Remembering Diane di Prima

“the only war that matters is the war against the imagination.” —Diane di Prima Onehandclapping, CC BY-SA 3.0 We just learned that Diane di Prima passed away on October 25th, 2020.  While we did not publish any of her extraordinary stand-alone works, she and her work appear in many Shambhala Publications books.  Though I had not been in touch in years, I knew Diane, especially after sitting next to her in some longer retreats with Lama Tharchin Rinpoche.  She had an incredible mind.  I remember her often picking up on something someone said, catching a turn of phrase that others less perceptive or less tuned into language would have not noticed, illuminating it and playing with it, making it dance.  I knew her to be a superb student, teacher, friend and inspiration to many. Allen Ginsberg described her thus: “Diane di Prima, revolutionary  activist of the 1960s Beat literary renaissance, heroic in life and poetics: a learned humorous bohemian, classically educated and  twentieth-century radical, her  writing, informed by Buddhist  equanimity, is exemplary in imagist, political and mystical  modes. A great woman poet in the second half of American century, she broke barriers of race-class  identity, delivered a major body of  verse brilliant in its particularity.” But it is her own writing where she comes out and shines. Diane's was a life well-lived.  Palms together to Diane. Nikko Odiseos, Shambhala Publications I Fail as a Dharma Teacher I don’t imagine I’ll manage to express Sunyata in a way that all my students will know & love or present the 4 Noble Truths so they look delicious & tempting as Easter candy. My skillful means is more like a two by four banging on the head of a reluctant diver I then go in and save— what pyrotechnics! Alas this life I can’t be kind and persuasive slip the Twelve-part Chain off hundreds of shackled housewives present the Eight-fold Path like the ultimate roadmap at all the gas stations in samsara But, oh, my lamas, I want to how I want to! Just to see your old eyes shine in this Kaliyuga stars going out around us like birthday candles your Empty Clear Luminous and Unobstructed Rainbow Bodies swimming in and through us like transparent fish. —One of the eighteen poems in The Beat Book See also Diane's profile at the Poetry Foundation A Short Profile of Diane di Prima from The Beat Book: Writings from the Beat Generation. Diane di Prima was born in 1934 and grew up in New York City. She dropped out of Swarthmore College to become a writer and lived in Greenwich Village, holding down a variety of jobs, consorting with artists, musicians, and poets. LeRoi Jones and his wife, Hettie, published di Prima’s first book in 1958. She was active in the Poets’ Theatre in New York and in the late sixties moved to San Francisco, where she raised five children, living in various communal situations, writing, and pursuing studies in politics, music, mythology, and religion. She also spent time in Timothy Leary’s Psychedelic community in Millbrook, New York. In 1962 she encountered the Zen teacher Suzuki Roshi: ‘‘I sat because he sat. To know his mind. It was the first time in my twenty-eight years that I had encountered another human being and felt trust. It blew my tough, sophisticated young-artist’s mind.’’ After Suzuki Roshi’s death, di Prima was accepted as a student by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche in 1983. Di Prima was a founding faculty member of the Poetics Program at New College in San Francisco, along with Robert Duncan, and was one of the early founding ‘‘mothers’’ of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. She received a Lifetime Achievement Award in poetry from the National Poetry Association in 1993. Di Prima’s books include the incendiary Revolutionary Letters, several volumes of memoirs, such as Recollections of My Life as a Woman, and many collections of poetry, including Loba. From Beneath a Single Moon: Buddhism in Contemporary American Poetry "I cannot really pin down the influence of Buddhism in my work or my life-I have written very few explicitly "Buddhist poems." What I feel is that Buddhism has permeated my way of seeing the world and of being in it. For me, the basic dharmic teachings are simply axiomatic: emptiness, interdependence. They describe the actual structure of the world. Put another way, the dharma is the warp of the world on which the colors are woven. But more than that: whether we are aware of it or not, something of Buddhism pervades American consciousness. When Bodhidharma came from India to China with the Buddhism that was to become Ch'an and later Zen, his answer to the Chinese emperor's request for "the holy teachings" was "VASTNESS, NO HOLINESS!" This seems to me to be at the very core of who we are, what we are doing in the world at this time, as a nation and as a species, as we move out of time into space. It's a big risk and, as the dharma reminds us, there are no answers-but consciousness is shapely, and we do know more than we know." From Heroine's Journey Many women poets express their erotic nature in its many facets, both sensual and spiritual. In “Ave” Diane Di Prima writes of her union with the divine feminine. . . . you are the hills, the shape and color of mesa you are the tent, the lodge of skins, the hogan the buffalo robes, the quilt, the knitted afghan you are the cauldron and the evening star you rise over the sea, you ride the dark I move within you, light the evening fire I dip my hand in you and eat your flesh you are my mirror image and my sister you disappear like smoke on mist hills you lead me thru dream forest on horseback large gypsy mother, I lean my head on your back I am you and I must become you I have seen you and I must become you I am always you I must become you . . . Diane di Prima in Recalling Chögyam Trunga Diane di Prima, a key presence in the early years and development of the Jack Kerouac School, had became closer to Trungpa Rinpoche after the death of her own teacher, Suzuki Roshi, and worked on her ngöndro (preliminary practice involving one hundred thousand prostrations, mantras, and mandala offerings) under the auspices and guidance of the Vajradhatu mandala. “Trajectory,” a poem from those early years, carries a sense of poignant irony that suffering is the greatest blessing: So this 1970 must be an excellent time when even the telephone poles scream in agony. . . . From Haiku Mind: 108 Poems to Cultivate Awareness and Open Your Heart Creativity and Imagination the inner tide— what moon does it follow? I wait for a poem —Diane di Prima "The realm of creativity is interior, and is a mysterious interior journey. The Trappist monk Thomas Merton said, “our real journey in life is interior. . . .” To enter the realm of the interior, the moonlit night of dreams, of the Muse goddess, of howling she-wolves, we must leave behind boundaries, rules, and fixations and embrace the realm of intuition and imagination. Over her lifetime, the Beat poet Diane di Prima continues to rant, “the only war that matters is the war against the imagination.” To protect and revere the imagination, we need to step beyond hope and fear and enter unknown territory. In Tibetan Buddhism this unknown is a bardo, or gap, the word often used for the place between death and rebirth—yet it is also a place of in-between states of our so-called awake life: a place of pregnant uncertainty and opening into creative space. Though mostly known for writing longer series of poems, di Prima has embraced haiku, and says about it: “Most recently it’s been all about spaciousness, vastness in the fewest possible strokes. Images. Letting the breath open the sky.” And always, leaving the space for the moon to illuminate and move the tides." Listen to Diane reading at Naropa University in 1987.

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Taking it to the Sheets: Mindful Sex

Mindful Sex An excerpt from Passion & Presence Taking it to the Sheets: Mindful Sex So, what exactly is mindful sex? What images come into your mind at the mention of “erotic presence”? Are you seeing two people breathing in synchrony as they gaze lovingly into each other’s eyes? If you imagine penetration, are you seeing slow thrusts?   Mindful sex is not necessarily “slow sex.” Nor is it an alternative to lusty or even “rough” sex. Any kind of sex can be mindful. It is the quality of presence that we bring to whatever type of sex we are having right now. This presence is curious and allowing. With erotic presence, we can feel ourselves emotionally, energetically, and physically. The inner observer has open eyes, enabling us to notice our thoughts, habits, and impulses throughout the experience.   Although there is no single experience of mindful sex, I’ve identified five features that make it a wakeful adventure. Some of these features reflect the spirit or attitude of mindful sex; others refer to the practice or state of consciousness that supports being open and wakeful.   The Five Features of Mindful Sex 1. Eliminating goals and reference points 2. Embracing both the joys and challenges bundled with sex 3. Accepting the impermanence that runs through our erotic life 4. Cultivating a state of novelty 5. Becoming present and embodied   Let’s look at the list in more depth. Each of the five features begins with a question or set of questions.   1. Eliminating Goals and Reference Points How would it be to enter an erotic experience without a destination or frame of reference?   Mindful sex keeps us coming back to the “spacious mind” of our pure erotic potential. In this state, we are free from goals and reference points that stifle the potential creativity available in the here and now. We practice noticing—again and again—when we are becoming automatic or goal oriented. At such times, we pause and wait for the next impulse to see where it might take us rather than plowing ahead.   From a spacious mind, we might find ourselves drawn to stroking our partner’s body in a new way. Alternatively, we may become newly aware of where and how we want to be touched at this moment. When we release ourselves from “destination tyranny” by emptying our mind of goals and reference points, we become curious explorers. We accept like any intrepid adventurer that sometimes the path we thought was to an exotic mushroom turns out to be a muddy dead end. With a spacious mind, we re-wild our sex life by exploring new trails.   2. Embracing Both the Joys and Challenges Bundled with Sex Do you assume that sex should always be good, if not great?   When it comes to sex, most of us chase pleasure and judge challenges and “just okay” sex as bad news. However, real-life sex can have incredible highs as well as multiple frustrations, just as real-life vacations can include flight delays or bungled hotel reservations. While we may believe that sex should be consistently fulfilling, many sexual experiences are okay, at best. Research tells us that more than 50 percent of the time, sex will be more enjoyable for one of us than the other.   Expecting sex always to be comfortable and satisfying is like hoping the weather will be sunny 365 days of the year. Like the weather, our sex life can be hot and steamy, stormy, or dry. We can be in a drought for months, even years. Nevertheless, couples who claim togetherness in sickness and health may lose said devotion when their sex life goes south. With mindfulness, we can begin to embrace the full range of our sexual experiences as a couple as we develop a nonjudgmental attitude toward them all.   Stage 3 couples do just that; they appreciate their delightful, deeply satisfying encounters as well as those that are awkward and disappointing. They shift their orientation so that sexual variability is merely evidence of the mystery of eros, rather than a problem to solve. With this mind-set, even unsatisfying experiences become grist for the mill. As Sengstan, in the Hsin Hsin Ming put it, “The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences.”   3. Accepting the Impermanence That Runs through Our Erotic Life Are you willing to surrender your attachment to a particular outcome or view of “great sex”? Can you let go of the so-called good times and bad? Why do intense moments of pleasure only slip through our grasp when we try to recapture them later?   Our best sexual experiences are like soap bubbles, delicate and short-lived. Even the Big O is normally only seven to twenty seconds long. Trying to keep our sex life the same is like saving a pressed flower. It will forever be just an echo of its former self, lifeless and without fragrance.   The good news is that something as good or better than your best sex is waiting for you right now. You will miss it if you try to reprise the oldies but goodies, or judge your sex life by your last few unsatisfying encounters. As you may have seen in the thought experiment earlier, our expectations determine what is possible between us. If we have the idea that our sex life is a problem, we are likely to be cautious and avoidant of sex.   Mindfulness can help us not attach to a particular experience of sex—good or bad. It can release every sexual experience back into the stream of ongoing experiences we are likely to have as a couple. Having goals can create attachment toward future experiences and cause rejection of current moments together. Holding on to reference points can lead us to want to replicate past experiences, the satisfying as well as the unsatisfying. When we let go of our attachment to specific experiences, we allow ourselves to discover pathways to pleasure that fit what is realistic and desirable for us right now.   If your sex life has been less than wonderful, try to empty yourself of expectations and inner models. This practice is what stage 3 couples do each time they make love. They release their images of what their best and worst sex is like and meet freshly. If you let go of your reference points, then whatever is happening right now is your “best sex.”   4. Cultivating a State of Novelty In a spirit of exploration, are you willing to see how mindfulness can convert an ordinary and familiar sexual encounter into something novel?   Ellen Langer is a social psychologist at Harvard University who has been studying mindfulness for more than forty years. Her findings indicate that when we look for novelty in familiar places, we anchor ourselves in the present. Because we are engaged, we enjoy ourselves and are more creative. I believe she’s right.   Mindful sex follows an internal rhythm, not a sexual script. We listen inside for the eros energy that pulses through us. When we liberate ourselves from the pressure to reach a goal and erase our images of sex, our experience becomes a free-form jam session. Instead of kissing our partner’s body with our lips, we might draw different shapes with our tongue, making a painting with our mouth. Instead of going up and down with our head, we might zigzag across our partner’s genitals and hum, enjoying the vibrations we feel inside of our mouth.   We awaken our PEP by following erotic impulses as they arise moment to moment without succumbing to automatic moves and routines. Sometimes our riffs will be mind-blowing, sometimes one or both of us may not be feeling the music. Whatever happens is okay. Acceptance is a crucial element of traditional mindfulness as well as mindful sex.   By improvising instead of playing tired standards, we access infinite possibilities rather than going straight for an orgasm. Of course, not every single stroke, kiss, or lick will be a first. However, the combination will be unique, and so will the energy behind it. Our playfulness, passion, and intimacy are born of the moment and therefore are fresh and unrepeatable.   5. Becoming Present and Embodied What if you want to feel aroused but have trouble doing so? How does sensation get coded as pleasure?   Some of us have bodies that talk to us through a megaphone. Our internal sensations may be so intense that we want to cover our ears. Others of us can go all day long without eating or drinking and never feeling hunger or thirst. Mindfulness can help you feel yourself from the inside, including your turn-on. This process is called “interoception.” When you link your pounding chest to fear and your growling stomach to hunger, you are using interoception, or your “felt sense.” The same system helps you recognize sexual arousal.   The brain’s insula is ground control for your felt sense. It is the re-lay station between body and brain and supports erotic attunement. Research by Sara Lazar indicates that mindfulness practice thickens the insula. In one study, this resulted in more intense orgasms for women. British Columbia’s Sexual Health Lab provides conclusive evidence that mindfulness can restore desire, arousal, and sexual functioning in women with arousal disorders related to gynecological cancer and sexual abuse.   Developing your sexual felt sense is essential to erotic attunement, which is the ability to feel your partner while you are feeling yourself during an erotic exchange. As we will see in chapter 6, the art of mindful sex is learning how to engage in an unscripted call-and-response. We do this by feeling and responding to each other’s nonverbal cues. You can develop your sexual felt sense by telescoping in on the sensations in your body that accompany arousal. When you bring focused attention to the body, you converse with your nervous system. Corresponding regions of your brain light up in the places where you are receiving physical contact, but only if you bring awareness to those areas.   If you are receiving wanted sexual stimulation, your feelings of arousal and your genital response synch up, resulting in “sexual concordance.” The higher your brain-genital concordance, the more likely you are to experience pleasure during sex. You can increase this concordance by using mindful awareness to notice the feel of the feelings you experience when you touch yourself and when your partner licks, kisses, sucks, or scratches you in different parts of your body.   Focused awareness on the body counters our tendency to go into our head and builds our capacity to concentrate and stay present. Each time your mind goes anywhere but here, gently bring it back to the body via your senses. If you are distracted or numb, you won’t notice the rich-ness of the moment, and you won’t experience the pleasure-enhancing benefits of sexual concordance. By becoming present and embodied, you can experience new worlds without leaving the bedroom   Beyond the Body: Wakeful Sex Sensing at the body level builds concentration and enhances sexual concordance. We can also go wide-angle. We can use the “open focus” of our awareness to notice how our life themes, limiting beliefs, and habitual behaviors display themselves on the erotic stage. By seeing, and then pausing and studying our experience moment by moment, we bring awareness to the customarily hidden shapers of our experience. “Wakeful sex” wakes us up from our habits and trances.   We may start to ask newer questions of ourselves. For example: Are we waiting for our partner to initiate because we feel too shy to do so ourselves? We may wonder how giving up on shaping an erotic experience expresses our relationship to power. Does hiding our sexual wishes protect us from disappointment or reflect an underlying belief that other people’s needs are more important than our own? What do our habits regarding initiating, expressing, giving, and receiving tell us about our early conditioning? What did we imprint about sex? About pleasure? About love?   We can investigate everything that diminishes our PEP, including protective strategies and the emotions behind them. For example, with the help of mindful awareness, we recognize that after sex, we are chronically dissatisfied. By staying curious, we notice that underneath our dissatisfaction is an unwillingness to ask for what we want. Beneath our reluctance is the fear that something is wrong with us for having “kinky” desires in the first place. And, behind that is our shame. Voilà!   Waking Up, Gently The things we can notice when we have sex mindfully are endless. How-ever, as our PEP-limiting tendencies become visible to us, we may fear that our habits are too entrenched for us to experience anything new with our long-term partner. We may believe we have too many internal roadblocks to ever come close to our PEP. In turn, we may judge our-selves or want to give up the practice of mindful sex.   It is natural to become discouraged when we see the usually hidden aspects of our mental and emotional life. It is for this reason that meditation teachers throughout the ages have encouraged practitioners to stay loving and curious toward themselves as they observe their habitual patterns. Self-aggression is the wrong spirit. Waking up is an act of love, not a whack on the head. “It is only when we begin to relax with ourselves as we are that meditation becomes a transformative process,” claims the American Tibetan nun and author Pema Chödrön.   Waking ourselves up is a lifelong project, not a race. Falling into a trance state is not unique to sex; we will fall into trance states whenever we fall asleep, even briefly. Many things, including automatic scrolling on our phones, can create a trancelike state. Our tendency to sleepwalk through life—and especially sex—is why regular mindfulness practice is essential. New habits are hard-won but can take hold with training, intention, and willingness to face the “pull” of our old ways.   In Sanskrit, the word mukta means “released.” The intent of mind-fulness within Buddhism was to help us to recognize and find relief from suffering born of a misapprehension of reality. Mindfulness helps us gently wake up from distorted perceptions and beliefs that have become automatized and can lead to trancelike states. We can learn to shift from being fused with such states to becoming a curious and compassionate witness to our states.   This process is called “disidentification”. Disidentification is like going into a bigger room. Instead of seeing just the bedroom, we see the entire house. Instead of seeing only the house, we see the whole neighborhood. And, with each widening of perception, we become wiser, have more choices, and access more PEP. A regular mindfulness practice can help us cultivate the inner observer as we free ourselves from trance states and PEP-limiting mind-sets.   Waking Up from the Performance Trance Are you ready to let go of a “bigger, better, more” mentality?   Sex sells. Advertisers, movie producers, and book publishers capitalize on this fact. Unfortunately, the media’s portrayal of eroticism perpetuates a myth that partner sex is always hot, mutually satisfying, and spontaneous. It isn’t, but you already know this. Or do you?   Enticed by the enjoinder to “be the best we can be,” many of us go to great lengths to become sexual Olympians—learning techniques to become masterful lovers instead of discovering inside-out pathways to pleasure. The naked truth is this: satisfaction lies in the call-and-response of two attuned people who are not aiming but are letting eros lead.   In performance trance, we forget this. We strive to reach specific benchmarks like arousal, orgasm, or intercourse. Our attention turns away from the moment to concerns about competency: We silently wonder, am I wet, hard, or sexy enough? Is my technique okay? Usually, we answer ourselves with a “no.” The danger of this trance is that we will never be a “good-enough” lover, and this can only mean, in all likelihood, that we will never have “good-enough” sex.   Mindfulness is an antidote to the “bigger, better, more” mentality that undergirds the performance trance. As we saw in the first of the five features listed above, we release ourselves from destination tyranny when we pause and savor the moment. If we notice we are striving for the next great thing, we pause to regain a spirit of exploration that is guided by our curiosity. As we shift from performing to exploring, we realize that our PEP has nothing to do with being an accomplished lover. An achievement mentality only creates sexual anxiety and leads to avoidance, warns the researchers Barry McCarthy and Lana Wald.   Remember Walter and Ingrid? Four months after our first meeting, the couple returned for part 2 of our Tending Eros series. The tension I felt being with them before had all but disappeared, along with the toe-tapping restlessness I had noted in Walter. I’m eager to hear about their journey, but avoid steering the session with too firm a hand. I wait, and surprisingly, so do they.   We look at each other for about a minute; then Walter begins: “I’ll be honest, it took some time for us to surrender our ‘fight mode,’ as you called it. I’ve been competitive all my life. Everything I have has come from my effort and determination.” He continues by saying, “I’m a pragmatist, and if my strategy isn’t getting me results, I’m willing to try a different approach. One day on the train, I read something that reminded me of what you said at the last retreat about the cult of perfection and the ‘Olympian imperative’ to score a perfect 10 in all areas of life.”   Walter continues, “A few days after we got back, we agreed that every single time I was straining to make something happen during sex, we would stop.” Ingrid laughs, “That was about ten times in the first two minutes.” She continues, “Sex had always been a serious business for us, but we just kept laughing. It got so ridiculous that we thought we would never get to sex, but at one point we just looked into each other’s eyes and something shifted.” They are looking at each other that way right now. It is intimate and loving. “Walter held me, and his eyes welled up,” says Ingrid, speaking more softly than moments before. “I could feel he was in his heart.” Again, they pause to look at each other.   “We decided to play the impulse game you told us about in the retreat. Walter asked, ‘What’s your impulse?’ Surprisingly, I wanted to be tied up.”   If we are present and listening inside, we may want to add a prop or toy, which is different from artificially incorporating something into our lovemaking to fill the novelty prescription.   Ingrid continues, “Walter went into the garage to get some rope, but it didn’t feel right. I suggested he grab the silk belt off my robe. Then, I asked him, ‘What’s your impulse?’ and he said, ‘To tie your wrists to the bedposts.’ We were still playful, but I also felt nervous. I am usually very active during sex. In fact, until that moment, I hadn’t realized how much control I like to have during sex. I paused to study my reaction, and we talked about it, which was also new. I like to use my hands to stimulate Walter, but I couldn’t. We remembered you telling us to let whatever is coming up be part of the dance. So, we tried to think of a way that I could be passive and in control.”   “Here’s where it gets fun,” says Walter. “We decided that Ingrid would tell me what to do. If I did what she asked, she would stroke me with her feet. If I didn’t do it exactly right, she would use her feet to push me away.” “It was exciting and awkward because I couldn’t use my hands to stimulate Walter like I usually do,” Ingrid adds. “Nothing we were doing felt natural. That’s when I realized how goal oriented I am. It’s not just Walter.” Self-awareness is the gift of mindful sex. We notice our tendencies by observing how we are feeling and behaving while making love. Instead of avoiding unpleasant feelings, we pause to study them. We choose to make necessary adjustments to feel more comfortable and use our discoveries to shift habits that may no longer be serving us.   Ingrid continues, “I decided that instead of trying to pleasure Walter, that I would taste and smell him. Surprisingly, I could feel more of myself when I did that. I noticed small waves of arousal moved through my body when Walter put his penis inside my mouth. I thought of the image of the homunculus you showed us at the retreat with those big swollen lips, and I decided to feel the nerve endings inside of my lips. I just kept staying curious and open, feeling the different sensations in my mouth.”   “Eventually, my arms got tired, so I asked Walter to untie me.” Walter decides now is a good time to chime in. “I really wanted to be inside of Ingrid and was starting to mount her in my usual missionary way, but instead, we decided to lie on our sides and face each other.” “That was almost too much,” Ingrid admits, but I can see that Walter is looking at Ingrid with admiration. They continue telling me more details of their sex play, including the moment when they paused because they were losing aliveness. Ingrid explains, “I needed to know that Walter was okay with all this, and he told me that he was.” “It sounds like you believed him,” I say. She searches his face now for confirmation and Walter nods.   “That evening was unique, for sure,” says Walter. “We haven’t had anything quite like that adventure since, but it hasn’t been ‘business as usual’ either.” I reiterate that sex can be a creative improvisation when we surrender goals and are present to the moment. This potential doesn’t mean that every experience will be fantastic, but that is okay.   Inevitably, we will sometimes fall back on our patterns, especially when we are tired, because presence is expensive, energy-wise. Automaticity enables us to do things without having a presence of mind. However, Ingrid and Walter now know that the possibilities are endless when they listen inside for the next impulse instead of pushing to reach a goal. They can relax during sex and make things up as they go along. They realize that how they are during sex shapes their experience much more than what they do in bed.   Waking Up from the Familiarity Trance by Recovering Curiosity Again and Again   In the familiarity trance, we approach sex with the same tired eyes. We let our bodies do what they do without being awake to the experience unfolding between us. Mindfulness trains us to meet fresh every time. Instead of fixing our partner to the first frame of a lifelong movie, we become reacquainted with our partner’s mind and body on an ongoing basis. We recover curiosity for the unseen ways our partner is changing in front of our eyes. Like Carla and Miguel, Gina and Elizabeth had spent nearly two decades in the familiarity trance. They were so busy with their business and taking care of their eleven-year-old daughter that they rarely had time for sex. They laughed at my suggestion to “see fresh,” but this simple exercise turned out to be a game changer for the couple and renewed their sexual spark. I also encouraged them to go outside the well-etched tracks of their familiar routines and take new paths during sex. At home, I suggested they nurture each other more because they had become used to interacting like business partners rather than lovers.   When we met six weeks later, Gina and Elizabeth were a different couple. I wondered what accounted for the lighthearted flirting that I was witnessing between them. Both women began speaking, then paused, and graciously offered the other the lead. Gina accepted: “We were skeptical when we left your office that things could be as good or better than they were in the early days, but that evening Elizabeth offered to brush my hair before bed rather than falling asleep on the sofa. She used to brush my hair when we first got together, but I thought those days were over.”   “I felt so much tenderness from Elizabeth that I started moving toward sex. Elizabeth stopped me, which was surprising and intriguing at the same time. I felt like she was playing hard to get when she is the one who usually presses me for sex. Elizabeth asked me to remove my robe, and I obliged, though I felt oddly shy. She looked at me for a long time and put her head on my belly like she used to do before our daughter was born. It was so tender that I began to weep. That night we snuggled all night long.” Gina continues with the story: “The next morning, we kissed for a while and then I pushed Elizabeth’s head to my crotch, but she didn’t taste me. Instead, she began describing my genitals like they were a work of art. I could feel currents of energy going down to my toes when her hand grazed my vulva. I had never felt anything like it. It was like having sex without being sexual, but it was very intense. That experience opened something in me. I felt a renewed sense of trust and appreciation for Elizabeth; like after all these years, we could find each other again.”   If you think these stories are too good to be true, I have news for you: you already have a wonderful partner too—you just forgot to notice. “Wonder” and curiosity are both inextricably linked. As we become curious about who is here now, beneath the petrified roles of day-to-day living, we can experience the wonder of novelty with our long-term partner regularly.   Elizabeth now takes a turn at reporting: “Last week, Gina rubbed my feet as she often does while we watch television. This time, she put on some music and blindfolded me. I had no idea what was happening, but I completely surrendered.” Gina jumps in again, “I made rubbing Elizabeth’s feet a mindful touch exercise where I let myself stay curious and exploratory. I became intensely engaged with merely feeling the texture of her skin, including the crevices between her toes.” “Afterward, we had some of the hottest sex we ever had,” says Elizabeth, “even though we were both exhausted. I have to say that I never thought I would feel this way again. It’s like I’m with Gina and with someone new.”   When we are enchanted in stage 1, we don’t have to work to be present because novelty draws us to each other like iron to a magnet. Because of novelty and our heightened arousal, we are naturally more present. We notice intimate details about the shape of our beloved’s fingers and wrists. We record facial expressions that convey disappointment or delight. These details are mesmerizing because they are new. Eventually, we lose sight of the details, relying instead on impressions we formed at an earlier time. Wayne Dyer reminds us, “If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” Instead of seeing the “same old thing,” we can see fresh. Try this now: Shift your attention from what I am saying to how the words appear on the page. Give yourself a good couple of minutes to pay close attention to the shape and size of the letters and the thickness of the paper. Imagine you are from another planet that doesn’t have books.   You don’t know what this object is for, only that it has unidentifiable symbols. Smell and touch the paper, the spine, front, back, and sides of this book. What are you noticing about the book now that you didn’t see before?   We can do this “seeing fresh” practice with our partner, who unlike a book, is changing every day. Greg Johanson, a founding trainer of the Hakomi Institute, writes that “humility” rather than “certainty” helps us find each other again. With mindfulness, we delete the cache and listen, look, and touch freshly. We can train our eyes to look for novelty in familiar places and, in so doing, recover our curiosity again and again.   Through erotic presence, the ordinary becomes extraordinary because we are here to enjoy it. If the inner observer’s eyes are open, we can also see our habits in real time, particularly those that diminish our PEP. Befriending our natural eroticism through mindfulness and mindful touch makes the cultivation of novelty an “inside job,” and helps us access our PEP more regularly. Related Books Maci Daye is a licensed professional counselor, certified Hakomi therapist, and certified sex therapist. In addition to clinical practice, she is on the faculty of the Hakomi Institute and teaches in the United States and Europe. She is the creator of Passion and Presence® couples' retreats and a frequent conference presenter. She regularly leads courses in the USA, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe. She holds graduate degrees from Harvard and Georgia State Universities. Share

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30 Years After

by Maureen Murdock, PhD author of The Heroine’s Journey and The Heroine’s Journey Workbook I wrote The Heroine’s Journey 30 years ago when women of my generation sought validation from patriarchal systems and found them not only lacking but terribly destructive to the feminine psyche. We were the children of the post-Sputnik era who were encouraged to excel in this competitive race in order to recover Western supremacy. Unfortunately, the historical cycle is repeating itself. My granddaughters, children of the post-911 generation, are implored to “Make America Great Again” in a 1950s desire for American supremacy. In our capitalist society, everything is geared toward getting the job done, climbing the academic or corporate ladder, achieving prestige, position, and financial equity, and feeling powerful in the world. We continue to focus on individual success rather than structural change. When I wrote the book, there had been no recognizable archetypal pattern that fit women’s experience. Throughout my life and my work as a psychotherapist, I noticed that women were quick to blame their feelings of inadequacy on their own shortcomings. I wanted women to understand that the widespread prejudice against the feminine emanates from the larger society. The continuing devaluation of women on the societal level affects how a woman feels about herself inwardly and how she perceives the feminine. It was what I called, at the time, the “Myth of Female Inferiority,” or “Deficit Thinking.” Women’s lives have a mythology that differs from men’s, so we deny who we are when we measure our success, fulfillment or satisfaction by the milestones of the hero’s journey. When a woman focuses on the process of her inner journey, she receives little recognition and less applause from the outer world. The questions she asks about life values make those who are committed to the quest for the outer trappings of success uncomfortable. And social media, which rewards superficiality, reinforces the denigration of introspection and the inner journey. Since 1990, there has been a dramatic shift in focus for women. Women are making a huge difference in society by showing what can be done when we step forward together in a spirit of collaboration rather than competition. Aside from the record-breaking number of female candidates for president of the United States, almost 25 percent of Congress is female. As Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi is second in line of succession to the president after the vice-president. Three women serve on the Supreme Court. The worldwide phenomenon of the #Me Too Movement has exposed the insidious sexual abuse and harassment of women and young girls throughout all industries, sports, and religions. Across the world, nations and states led by women are handling the scourge of the Covid-19 virus better than male leaders, enacting measures to bring their caseload down to zero. In the entertainment industry, Wonder Woman was the first big budget movie directed by a woman; Ava DuVernay was nominated for an Academy Award for her film 13th, about the disproportionate criminalization and incarceration of African-Americans from the end of slavery until today; and Gina Prince-Bythewood became the first Black woman to direct a big-budget comic-book film. In publishing, women now hold the top positions at Simon and Schuster, Knopf, Henry Holt, and Pantheon and Schocken Books. This is an exciting step forward for women; the stories they champion will shape our worldview for decades to come. These milestones indicate a dramatic shift. And yet. Little did I imagine that we would face the same archetypal gender stereotype we faced three decades ago. Because we still live in a society which sees the world from a masculine perspective, many women continue to internalize the patriarchal voice that tells them they are less than or not “good enough.” As a result, many girls feel invisible, inferior, and discouraged from developing their full potential. And in the current political climate, there is still an undeniable attack on women’s health and reproductive rights. So yes, we have made great strides in the outer world but we continue to battle a narrative embedded in our patriarchal culture for the last five thousand years. Hate arises as women’s power emerges and there is no end to backlash against women who speak truth to power. Yet women today are acquiring the courage to express their vision, the strength to set limits, and the willingness to take responsibility for themselves and others in a new way. They are reminding humans of their origins, the necessity to live mindfully, and their obligation to preserve all life on Earth. Share Related Books Maureen Murdock, PhD, has always been interested in mythology and memoir, so she teaches and writes books on both topics. Her book The Heroine’s Journey: Woman’s Quest for Wholeness, which explores the rich territory of the feminine psyche, was translated into a dozen languages, and she has led workshops on the topic for women throughout the United States and Europe. Murdock was Chair and Core Faculty of the MA Counseling Psychology Program at Pacifica Graduate Institute and teaches memoir writing for the International Women’s Writing Guild. Her other books include Fathers’ Daughters: Breaking the Ties that Bind; Unreliable Truth: On Memoir and Memory; Spinning Inward: Using Guided Imagery with Children for Learning, Creativity & Relaxation; and The Heroine’s Journey Workbook.

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An Urgent Yearning for Women’s Leadership

by Maureen Murdock, PhD, author of The Heroine’s Journey and The Heroine’s Journey Workbook “We are a community in which every life and every person counts.” —Angela Merkel Across the world, nations led by women are handling the scourge of the Covid-19 virus better than male leaders. The above quote by German Chancellor Angela Merkel speaks to the mindset behind this success—many successful women leaders have emphasized collaboration with experts in the scientific community, decisive action, clear and consistent communication, and empathy for the fear, anger, and death of their citizens. One of the stages in The Heroine’s Journey is an urgent yearning to reconnect with the feminine after a period of descent and deconstruction. The first couple of months after the outbreak of the virus were indeed a time of descent and destruction: anger and fear of the unknown, loss of jobs, loss of life, and utter loss of control over one’s life. Women leaders took a no-nonsense approach to the crisis that stood in stark contrast to the bombastic response of several of the world’s most prominent male leaders, who approached the crisis with denial, confusion, incompetence, and refusal to take responsibility. The stark difference between a feminine style of leadership and a distorted masculine style of leadership comes down to the difference between collaboration and competition. As I wrote in The Heroine’s Journey, women leaders value life over material success; they listen to and honor the expertise of others, act decisively, take responsibility, attain power not for self-aggrandizement but for the good of others, strive for authenticity, not perfection, and have courage. Gretchen Whitmer, the first-term governor of Michigan, stood her ground when men armed with AK-47s protested her stay-at-home order. She refused to capitulate to pressure and bullying. In the case of Jacinda Ardern, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, her clear messaging, regular news briefings alongside top health officials, empathy in her remarks on social media and determination to “Go Hard, Go Early” demonstrates that one can lead with both resolve and kindness. She told the children of the country that she counts the tooth fairy and Easter Bunny as essential workers, letting the children know their concerns are taken seriously in a crisis. She and her cabinet set strong boundaries and have eliminated the virus from her country. Unlike Ardern, Merkel and Whitmer, several male leaders throughout the globe have denied science, refused to lead by example, flouted medical guidelines, blamed other countries, gave confusing contradictory messages, and spread fear and hate rather than the calm and empathy their citizens so desperately need. Because of the successful examples of women like Merkel, Ardern, Whitmer, Erna Solberg of Norway, Katrin Jakobsdottire of Iceland, Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan, Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta, and so many others, we have seen a more balanced version of leadership and have become aware of global and racial inequalities. We are now being tasked with creating global change. As I wrote in The Heroine’s Journey thirty years ago: “We live in a dualistic culture which values, creates, and sustains polarities—an either/or stratified mentality which identifies and locates ideas and people at opposite ends of a spectrum. We see the other as the enemy, and we rationalize our criticism, judgment, and the polarization we create by arrogantly saying that we are ‘correct’ or have God on our side. “This type of polarization has kept some people poor, ignorant, or infirm while enabling others to be rich, well-tended, and powerful. It has allowed nationalities to assert their supremacy over people whose religious beliefs or view of reality they disdain. It has allowed feminists to blame men for the imbalance on the planet without taking responsibility for their own desire for control and power. It has given men freedom from the excruciating self-examination required for change, while they demand that women do all of their emotional work for them. It has supplied the powerful with permission to suppress and distort truth, censor speech, sterilize the ‘unfit’, and cause incredible suffering over all the planet. Human arrogance fails to see that we are all one and coexist along a continuum of life.” Share Related Books Maureen Murdock, PhD, has always been interested in mythology and memoir, so she teaches and writes books on both topics. Her book The Heroine’s Journey: Woman’s Quest for Wholeness, which explores the rich territory of the feminine psyche, was translated into a dozen languages, and she has led workshops on the topic for women throughout the United States and Europe. Murdock was Chair and Core Faculty of the MA Counseling Psychology Program at Pacifica Graduate Institute and teaches memoir writing for the International Women’s Writing Guild. Her other books include Fathers’ Daughters: Breaking the Ties that Bind; Unreliable Truth: On Memoir and Memory; Spinning Inward: Using Guided Imagery with Children for Learning, Creativity & Relaxation; and The Heroine’s Journey Workbook.

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Michael McClure

Photo credit: By Onehandclapping - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7751339 The great poet and Shambhala author/contributor/blurber Michael McClure passed away May 4th, 2020. Michael was at the heart of the Beats, always listed as one of the shining lights of this group of explorers and creatives. We published a book of his poetry, Touching the Edge: Dharma Devotions from the Hummingbird Sangha. His work appear in our Haiku Mind too. Here is a sketch of him from The Beat Book, edited by Anne Waldman: “MICHAEL MCCLURE was born in 1932 in Marysville, Kansas. In 1954 he attended art classes at San Francisco State College and took a poetry workshop given by Robert Duncan in the mid-1950s and performed in a reading of Duncan’s play Faust Foutu. In 1955, McClure joined Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, Allen Ginsberg, and the San Francisco surrealist Philip Lamantia at the historic Six Gallery reading. McClure’s early experimental writings included ‘‘Peyote Poem,’’ written while on the sacramental peyote plant, and ‘‘Dark Brown,’’ a wildly erotic sexual vision. His book Ghost Tantras restored what he called ‘‘beast language’’ to poetry—growls, moans, coos, whimpers, and roars intermingling with prayer and celebration in lexically recognizable human speech. He achieved underground fame through a succession of plays, including the sexy, terrifying ‘‘The Beard.’’ McClure’s poetry remains grounded in a biological and spiritual sensibility (‘‘Consciousness is a real thing like the hoof of a deer . . .’’). McClure is also a chronicler of the innovative and liberating poetries of the fifties and sixties—his Scratching the Beat Surface is a book-length account of the period written by one of its active members. His ecological activism is expressed in poems like the angry ‘‘For the Death of 100 Whales,’’ and his appearance with Gary Snyder at the U.N. Environmental Conference in Stockholm in 1972. He has published more than twenty books, including Rain Mirror: New Poems and Plum Stones: Cartoons of No Heaven. He has also worked extensively with Ray Manzarek, the The Doors' keyboardist, and with the experimental composer and musician Terry Riley.” He also recently blurbed our Some Unquenchable Desire: “"Imagine you are Percy Shelley sleeping in your favorite snoozing place among the ancient ruins in Pisa, and you awaken to the Sanskrit poems of Bhartrihari instead of to the Greek poets and Ovid’s Metamorphosis. Will your new poems be splashed with eroticism and awakened with rich theology? Unknown thoughts and imagined odors tremble at your ears like mosquitoes at Behemoth’s nose. Bhartrihari’s poems are wealthy in the loved sciences—Natural History—and the mammal solidity of exciting emotions changing shape. Breasts and honeyed Lips, not chockablock metamorphoses. Andrew Schelling's genius has given us Bhartrihari's great gifts of overwhelming beauty. Never have Entertainment and Loveliness so melted together!" —Michael McClure” And finally, here he is talking about his poetry in our Hard to Be a Saint in the City (https://www.shambhala.com/hard-to-be-a-saint-in-the-city-15…): “My poetry is to make myself conscious. And my poetry is to illuminate a reader, if he or she is interested, with what I’ve been able to do with my consciousness, which may be of use to them on their own. Perhaps my poetry is to broaden my sensorium, and hopefully it will broaden the sensoriums of other individuals who read it. In other words, the function of poetry, as I see it, is to create a myriad-mindedness. I see myself wholly as an artist, as a poet. I am not a utopian. I’m not a socio-biological thinker. But I do align myself with a movement or a thread or a stream or a surge of individuals who are interested in liberation of the body, in the liberation of the imagination and the liberation of consciousness. In that sense, we may be of help to those who begin to deal with the situations that need to be dealt with. I constantly ask biologists, botanists, or bio-philosophers what we may do, what we may think about, what the situation is. That’s reflected in my poetry. I’m an artist.” Thank you for your artistry Michael!

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Being Different

The Difference between Yes and No, Good and Bad An Excerpt from Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching How much difference between yes and no? What difference between good and bad? What the people fear must be feared. O desolation! Not yet, not yet has it reached its limit! Everybody’s cheerful, cheerful as if at a party, or climbing a tower in springtime. And here I sit unmoved, clueless, like a child, a baby too young to smile. Forlorn, forlorn. Like a homeless person. Most people have plenty. I’m the one that’s poor, a fool right through. Ignorant, ignorant. Most people are so bright. I’m the one that’s dull. Most people are so keen. I don’t have the answers. Oh, I’m desolate, at sea, adrift, without harbor. Everybody has something to do. I’m the clumsy one, out of place. I’m the different one, for my food is the milk of the mother. The difference between yes and no, good and bad, is something only the “bright” people, the people with the answers, can understand. A poor stupid Taoist can’t make it out. This chapter is full of words like huang (wild, barren; famine), tun (ignorant; chaotic), hun (dull, turbid), men (sad, puzzled, mute), and hu (confused, obscured, vague). They configure chaos, confusion, a “bewilderness” in which the mind wanders without certainties, desolate, silent, awkward. But in that milky, dim strangeness lies the way. It can’t be found in the superficial order imposed by positive and negative opinions, the good/bad, yes/no moralizing that denies fear and ignores mystery. Share Related Books Ursula K. Le Guin is the winner of the Hugo, Nebula, Gandalf, Kafka, and National Book Awards. She is the author of many short stories and more than fifteen novels, including The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed. She is also an honored author of children's books, poetry, and criticism.

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Healing Trauma, Letting Go of Shame

"Turn Your Wounds Into Wisdom" An Excerpt from Conceiving With Love I am a huge fan of Oprah. She has done what she encourages all of us to do: “Turn your wounds into wisdom.” She knows what it’s like to suffer sexual abuse and heal from it. And while she didn’t go on to have children, she did put her creative energy to good use, to stimulate, educate, entertain, motivate, and inspire us all. She believes that whatever our wounds are, wherever our traumas emerge from, we can grow from them, heal, and go on to make a difference in the world. If you have had your own traumas, use this chapter for suggestions to get back to pleasure and love, and from that place create intimacy that has no choice but to bring life forward. For those of you who suffer from sexual trauma, please know you’re not alone. In my many years of treating women and men for sexual dysfunction and infertility challenges, I’ve seen hundreds of ways that trauma has played a role in their distress: ambivalence or aversion to touch or sexual penetration, to their own bodies, and even to the idea of parenthood—all of which spill over into their day-to-day relationships and, in some cases, prevent them from achieving their goals. Trauma is highly personal—no two people react to difficult experiences in the same way. Before we dive too far into how trauma can adversely affect your ability to conceive, let’s take a moment to define it. Trauma is a person’s reaction to an event that overwhelms his or her ability to cope or integrate it. Trauma for women and men can stem from unprocessed emotions—wounds from childhood, adolescence, or young adulthood caused by physical, emotional, or sexual abuse; negative messages about sexuality; betrayal, self-loathing, addiction, and dishonesty; old memories that surface from having an abortion or a string of miscarriages. And finally, trauma can emerge from the stress of trying to conceive in the first place, made even worse for couples who must choose medically assisted fertility treatments. Trauma shows up as negative thoughts and self-criticism; as anxiety, fear, and sadness in the emotional body, which can’t be expressed or released; and in the somatic body as physical conditions—vulvar pain in women, for example, and erection or ejaculating difficulties in men. All of these forms of trauma can keep women and men from experiencing sexual pleasure. Trauma is highly personal—no two people react to difficult experiences in the same way. For example, Ava, a patient of mine, discovered many years ago that she had gotten genital herpes from a boyfriend who lied to her throughout their relationship. Now, many women and men I’ve worked with have confessed to having herpes, too—after all, it’s a pretty common condition. And many of these folks have been able to accept it as an unfortunate reminder of their not-so-skillful past. Not Ava. She felt such unrelenting shame around her diagnosis that it deeply affected her ability to have a loving relationship with a man—for more than twenty years. When she got married, she insisted her husband wear a condom whenever they made love. When they were ready to have a child, she let him cut a hole in the tip of it. Neuroscientists believe that trauma resides in the amygdala, the part of the limbic system where emotions are stored, but not language or speech. Hazel Williams-Carter, a traumacologist, healer, and founder of healingtraumacenter.com, explains that the amygdala is home of implicit, or emotional, memory. This part of the brain uses past experiences in the form of emotions and sensations to remember things without actually thinking about them. The amygdala responds not only to real fears (or other emotions), but also to the memory of fear. “For this reason, people who have been traumatized may live with implicit memories of the terror, anger, and sadness generated by the trauma,” she says. This surfaced recently for Angela, a patient of mine who admitted that she hated having her breasts touched because she had been molested by her father. Whenever her partner goes to touch her breasts, she recoils; she wants to feel turned-on, but her amygdala registers fear and rage. She and her partner are working on ways to be intimate without triggering old, unprocessed emotions. Communication, as always, is key. Trauma isn’t necessarily tied to the past for couples trying hard to conceive. The fertility journey itself can be fraught with so many disappointments and conflicted feelings to work through, all of which takes a toll on a couple’s ability to stay positive and connected. Women frequently complain to me that they get retraumatized every time their doctor reminds them that their eggs are “old,” or tells them they have a slim-to-none chance of ever conceiving. They feel inadequate, ashamed, and depressed, which in turn affects their ability to be present in their intimate relationship and in their relationship with friends and co-workers. They end up blaming their partners and shunning their friends. Working through trauma requires help. Forgiveness work, acupuncture, ritual, trauma-sensitive yoga, spiritual guidance—these are all tools that can help release stuck emotions. They all involve the body, not just the mind, because, as trauma experts will tell you, trauma lives in the body and needs to be released from the body. Talk therapy alone doesn’t work because recounting your story can retrigger your nervous system and send you right back into fight-flight-freeze mode, as though the event were happening all over again. ACUPUNCTURE AND THE EIGHT EXTRAORDINARY VESSELS Much of my understanding of trauma and Chinese medicine comes from my teacher Jeffrey Yuen, an eighty-eighth generation Taoist priest of the Jade Purity School, Lao Tzu sect, and a twenty-sixth generation priest of the Complete Reality School, Dragon Gate sect—and a highly sought-after teacher of traditional Chinese medicine. As it turns out, acupuncture and TCM have a lot to offer anyone suffering from trauma, whether that trauma originates from an accident, the death of a loved one, childhood sexual abuse, or sexual dysfunction. Problems exist, the masters say, when we get separated from our authentic self and we don’t do the work to understand what we’ve inherited physically and emotionally. The goal of TCM is to bring you to back to your authentic self, your true essence, which is never wounded or traumatized. Your authentic self, as Lonny Jarrett, author of The Clinical Practice of Chinese Medicine, explains, “is fully formed, always complete, and desires nothing except to be expressed.” To express our authentic self, Chinese medicine calls on the Eight Extraordinary Vessels (aka the Eight Extra Channels), the pathways of energy that supply all the meridians of the body with life force and blood. In an article she wrote for Acupuncture Today, Mary Elizabeth Wakefield, LAc, Dipl.Ac., MS, says that the Chinese term for these eight vessels, Qi Jing Ba Mai, describes them best. She explains: “Qi is the energy that is likened to an ‘ah-ha’—a flash of enlightened understanding. Jing penetrates our ancestral roots and makes up our DNA matrix—it is the precious essence of life. Ba means ‘eight.’ Mai symbolizes the movement in the meridians.” Much like the chakras in yoga, which are also powerful energy centers, the Qi Jing Ba Mai can become blocked by unresolved emotions or traumatic experiences. To heal trauma, we must address our wounds and release the stuck energy from these pathways. It’s vital that we do this so that we don’t accidentally pass these patterns on to the next generation. As trauma experts will tell you, trauma lives in the body and needs to be released from the body. Working with the Eight Extraordinary Vessels is TCM’s way of reversing epigenetic inheritance. Epigenetic inheritance, according to Bruce Lipton, PhD, a stem-cell biologist and author of The Biology of Belief, is the understanding that “all the cells of your body are affected by your thoughts.” Beyond that, epigenetic researchers have found that those cells are also affected by the trauma we inherit from our parents and grandparents. This inheritance can alter gene activity without disturbing our DNA. The good news is that we can begin to reverse such epigenetic changes. In other words, we can release stuck emotions from our own experiences as well as those we’ve inherited, and this can stop us from passing them down to our own children. One way to do this is through the eight extra channels. Eight Extraordinary Vessels work is pretty complex, so I don’t want to give you the impression that I’m offering a one-size-fits-all healing. There’s no such thing. I’m merely presenting a basic understanding of what these channels are and what they mean, along with some suggestions that may resonate with you. If you want to dive deeper, I invite you to find an acupuncturist who is familiar with these vessels. Chong Mai: Penetrating Vessel The Chong Mai invites us to understand ourselves and how we have arrived at where we are. Home of our ancestral inheritance, it is what we pass along to our offspring. And yes, that includes our own traumas as well as those of our parents, grandparents, and on and on down the ancestral line. The reproductive organs are part of this vessel, too. Some say that energetically the uterus holds on to and stores these unprocessed emotions, until they can be seen, acknowledged, and released. So it’s easy to see how trauma can be transferred to our children before they even come into the world. Stories of not being wanted—like the mother who told her daughter, “Don’t have kids, they are such a big burden,” are held in this vessel and can destabilize it. So can anxiety, especially if your parents and or grandparents suffered from it. Being a victim of sexual violence can cause the Chong Mai and the Ren Mai to shut down. When Chong Mai is balanced, our reproductive energy (Kidney essence) rises up toward the heart as the Heart essence (love and passion) moves downward. The Chong Mai is the pathway they travel to join together. That pathway should be clear of obstacles (traumas, sorrows, unprocessed emotions) so that our children can inherit vitality, strength, and a loving heart. To ensure that, we want to conceive in love, not when we’re full of anxiety, distrust, and confusion. Ren Mai: Conception Vessel The name says it all: this meridian nourishes life. What seeds do we want to plant, nurture, and give birth to? The Ren Mai, which regulates reproductive function, controls all aspects of a woman’s natural cycle—conception, fertility, pregnancy, puberty, and menopause. Furthermore, this vessel asks Who am I? How was I nurtured by a primary caretaker? Did I get enough care? Ren Mai trauma can happen as a result of childhood neglect or abuse. Perhaps as a child you had primary caretakers who weren’t attentive, who didn’t help you learn to emotionally self-regulate, or were abusive. All of these memories leave a residue in the Ren Mai that can affect your ability to be intimate, feel worthy of love, or capacity for comforting yourself. These insecurities and traumas can manifest as an excessive need to be validated, needed, or loved by others, as well as a tendency to overeat or overindulge in drugs, alcohol, or inappropriate sexual behavior. The Ren Mai can also become unbalanced if your primary caretaker in childhood was overprotective and prevented you from exploring on your own. As an adult, this imbalance, seen as stagnation of qi in the abdomen, can lead to anxiety and insecurity. To balance Ren Mai, the focus becomes “How can I love myself more?” Self-care is the first step to true healing. It may take a combination of talk therapy, loving-kindness meditation, acupuncture, and body-based practices like yoga and qigong to begin to feel more deserving of love and to learn how to honor yourself. The late Ray Rubio, founder of the American Board of Oriental Reproductive Medicine, once said, “We can’t let the past define us. We must know our story, share our story and know how to do rewrites.” That’s not always as easy or comfortable as it sounds, of course. But, Brené Brown, PhD, a research professor at the University of Houston, Texas, and a prolific author who talks and writes about vulnerability and shame, says, “Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. . . . Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.” Du Mai: Governing Vessel Beginning at the perineum and moving up the spine, the Du Mai joins the Ren and Chong vessels in the Who am I? inquiry. The Du Mai, also called the Vessel of Individuality, is the body’s yang aspect and presides over our individuation, the process of becoming self-aware or self-actualized. It’s evident in children as they go from crawling to walking and begin to explore a world that includes more than just their primary caregiver. Adolescence is the second phase of individuation, when a young person discovers a sense of self distinct from, and not dependent on, the approval of their parents or caregivers. When there is weakness in this vessel, adults lack the motivation to go forward and often, instead of persevering, will give up, retreat, or slip into depression. Some describe feeling as though their strength has run out and, in terms of baby-making, they say trying to conceive is “just too much work.” In the face of loss or disappointment such as a miscarriage or failed IVFs, they may be too scared to try again. On the other hand, a person with a Du Mai excess has a pretty rigid way of looking at the world and can get stuck in a “my way or the highway” mentality. To balance this vessel it’s important to reflect on what motivates you. What keeps you from moving forward with your dreams and desires? What are you afraid of? If a deficient or excessive Du Mai is preventing you from having a loving relationship, you may want to get help from a life coach, sexologist, or fertility specialist; an acupuncturist can suggest treatments and herbs to increase your motivation and even your sex drive. Practice yoga or qigong to gain flexibility—a flexible body can yield a flexible mind. In life, we need a good balance of Ren Mai and Du Mai energies; in other words, a healthy sense of who we are, knowledge of where we want to go, and the ability to make it happen. Jeffrey Yuen says that we get the resources we need to create our destiny from these three vessels: the Chong gives us our blueprint, the Ren supplies the lumber, and the Du Mai provides construction. Yin Wei Mai and Yang Wei Mai (Linking Vessels) The two Wei vessels are like ropes or nets that hold things in place both structurally and psychologically, and they have to do with the aging process. They ask the question What is my life’s purpose? When the Wei vessels do their job, we can meet life’s challenges with more equanimity and grace and can bounce back from adversity. A strong Yang Wei vessel protects us from disease and external negativity, while Yin Wei nourishes us from the inside. When our Yang Wei is stable enough to withstand outside turmoil, we know how to choose actions that support us. Reaching out to those we know we can rely on—family, friends, mentors—can shore up the Yang Wei. So can being part of a community—perhaps joining a meditation circle or a church or support group. When our Yin Wei is strong, we know how to find what we need to feel more resilient, to be able to meet and withstand our internal turmoil and confusion. Conversely, a loose Yin Wei “net” can manifest physically as pain in the chest or around the heart. Emotionally, we may have trouble divorcing ourselves from past disappointments; we get caught in the past, stuck in the “if onlys,” losing sight of where we’re going. To balance or strengthen the Yin Wei, it’s important to acknowledge your feelings—all of them, without judgment. When you feel scared or ashamed, for example, instead of denying that you feel this way, you must commit to sitting with the fear and shame. In doing so, you may realize that the emotion is attached to the past and is trying to keep you there, too. Or you may discover that it isn’t yours to begin with. If you have a tendency to complain about everything, once you sit with it you may realize that your mother used to complain all the time, too. You can then tell yourself that you have the power to feel those feelings, but you also have the power to release them—with gratitude. This unhooks the place in yourself where the energy in the net is bound up. As you take a look within, see if you can discover the places that feel stuck or constricted—perhaps the throat, your chest, or your pelvis. Chances are that’s where you hold on to feelings you’d rather not look at. Breathe there—slow, easy, and steady breaths. Offer loving-kindness to the feelings you’ve harbored for so long and gratitude for their willingness to let go of you. Yin Qiao Mei and Yang Qiao Mei (Vessels of One’s Stance) These pathways originate in the ankles and go to the eyes. How we stand in the present-day awareness of who we are is predicated on what our childhood experiences were. We can take our place in society when we know who we are. Yin Qiao asks the questions Am I comfortable in my body? Do I know who I am, even in the darkest aspects of myself? When Yin Qiao is not in balance, all you want to do to is close out the world so no one can see how broken you feel. This is common in patients who are struggling with conceiving. They don’t want to go to baby showers and they dread dinners with friends who have given birth already or who can’t wait to share the news of their own pregnancies. They want to keep their distance from anything that could remind them of their “failure.” I certainly am not interested in judging that inclination. What I am interested in is helping them strengthen their Yin Qiao Mei, which can address their feelings of inadequacy, their fear that they are not whole because they haven’t conceived yet. One way to do that is by working with an acupuncturist. But Yin Qiao also invites us to practice loving-kindness and self-love in the moment. A powerful reminder comes from Theravada Buddhist teacher Ajahn Sumedho, who says, “Right now, it’s like this”—a great mantra to help us stay in the present, with compassionate attention. The Yang Qiao asks the questions How do I move in the external world? Do I have a sense of ease in my body? Can I stand straight and tall? Chronic pain in the neck, shoulders, and hips generally indicates imbalance in the Yang Qiao. This happens when you are moving forward at lightning speed, going from one thing to another, focusing on a single goal at the expense of everything else. It’s when you don’t know when or how to stop. To bring the Yang Qiao back into balance it’s best to close your eyes and go inward toward the Yin Qiao. In other words: Stop. Listen. Feel. I encourage couples who have been using fertility drugs month after month without results to consider taking a break for a bit. Allow the nervous and immune systems to reregulate, and give the mind a chance to quiet down. Communicate with your partner. Your job is to listen compassionately and patiently. Dai Mei: Belt Vessel Wrapped snugly around our lower area like a belt, this vessel guides and supports the qi of the uterus and that of the many energy pathways that flow through the torso. It is also where our body stores any trauma we’ve experienced from being violated and any deeply held sentiments we can’t allow ourselves to feel. Sometimes people gain weight around their middle as a way of protecting themselves from unwanted advances or for other emotional reasons. Others may experience lower back pain that wraps around to the front. These are Dai Mei imbalances; others may present as fibroids, cysts, painful periods, painful intercourse, or prostatitis. A weakened vessel can even lead to miscarriage or uterine prolapse. The classic Chinese medicine texts say that an excess of Dai Mei can feel as though you’re carrying five thousand coins on your back. So the question becomes What are you carrying that no longer serves you? When the Dai Mei energy is stuck and the qi is not moving, I recommend using a rebozo, a very long, woven scarf used by Mesoamerican indigenous peoples. Midwives and doulas use these scarves to aid in labor and birthing. I find them helpful to get the uterine and pelvic qi unstuck or to strengthen a weakened Dai Mei, which can happen after a miscarriage. To move stuck qi, lie on your back and position the rebozo underneath your hips. Have your partner or a friend hold on to the ends of the rebozo and gently shake it back and forth, vigorously enough that you feel some shimmying in your hips. If your Dai meridian needs tightening because of the trauma of miscarriage, ask your partner to wrap the scarf around your womb center and tighten it like a belt. HOW TO SHOW UP FOR YOUR PARTNER The fertility journey is fraught with stress, which becomes much more acute when things feel like they’re going terribly wrong. Miscarriages and failed IVFs are opportunities to bring couples closer instead of pulling them apart. Here are a few tips on how to be present with your partner through it all: Don’t take anything personally. If your partner has issues about her sexuality or her inability to get pregnant, it’s not about you. Understanding this will help you be present without being defensive. Communicate with your partner. Your job is to listen compassionately and patiently. No matter how many times she needs to process, no matter how many times he wants to talk about his fears or inadequacies. Through loving conversations, commit to discovering what each of you needs from the other to stay positive and to get through the hard times. Reach out to others. What you both need is a good support system, beyond the two of you. Engage family and friends who love you, around whom you feel comfortable. People like that can have a positive effect on your mood and can, by their very presence, bring you closer together. Share Related Books Denise Wiesner, L.Ac., Dipl. Ac., founder of the Natural Healing and Acupuncture Clinic in West Los Angeles, is an internationally recognized Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioner, specializing in the Whole Systems Chinese medicine approach to women's health, sexuality, and fertility. Since 1994, Wiesner has treated and helped women manage challenges from menstrual disorders and menopause to infertility and pregnancy. Learn More. Linda Sparrowe has written numerous articles on women's health, herbs, and complementary medicine, as well as on yoga and Pilates. She is the former managing editor of Yoga Journal and is now a contributing editor. She is also author of Yoga Journal's book, Yoga, featuring the beauty of yoga poses. Learn More. 

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Butterfly Kiss for the Buddha

Sutra 5 An Excerpt from The Mama Sutra I’m speeding down Sir Francis Drake Boulevard on a glorious fall day, running through yellow lights, completely stressed out, trying to get to the meditation hall on time. I’m teaching the daily yoga classes at a women’s meditation retreat at Spirit Rock, a Buddhist retreat center in a rural valley north of San Francisco. But my beloved babysitter, Megan—a twenty-something Zen student with beads and tiny electronic parts woven into her turquoise-and-blonde dreadlocks—had gotten caught in a traffic jam and arrived at my house an hour late. Then I got stuck in the same freeway snarl myself. As I barrel down the winding country road, I imagine a cop pulling me over: “But, officer, it’s a dharma emergency! A hundred women in deep meditation are waiting for me!” I burn rubber into the Spirit Rock parking lot, walk up the hill to the meditation hall as fast as possible while still appearing mindful and serene, and get to the yoga room with seconds to spare, just as the bell is ringing to end the last sitting period. It’s two days into the seven-day retreat and I’m already exhausted. I would have loved to have participated in the entire schedule of this silent meditation intensive, “Reclaiming the Sacred Feminine,” a title that hinted that it might explore some territory that wasn’t exactly mainstream Buddhist orthodoxy. But as the mother of a two-year-old, sitting a full retreat isn’t possible. So I’m flip-flopping identities each day: a mom all night and morning, a yogini all afternoon and evening. Unfortunately, Forest has been cutting two molars this week. Last night, he woke me up six times between 11:00 p.m. and 4:00 a.m., at which point I finally brought him into bed with me—where he thrashed around for another two hours, whimpering and talking in his sleep. At one point he cried out in delight, “What’s that down there? It’s . . . it’s the gas pedal!” Then he half woke up and began rooting at my chest, mumbling, “More gas pedal! More gas pedal!” in what appeared to be an archetypal male conflation of car and breast. By day, he has been in classic two-year-old mode, exploring the limits of autonomy and personal power. All is harmonious as long as I let him indulge his current olfactory obsession: opening and sniffing every jar in my spice drawer, identifying each by scent. That morning, we’d sat and smelled them together for over an hour—“Nutmeg! Cardamom! Rosemary! Turmeric!”—until my nose hummed and tingled in what felt like a practice dreamed up by a Zen master on LSD. But when I tried to take him to meet some friends at a nearby park, all hell broke loose. Forest didn’t want to leave the car; he just wanted to sit in his car seat listening to Al Green’s “Love and Happiness” nineteen times in a row, while taking periodic hits off his bottle of cinnamon, which he had insisted on bringing with him. Exhausted and starved for adult conversation—even if it was just comparing teething notes with another mom—I did not handle the situation quite as tactfully as I might have. The outing ended in a fiasco, with the absurd spectacle of me grimly hauling a screaming, flailing child toward a playground, in a shower of tears and cinnamon, while he shrieked as if I were carrying him off to the electric chair: “No slide! No swing! More ‘Yuv and Happiness!’” I finally surrendered and took him back to the car. As I started the engine to drive home, the tears turned off like a faucet and were replaced with beams. “I just want you to cooperate,” he told me cheerfully—then chugged a juice box and passed out. So as I drive off to the retreat that afternoon, let’s just say I don’t exactly feel like the Divine Mother. But arriving at Spirit Rock feels like diving into a pool of peace. The center is tucked in a valley of burnt-gold hills; the autumn air is a musky, minty blend of sage and pennyroyal. After teaching two gentle yoga classes, I sit the rest of the afternoon in the domed meditation hall, dipping thirstily into a vast well of silence. I find myself asking my perennial question: How can I make my life feel more like a meditation retreat? How do I bridge the apparent gap between yogini and mom? In two years of motherhood, my body has forgotten what a meditation retreat is like. It’s astonishing to find myself, even for a few hours, in the midst of a hundred silent women, all of them moving slowly, as if underwater—sometimes smiling, sometimes weeping as they stop and sit down in the middle of their hundred individual lives, each as intense and vivid and complicated as my own. I sink into the luxury of having nothing to do but feel my body and heart, breath by breath. For a few hours I stop skimming along the surface of my life and swim into the depths. As I walk from my silent dinner toward the meditation hall that night—pausing to savor the crimson sunset and the wild turkeys rustling through the long grass—I find myself asking my perennial question: How can I make my life feel more like a meditation retreat? How do I bridge the apparent gap between yogini and mom? In a dharma talk that evening, the vipassana teacher and psychotherapist Debra Chamberlin-Taylor—a mentor of mine for over a decade—offers a few hints. The sacred feminine, she explains, is a psychological term for an archetypal spiritual dimension that exists in both men and women. It is nonlinear and receptive. It’s about being, rather than doing; integrating, rather than analyzing. It moves in spirals and circles, rather than lines and angles. It intuitively perceives all of life as an interconnected whole (which, of course, is also one of Buddhism’s central teachings). It values the world, the body, the emotions, relationships, the connections of the heart. But in our daily lives—and even in our spiritual practice—it is often paved over by the more masculine attributes of action, analysis, and achievement. In Buddhist practice, this powerful energy is symbolically represented by images such as Kuan Yin, a female manifestation of an awakened being who “hears the cries of the world” and responds to them. In Tibetan practice, there’s the compassionate goddess Tara in her myriad forms and colors. In other spiritual traditions, it takes the form of a Divine Mother, such as Mother Mary, or a consort, such as Parvati. Invoking such images, says Debra, can help us relax and expand our meditation practice to embrace with compassion the chaos of our daily lives, rather than trying to escape it or push it away. Debra emphasizes that both men and women can benefit from connecting with the image of a Kuan Yin or Tara. It’s not about trying to project “feminine” and “masculine” qualities onto actual women and men. However, she says that for her, there’s been something especially powerful about leading all-women retreats. Whether shaped by biology or by culture, women’s deep involvement with relationships, family, children, and home has traditionally been viewed in most religions as an impediment to spiritual practice. “On a women’s retreat with women teachers, they will come into dharma interviews talking about their divorces, their hot flashes, the pain of leaving their children for the first time to go on retreat—things they say they have never dared to talk about on a meditation retreat before,” Debra says. She is sitting on the dais flanked by two statues: a traditional male Buddha, and a slender, busty female deity called Prajnaparamita, the mother of all Buddhas. “And when these experiences are seen as sacred, as part of the spiritual journey—rather than as something to be discounted and passed over en route to something more ‘spiritual’—the whole field of awareness opens up, and women can go deeper into their meditative practice than they have ever gone before.” [The sacred feminine] is nonlinear and receptive. It’s about being, rather than doing; integrating, rather than analyzing. That night, Forest is restless again, waking up and calling me over and over. He doesn’t want to come to my bed, but he also doesn’t want to be alone in his crib in his bedroom next door. Finally, at three o’clock in the morning, I lie down on the floor of his bedroom, wrapped in a quilt, to keep him company as he falls asleep. The floor is hard; I can’t sleep. So I lie there and meditate, feeling my breath go in and out. I am trying to rest with exactly what is: exhaustion, the aching bones, a vast loneliness wrapped around my heart. Yet I find myself also opening my heart to the joy of that moment: My child lying in his crib, clutching his blue blankie and his stuffed lion. The room filling up with his earthy, yeasty smell, like a cross between lawn clippings and baking bread. The intimate textures of my daily life, filled with “Love and Happiness” and the smells of cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, and ginger. And in that moment, I am on retreat, present in the moment—as much as if I’d been in a cloister at Spirit Rock. Kuan Yin, I remind myself, does not hide from the world. She sees it all and embraces it, like a mother holding a child. She finds the sacred right here, amid the smells of the spices, the tantrums, and laughter. She finds it in the relationship struggles, the teething, the pain and joy and mundane tasks of everyday life. She reminds us that rebirth is possible in every moment and, indeed, is only possible in this moment. The next morning, running around the house in his pajamas, Forest stops and points to the beautiful sandalwood Buddha statue on my mantelpiece. “There’s the Buddha!” I get the statue down and hand it to him. “Eskimo kiss for the Buddha!” he says, and he rubs his nose against the Buddha’s. “And now a butterfly kiss for the Buddha!” And he flutters his eyelashes, intimately, against the Buddha’s cheek. Share Related Books Anne Cushman has been practicing Buddhist meditation since 1983 and yoga since 1986 and teaching their integrated practice since 1997. Her essays on the intersection of spiritual practice with daily life have been widely published, appearing in the New York Times, O magazine, Yoga Journal, Tricycle, and the Shambhala Sun. Learn more.

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