well, that was similar in some ways to an experience I discussed with Dr. Couvier, a time when I had a give a speech. The feelings then were different--anxiety and insecurity. But then, as now, the whole scenario changed suddenly, as if from night to day. There was no longer any conflict. I just wanted to be right there, giving my talk. I ended up feeling like I was on top of the world. And my awareness was heightened then, just as it was with this exercise."
"Sounds like that was a critical point all right. And it sounds like you handled it well, too."
"Thanks. But then I never thought consciously about going into a negative sensation or feeling as you suggested. Maybe it just happened naturally."
"Yes. It can do that. But it's probably helpful to know more about what's happening. It seems to make it easier and quicker to work with the process."
"So when a negative feeling comes up, you lightly focus on it, or try to move your awareness to it?"
"Yes. Or you can even think of your awareness as coming from it."
"And you stay with the feeling until it changes?"
"Yes, try to stay with it until the conflict resolves itself somehow. The different possible choices of what to do seem to arise most quickly when we lightly focus on the feelings involved, rather than thinking about where the feelings came from. Eventually it should become clear that one or more directions would enhance your sense of well-being. Other choices will probably seem less productive."
"How can you tell which path to take?" Michael asked.
"Clarity seems to come from the scenario itself, not from any kind of rule. You just let the path speak for itself. The important thing is to watch the scenario shifts that happen: first you may observe the feeling from a distant position; then there is only the feeling, with no separation between a self and the feeling; and so on."
Different ways of experiencing a feeling, such as anger:
There seem to be infinitely many ways of relating to experience,
and of this range I arbitrarily describe three levels to represent
(1) our usual way of experiencing at one end of the range, (2)
a level of consciousness in the middle of the range, (3) an enlightened
or self-actualized way of experiencing at the other end of the
range. (These levels correspond to the three
levels described in Time,
Space, and Knowledge.)
Suppose you are feeling angry. Let's examine the scenario at the above three levels of consciousness. Note that the physical sensation is the same in the description of the experience of all three levels; it is the way the feeling is experienced that is different. At the first level, our usual way of experiencing, the feeling is usually labeled, and is experienced as located in particular places in the body, perhaps in this case in the belly or chest. Also, the experience is one that you have. That is, you, the knower or observer of the feeling, are not identified or merged with the feeling; your sense of self as the knower is outside the feeling, which you have. Your experience of time is linear, usually with one experience at a time. Space is experienced as extended in three dimensions.
At the second level of experiencing, there is not simply a labeling of anger, which is thus felt as more immediate, not separated from oneself by a label or thought. The anger is not experienced as so clearly locatable as in the first way of experiencing. Of course, the feeling is in the same physical location, but one experiences the boundaries of the anger to be more open or less definite. One also experiences the surrounding space differently-more open, less separated and container-like; more open, but in a nonextended way. Similarly, the sense of oneself as the observer of the anger is more open. Rather than a highly intellectual way of knowing the anger, for example, there may be a simple, nonverbal observation of it. One may also experience a slowing down of time passing. There may be a strong element of clarity encompassing the anger.
Finally, at the deepest level of experiencing, there is simply
the pure energy of the anger, and no identification of location
in the body. There is no feeling of oneself as an observer separate
from the feeling. One's awareness is one with the feeling, which
has no apparent source, nor anything outside it. There is no
sense of time passing, and no experience of space as a container
for things and events. Space is simply nonextended openness.
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