We think we have free will, she continued, but we are foiled at every turn. First our biology conspires against us with brains that are hard-wired to increase pleasure and decrease pain. Meanwhile, we are so gregarious that social systems — whether you call them peer pressure or politics — reliably dwarf us as individuals. “There is no way you can escape." From NYT interview of Dr. Volkow, Director National Institute for Drug Addiction
The brain craves dopamine. This pleasure hormone gives us an overall feeling of well-being, connection, self-efficacy, ease. Addictive behaviors are influenced by how well our brains absorb dopamine. If you have too few dopamine receptors, additive substances and behavior won't have much purchase but too many can make the addictive substance or behavior unpleasant.
Addiction, however, also has a social component. Volkow writes, "Meanwhile, we are so gregarious that social systems — whether you call them peer pressure or politics — reliably dwarf us as individuals. There is no way you can escape.” Which is to say that we are profoundly influenced by the people we spend our time with.
We can choose to spend more time with people who push us to go inside, connect with our deep selves or those which, for whatever reason, push us to negative self-judgements, shame, fear, disconnection. To experience deep connection and love for your inner self is a natural balm for pain. Heroin, alcohol abuse, overwork, and overuse of pain medications are also balms for pain, but in contrast to the soul are not of the life-supporting kind.
Pain whether emotional or physical is part of life. How we comfort ourselves in pain, with equanimity, curiosity, and compassion versus fear, aversion, or shame, is an individual, economic, cultural, and political choice.
As a culture, the US is not doing so well dealing with pain. According to the NYT, "The toll from soaring rates of prescription drug abuse, including both psychiatric medications and drugs for pain, has begun to dwarf that of the usual illegal culprits. Hospitalizations related to prescription drugs are up fivefold in the last decade, and overdose deaths up fourfold. More high school seniors report recreational use of tranquilizers or prescription narcotics, like OxyContin and Vicodin, than heroin and cocaine combined."
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Monday, June 13, 2011
The Power in Loss
"..The way we deal with those losses, large and small, can really help or get in the way of the way we deal with the rest of our lives, with what we have. Right? Not just what we've lost." (Krista Tippet interviewing Dr. Naomi Remen, medical director of the Commonweal Cancer Help Program.)
How, then, do you deal with loss? Loss of a dream, an expectation, a piece of skin, a child? What do you do when the ground falls beneath your feet, you have no answers only questions, you find pain where once you found comfort and pleasure?
Over the years, I have "dealt" with loss in many different ways including denial, over striving, drugs, food, rage, continual motion, dreams, thinking, self-loathing, and escape. In each of these ways, I have treated loss as some kind of abnormality in my life, some great misdeed, or mistake I have made or an injustice by an enemy against me. Each of these strategies can offer temporary numbness and balm but in the end just serves to intensify my fear of loss which is really a fear of living fully with openness to what is. In these ways of coping with loss, I cling with vice grips on weak limbs, unable to open my palms to feel the next gust of wind, the rain, the penetrating sun, a friends hand.
There is a new way, I am learning, in which the inevitable losses can be experienced, acknowledged, and honored for the powerful healing, humility, and connection that they offer. Our experience of loss, afterall, is what makes us human, is what enables me to see the woman who serves me coffee as myself, the tears of a mother half way around the world my own. More so than our pleasure, the pain of loss brings us into the truth of our vulnerability and dependence on each other. And that knowledge alone can melt a thousand years of hatred if it is allowed to breath.
This new way, the sages tell us, requires us to enter the pain of loss, hold the wound with the same tenderness that you hold an infant, to trust that there is a ground beneath the emptiness, light to penetrate the darkness.
There are more questions than answers in this place of loss. But, as Naomi Remen has written, "I have no answers, but I have a lot of questions, and those questions have helped me to live better than any answers I might find."
How, then, do you deal with loss? Loss of a dream, an expectation, a piece of skin, a child? What do you do when the ground falls beneath your feet, you have no answers only questions, you find pain where once you found comfort and pleasure?
Over the years, I have "dealt" with loss in many different ways including denial, over striving, drugs, food, rage, continual motion, dreams, thinking, self-loathing, and escape. In each of these ways, I have treated loss as some kind of abnormality in my life, some great misdeed, or mistake I have made or an injustice by an enemy against me. Each of these strategies can offer temporary numbness and balm but in the end just serves to intensify my fear of loss which is really a fear of living fully with openness to what is. In these ways of coping with loss, I cling with vice grips on weak limbs, unable to open my palms to feel the next gust of wind, the rain, the penetrating sun, a friends hand.
There is a new way, I am learning, in which the inevitable losses can be experienced, acknowledged, and honored for the powerful healing, humility, and connection that they offer. Our experience of loss, afterall, is what makes us human, is what enables me to see the woman who serves me coffee as myself, the tears of a mother half way around the world my own. More so than our pleasure, the pain of loss brings us into the truth of our vulnerability and dependence on each other. And that knowledge alone can melt a thousand years of hatred if it is allowed to breath.
This new way, the sages tell us, requires us to enter the pain of loss, hold the wound with the same tenderness that you hold an infant, to trust that there is a ground beneath the emptiness, light to penetrate the darkness.
There are more questions than answers in this place of loss. But, as Naomi Remen has written, "I have no answers, but I have a lot of questions, and those questions have helped me to live better than any answers I might find."
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Falling in Love
Quite unexpectedly and at the ripe old age of middle age, I find myself falling in love. This is no ordinary lover, however, not a lover at all. Alas, I have come to love my yoga teacher and like a school girl in spring feel giddy, hopeful, and beautiful when I am near her.
The Buddhists say that when the student is ready the teacher appears and that has been the case with me. On a lark, last summer I signed up for a three day retreat and have been hooked ever since. In three short days, my teacher brought me deeper into myself than I had ever been. Yes, I was ready for this journey having practiced for over 15 years with more or less devotion depending on my whims, time, energy. I knew where my tailbone was, could spread my toes wide on the ground, had access to my thoracic spine. I could hold a five minute head stand, a one minute hand stand, and press up into back bend after back bend.
Still, I knew very little about the yoga sutras, has a disdain for pranayama and meditation, practiced with so much striving for perfection as to cause myself harm - physical, emotional, spiritual.
My teacher helped me to loosen up, lighten up, be very curious about my own body and how it moves (and how it doesn't). She helped me to make friends with the pain, plunge into dark and wounded parts, touch ever so lightly the unknown.
I have more resolve in my own practice now, am able to get down onto my mat daily even when I don't want to because it is her voice that I long to hear in my head.
"Come with me," she says with resolve and tenderness, "You can do this. Stay present, curious, find yourself." And she is there week after week after week showing us the way.
The Buddhists say that when the student is ready the teacher appears and that has been the case with me. On a lark, last summer I signed up for a three day retreat and have been hooked ever since. In three short days, my teacher brought me deeper into myself than I had ever been. Yes, I was ready for this journey having practiced for over 15 years with more or less devotion depending on my whims, time, energy. I knew where my tailbone was, could spread my toes wide on the ground, had access to my thoracic spine. I could hold a five minute head stand, a one minute hand stand, and press up into back bend after back bend.
Still, I knew very little about the yoga sutras, has a disdain for pranayama and meditation, practiced with so much striving for perfection as to cause myself harm - physical, emotional, spiritual.
My teacher helped me to loosen up, lighten up, be very curious about my own body and how it moves (and how it doesn't). She helped me to make friends with the pain, plunge into dark and wounded parts, touch ever so lightly the unknown.
I have more resolve in my own practice now, am able to get down onto my mat daily even when I don't want to because it is her voice that I long to hear in my head.
"Come with me," she says with resolve and tenderness, "You can do this. Stay present, curious, find yourself." And she is there week after week after week showing us the way.
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