Meditating on What Upsets Me

In a recent post ("Healing Meditation") I wrote about a psychotherapy technique called EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reintegration).  The method involves shifting attention rhythmically from left to right, left to right--either with the eyes or the ears--in a way that mimics the rapid eye movement of dreams, while recalling traumatic memories.  In countless studies, EMDR has been shown to be amazing effective at helping people traumatized by war, crime, and natural disasters recall their traumas vividly--as if their dreamlike eye movements induce a "dreaming" state--and then they naturally, with little help from the therapist, heal themselves.  They "deal with" the trauma effectively and quickly, even if they've been tormented by it for 30 years.  Here's a link to a website for more information:  EMDR.com.

Nobody knows exactly why the technique works, but some of the speculations that I've read about ring true to me.  I've read that the left-right shifting of the eyes or of recorded sound might cause both sides of the brain to engage in processing the memory of the event.  The logic of the left brain and intuition of the right brain are both engaged in dealing with the memory of the event.  It's like making sure that you apply all the tools available to you, all the mental strengths you have, to the task of deciding, "What did this event mean?  What lessons can I learn?  What does this tell me about who I am?  Am I safe?  Was I to blame in any way?  What REALLY happened, and what can I expect in the future?"

The other speculation that I've read is that EMDR mimics dreaming, and that dreaming is the way humans best deal with trauma.  When we are awake, our consciousness is dominated by our verbal, logical left brain. Our intuitive, emotional right brain is relatively unconscious and disengaged.  We need both sides of our brain in balance to know the truth about what happened to us when a tornado destroyed our home, when a loved one died, when we were victims of a crime, or when we saw our friends die in combat.  So humans heal themselves through dreams.  In dreams, the eyes shift rapidly from left to right to engage both sides of the brain equally.  We are balanced in applying our brains to the memories that we dream about.  And then we rapidly heal ourselves just as we form clots and scars to heal physical wounds.

In her book, EMDR: The Breakthrough "Eye Movement" Therapy for Overcoming Anxiety, Stress, and Trauma, Dr. Francine Shapiro, who discovered the technique, gives many case studies of the method.  She cautions that the method is too powerful for people to apply to themselves without the help of a trained EMDR therapist.  But I've decided to experiment with applying EMDR to myself for minor issues, things that are not traumatic, but things that do tend to upset me.  Shapiro did the same thing to herself as she developed the method.

I call this "Meditating on What Upsets Me".  As best as I can, I do try to follow the basic process Shapiro describes in her book.  I'll start by picking a topic to focus on--something that is not traumatic but has often upset me or annoyed me over the years.  The topic I've worked on the most since I started experimenting with EMDR has been that it has often upset me if I've been criticized harshly and (in my opinion) the criticism wasn't fair.

I'll then listen to an EMDR recording with headphones.  My favorite recording is the music of Liborio Conti, "EMDR Meditations".  I tune into the shifting left-right chimes, bells, or percussion of each piece.  I relax deeply.  Then I recall a key event or two from childhood, from school, or even from as late as last week that fits with the topic.  Shapiro calls this memory the current "target".

The oscillating sounds seem to make it easier to remember the event clearly.  As Shapiro suggests in her book, I'll deliberately dwell on any self-doubts triggered by the event.  Being criticized may have made me doubt myself, even when I felt the criticism was wrong.  Then I'll dwell on what I'd rather believe.  "I was right all along.  The other person misunderstood me or the situation."

If I follow this process correctly, I should eventually become less sensitive to harsh criticism.  I should end up being bolder, more willing to engage leadership with a controversial proposal, even at the risk of criticism.  And if the criticism comes, I'll be less likely to be upset by it. It's hard to measure, but I think at work I've felt that I AM getting bolder and more willing to engage higher-ups on issues that matter.

I've also applied "Meditation on What Upsets Me" to some other things that have bugged me over the years.  It's a technique that requires practice.  I don't like to do the same kind of meditation every day, and it is giving me a healing alternative.

At last, finished writing my book!!!

For years, I wanted to write a book entitled "Embrace Your Changing Self".  Many of the people who have helped me most in life are people whom I've never met but who wrote books about happiness, about parenting, about succeeding at work, about spirituality.  I felt that I had something of a gift for reflecting on the ideas in these books and putting them in my own words and applying them to my own life and that I too might be able to help others as these authors have helped me by sharing my thoughts.  So I dreamed that I could write this book and, through it, have a positive effect on at least a few of the people around me.

But the idea of writing a book was intimidating.  What if I poured my heart and soul into drafting a book and could not get published?  Could I really convince anyone to publish it?  I'm just an engineer, not a psychologist or someone with years of Buddhist training.  Could this all be just a dead end?

Year after year, my friends and relatives would ask, "So how's it going on your book?"  I'd answer sheepishly, "OK.  Just writing a little here and there."  But I was actually embarrassed because my progress was so slow.  I had writer's block.  The whole idea of investing this time and possibly never getting someone to publish the book, the idea that nobody except friends and family would read my book and that even they would do so out of loyalty and a recognition of how important this is to me--all this left me unable to just create, to just let the words flow.

But tonight, I celebrate.  I've written my book!!!!!!!  This is my 200th posting on this blog.  In my heart, for several months, I've felt that reaching blog posting #200 would mark the realization of my dream.  200 blog posts feels like enough blog posts to say that I've produced as much material as a person might find in a book.  I've written my book!!!!!  It no longer feels like something that I hope to do someday but that I have no control over and that I'm not making much progress on year after year.  

Thank God for the Internet, for the ability to express myself without having to persuade a publisher to invest in giving me the opportunity to reach out to others.  In the last few months this website has grown from 300 page views per month to 600-700.  That's not an amazing number, but how many people would I have reached with an expensive, physical paperback or hardcover book?  Maybe 10, including my wife?

Tonight, I celebrate.  I'm entitled to it.  I realized one of my life's dreams.  I wrote a book.  The posts I write in the future are just adding to the dream.

Healing Meditation

A friend of mine has suffered for about 20 years from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder due to having been a victim of violent crime.  She recently went to a therapist who used a technique called "EMDR" to help her recall the crime and process her feelings about it.  After just one ninety minute session, my friend felt she had experienced significant healing and may not even need more EMDR therapy sessions.

Intrigued, I decided to learn more about EMDR.  EMDR stands for "Eye Movement Desentization & Reintegration".  The technique was invented in 1996 by Francine Shapiro, author of EMDR The Breakthrough Therapy for Overcoming Anxiety, Stress, and Trauma".  Shapiro was trying to find more effective therapies for chronic stress when she noticed her own tendency to move her eyes rapidly from left to right when thinking about stressful memories.  She noticed that these eye movements made the traumatic memories become less stressful, as if they helped her "get through" the events an move on.  Over time she developed EMDR.  This therapy is now considered perhaps the fastest and most effective method for a person to work through painful memories ranging from minor stresses (public humiliation, unkind words from parents) to major traumas (being a victim of a violent crime or seeing friends die in combat).

Given my interest in left and right brain research, I'm interested in the fact that the technique involves shifting attention rapidly back and forth from left to right.  This can involve moving the eyes from left to right, but it can also involve listening with headphones to recordings in which tones alternate rapidly between the left ear and the right ear.  Shapiro admits to not understanding why EMDR works this way.  She discovered by accident that stressful memories are dealt with much faster when the attention shifts back and forth from left to right.  She speculates that this might have something to do with left brain and right brain differences and that it is similar to rapid eye movement in sleep.  I suspect it is a way in which the brain ensures that it deals with stressful memories using all of it's best talents:  the logic of the left brain and the intuition of the right.

I've started experimenting with EMDR as a form of meditation.  I found some EMDR recordings by Liborio Conti on iTunes.  Her "EMDR Meditations" album has beautiful instrumental pieces, each of which has sounds alternating rapidly from left to right.  I haven't had horrible traumas in my life (at least not yet), but have some issues with harsh disapproval.  So I've tried at times to listen to Conti while bringing to mind some of the most unpleasant times I can remember in which I've had harsh criticism from an authority figure.  I'm not sure yet if this is having an effect, but I'm hoping it makes me a bit less sensitive to harsh criticism in the future.

Shifting to the Right

In her book, My Stroke of Insight , Jill Bolte Taylor describes how her life threatening stroke in 1996 forced her to see the world through the eyes of the only part of her brain that could still function at the time:  her right brain.  As she explains in her book, this is the half of the brain that lives in the moment.  It has no sense of past and future.  It tells no stories.  It has no worries or obsessions, no plans or responsibilities.  It does not see any difference between the inner world and the outer world, between human body and surroundings.  It only sees all of reality as it is right now, accepting everything that is exactly as it is right now, at peace and filled with wonder.

According to Taylor, this type of awareness is available to all of us.  It is part of being human.  It is a basic fact of brain science that the left side of the brain is verbal, that the left side is logical, that it tells the stories of past and future, that it is the side of the brain that distinguishes between self and other.  It is also known that the right brain is intuitive, that it just sees the present moment without connecting the now to the past and the future in a timeline, and that the right brain blurs the boundaries between self and universe.  But the left brain dominates most of our awareness.  The mental chatter doesn't stop for more than a few seconds at a time.  Thoughts of past and future constantly jump into our brains.  Peaceful, carefree, silent absorption in the current moment, feeling connected to everything, is an ecstatic spiritual state we read about but can feel outside of our grasp.

How can we shift our awareness to our right brains as Taylor did without getting there as she did, by suffering a hemmorrhage or blod clot that shuts down the rest of our brain?

I don't think it's that hard to give the left brain a rest and shift to the right.  This is what meditation is all about.

Effective meditation is all about setting up conditions in which the left brain takes a vacation.  And when the left brain lets go, the right brain naturally rushes in to fill the void.  Here are some of the things that I've found will help me deepen my daily meditations:

1. Always give myself permission to stop DOING anything until the meditation is over.  I always need to tell myself that I'll get back to my work, my family, and my home later.  In the long run, everyone will benefit if I stop pushing all those agendas ahead for 20 or 30 minutes while I meditate.  I can't possibly shift to my Right Brain if I don't do this because, as long as there is work to be done, my Left Brain is going to insist on being in charge.
2. Keep conversations short.  As many meditation guides suggest, it's way too much to expect NO thoughts to creep in, to beat yourself up because you remember something you ought to do next time your at work, or a bad memory pops up.  But I always start my meditations with the intention of limiting these conversations.  Notice them when they arise.  But don't run with any particular train of thought.  Remind myself that this is not the time, that I can get back to that topic later.
3. Always relax my body.  A relaxed body and the Left Brain don't mix.  The Left Brain is about action, effort, fight, or flight.  When the body relaxes, the Right Brain settles in.
4. Focus on something fluid.  Anything that is fluid--a candle, a river, the wind in the trees, or my breath--has no rigid boundaries.  The flame starts at the wick, continues into the visible flame, continues into invisible hot gas, and ends in smoke dispersing everywhere.  Where does the flame start and end?  Similarly, when I inhale, is the breath inside my lungs "me"?   When I exhale, has part of "me" left?  Focusing on anything fluid during meditation is a great reminder that there are no clear boundaries between my inner world and the outer world.  And because this is how the Right Brain already thinks, when I focus on these things during meditation, I encourage my Right Brain to take control.

Brain Dance

Both sides of the human brain can see, hear, smell, taste, think, feel, remember and communicate.  But how each half sees, hears, tastes, thinks, feels, remember, and communicates is completely different from the other half.

The left half of the brain takes information it receives from the senses and uses it to separate the world into different things.  It defines the borders between beings or objects so that each "thing" can be dealt with as a separate entity.  It names things.  It listens to words, thinks in words, speaks in words.  All because it is driven to get things done, to control the situation--exactly what we need much, but not all, of the time.

The right half of the brain starts with the same information, but seeks to see things as they are.  The whole picture.  No boundaries between self and others.  No words or names to represent reality.  Instead, absorb reality in all its raw, unfiltered complexity. 

In her book, "My Stroke of Insight", Jill Bolte Taylor, describes brain scans showing that both sides of the brain are active most of the time.  In a conversation, the left brain will interpret the words and the right brain will interpret the sneer that shows the words are sarcastic.  They work together to achieve more than either could alone, but the left brain usually dominates our awareness.  As a result, we have two minds but are usually see things mostly from the left brain's perspective.

It's as if the two sides of our brains were in a dance.  Most of the time, the left brain leads the dance.  The couple could not be more different in personality, priorities, and character.  But if they agree on who will lead the dance, they can appear as one.

The Perfect Stroke for the Perfect Victim

We are all so lucky that, in 1996, Jill Bolte Taylor had a life threatening stroke.  It took her 7 years to regain all her mental capacity.  I wouldn't wish this on anyone, but--if it had to happen to someone--we're fortunate that it happened to her.

This was the perfect combination of stroke and victim.  The stroke was unusual in that it shut down the entire left hemisphere of her brain and did no damage to her right hemisphere.  As a result, Jill was able to see the world purely from the point of view of her right brain.  This right brain can't speak, but it is a master of non-verbal communication.  It can't reason, but it is the source of intuition.  It can't imagine the past or the future, but it dwells in the eternal present.  It has no concept of "self"; it doesn't know the words "I am".  Instead, it sees no separation between itself and its surroundings.  To the right brain, all reality is interconnected.  It has no goals, but it is therefore carefree.  In her book, "My Stroke of Insight", Jill describes the 2-1/2 weeks that she was wide awake but unable to think or understand the spoken word as Nirvana.  Peace.  An exhilarating mystical connection with everything in life.  Complete absorption in the eternal now.

What made Jill the perfect victim for this perfect stroke was her background and her personality.  She was a brain scientist--a nueroanatomist at Harvard University.  She already was an expert, region by region, on the differences between the left brain and the right brain.  She already knew that the left brain was verbal and was the location for all ideas such as "I am a brain scientist.  My name is Jill.  My body ends here and then the rest of the world starts."  She already knew that the right brain was the source of emotional intelligence, intuition, creativity, and that the right brain has no concept of past and future.  So she had the expertise to explain to us in her book exactly what was going on in her brain when her consciousness shifted to the right and during her 7 years of recovering left brain functioning.

Her personality also made her the perfect victim for this stroke.  In the riveting chapter where she describes the first 4 hours of her stroke, she recalls when she first realized that she was having a life threatening stroke.  She said,

Oh my gosh, I'm having a stroke!  I'm having a stroke!  Wow, this is so cool!  Wow, how many scientists have the opportunity to study their own brain function and mental deterioration from the inside out?

The real question is: how many scientists would realize they could die and would find it "cool" and fascinating?  Jill's enthusiasm and passion for understanding what is happening to her even during the stroke and the years of painstaking recovery are characteristics of her personality that made her the perfect victim for this perfect stroke.  Nobody else could have given us the gift of the story she tells us in her book.  Only she could have experienced this and come back to teach the rest of us so much about how our minds work.

Two Brains

We've known for decades about the vastly different consciousness found in the verbal, left half of the brain and the non-verbal right half of the brain.  The most famous initial research was done by Roger Sperry.  Sperry studied epileptic patients who had undergone a special operation to control their seizures.  This operation severs the "corpus callosum", a set of nerves that allow the two halves of the brain to talk to each other.  Sperry showed that such patients react totally differently when information is presented to their left eye or ear versus when it is presented to their right eye or ear.  Through this research, he showed that the left brain is logical and verbal, and the right brain is intuitive and visual.  Sperry won the Nobel Prize in 1973 for this work.  Here's a link to a You Tube video showing one of the patients studied by Sperry and his colleague Micheal Gazzaniga:  Video of Split Brain Patient

What is even more amazing about the experience that Jill Bolte Taylor describes in her book My Stroke of Insight is that she didn't just see an image for a few seconds with her right brain and then another image for a few seconds with her left brain.  Her left brain SHUT DOWN for over two weeks due to a near fatal stroke. And because she was a Neuro-anatomist at Harvard University, she was uniquely positioned to describe later exactly what it was like to shift all of her consciousness to the silent, intuitive, perceptive right brain.  And she found that it brought a peace and joy and feeling of oneness with the universe that sounds exactly like the experience of mystics everywhere.