Innovate with Love

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  • Bearing witness to modern warfare

    Like most, I am strong, decent, kind man. Flawed, but good.  And, like many, I have borne much in this life, but this – this, I can hardly bear.  I am nauseous as I write.

    Actual footage from an American Army chopper outside Baghdad.  The ill-informed, light-hearted murder of innocents by men carrying out orders, doing their duty as directed in the course of daily business. 

     

    Grown American men in the grip of the fog of war, seeing  those who they have no real information on — peaceful journalists, parents and children — as video game targets.  Slaughtering them, pushing a button from the sky. 

     

    Even with all my imagination, I can’t find another God-honest way to see this.

     

    America – wake up!  Half of our discretionary tax dollars — 700,000 military — 2.3M civilians — $900 Billion/yr — 8% of our annual GDP — helped to perpetrate this.  

     

    That chopper took billions of our dollars and hundreds of lifetimes of our brightest scientists, engineers and technicians to build.

     

    This is not just the men sitting in the cockpit pushing buttons.  All of us, together, have done this.  Their blood is ours to sop up.


    America! Do we recall our promise?  We are a covenant to the world.  My parents, like so many , left all they knew in the hope of its fulfillment, and I work, as so many do each day, in that same hope.   


    AMERICA! We the People are financing this every day — the one-third of our paychecks in taxes – a quarter of that money goes to pay for this — on average, about 40 minutes of your work day, even this very day, is STILL paying.  If you are blessed with employment. 

     

    It is our voice, our silence, our unwillingness to bear witness, and the hours and dollars we spend each day doing looking away – that has done this, just as much as the men pushing the buttons above Baghdad. 

    The men in the chopper are merely the symptom.  We are the problem – our ruthless, murderous silence. 

     

    Those men were just doing their jobs, clicking their mouse, just as you click yours. 

     

    And they were doing it in January 2007, knowing full well — as we all did by that time — that there were no WMD’s in Iraq – our whole rationale for military action there. 

     

    And yet we all just kept clicking.  What, in God’s name, what is wrong with us?

     

    America, may we never again abandon your promise!

     

    And, Mr. President Obama, you too made a personal promise us all to end this.  Why are we still there?!

     

    Please — no more!  The time is not someday, not soon — but now — to make good on your word.

    And most of all, oh dear God of Love, Sprit of Peace, Brotherhood of Man —  please hear our cries!

     

    Please, please let this be the real beginning of the real end to the illusive ill-defined war on terror.

     

    May we see the terrorists are really just murderous criminal gangs. 

     

    May we understand we must no longer dignify them as warriors.

     

    May we stop inflicting our fear and vengeance upon their innocent, decent neighbors.

     

    May we stop ordering our own best men to commit heinous crimes in our name.

     

    May we see that the War on Terror should never have been.

     

    May we see, there just should have been, and could still now be — the largest, most concerted criminal dragnet in the history of humanity – for which we would have the world’s unqualified support. 

     

    May we see that if the enemy really is terror, then we can win it now — when we put down our fears, and live in the clear-eyed faith that terrorists are nothing but criminals.

     

    And, unless we let them change us, they can pose no real threat to our way of life –the openness, integrity, generosity of a free people united and peaceful — only we can surrender that way, that promise.

     

    And may we see, in the name of stopping them, that is just we have been doing — abandoning ourselves!

     

    Oh Dear God — please relieve us of our blindness now — may we awaken!

     

    It is time to just go get the terrorists and bring them out into the light, into the full blaze of justice before the world’s gaze.  

     

    Every peace-loving person on Earth wants for that, only that.

     

    And, in our heart-of-hearts, we want to stop dignifying them and defiling ourselves with this erroneous war on terror.

     

    So all of us — American, Afghan Iraqi, and all others – may live amongst one another as brothers, in peace.

     

    Amen.

     

     

  • Clare and Harris Wofford’s India Afire

    Gandhi_dc

    It was suggested to me by a friend, Rajeev Goyal of www.PushforPeaceCorps.org, that I reach out to former Senator and Peace Corps Associate Director under JFK and LBJ —  the Honorable Harris Wofford. 

    Before I did so, I wanted to read his book India Afire, which he co-authored with his now late wife Clare. It was published just three years after India’s independence in 1951, after a six-month trip they took together to India in 1950.

    I had to interlibrary loan request it, and am at Lauinger Library on the Georgetown campus now, looking out at a full moon and the Washington monument and Kennedy Center in the distance, giving it a read.  

    On the title page is a quote:

    Pray tell me, what am I to do with a fifth of the human race living on the verge of starvation?

    — Gandhi

    So it started off well; Gandhi is perhaps my single greatest hero and most frequent object of daily meditation. His beautiful memorial on Massachusetts Avenue is a near-daily stop on my way to or from work, where I stop to touch his feet and read the inscription “MY LIFE IS MY MESSAGE”,  reminding myself to live likewise.  
      On the second page, the Woffords write:

    India is afire with the same revolt affecting all Asia, but the course it is taking is still far from communism.  After all, Gandhi consciously struck the first great Indian sparks.  Having witnessed the results of Gandhi’s nonviolent struggle and studied his story, we rank him as the world’s greatest revolutionary.  

    I welled up with pride and joy upon reading this. Here is Wofford, a young American who will go on to be a great leader — a Senator, college President, moral leader of the Peace Corps — who ranks Gandhi higher even than George Washington or Thomas Jefferson.  
    We are in agreement on this. Not that the accomplishments of the American revolutionaries aren’t extraordinarily great.

    An aside — just last Sunday, I had occasion to visit Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell and Independence Hall, which was the scene of the signing of the American Declaration of Independence and US Constitution, and to ponder the scene a while, to try to feel what it must have been to be in a world in which there was no living memory or knowledge of democratic nationhood–where consent of the governed and merit of the governors ruled, rather than bloodlines–and to strike out into the unknown to try it.  It’s immense.

    However great, Gandhiji had a universal human vision that went even beyond the Founding Fathers’  national one, though they were no strangers to the idea either.  I’d go so far as to say, they were the first modern men to give voice to it.  Yet even today in America, most of us struggle to really believe this:

    We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

    The self-evident truth of a Creator endowing us with such rights may be easy for us to confer upon fellow Americans, but the deeper morality this calls us toward — a universal humanistic vision of defending these rights equally for all mankind, especially those who lack the basic conditions of life to defend it for themselves — is just now evolving.  After nearly two and a half centuries of struggle for slaves, women, blacks, and immigrants in America, we have only in the past two generations begun awakening to the possibility that our nation can play a purposeful and intentional role in the enduring establishment of Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness for all people everywhere.  

    Which brings me back to the Woffords — they were funded on this trip by the Foundation for World Government, an organization begun in 1937 in New York.  They write:

    Undoubtedly we were drawn to some aspects instead of others by our “one world” bias…. By the time we left for India, six years of our lives had largely revolved around the world government idea.

     When I saw “one world” on the page in quotes, I again was deeply moved as one of my own passions is one-planet living.  They are not at all the same in a sense, but they are of a kindred intent — peace on earth through unity.  

      One-planet living is about self-responsible economic choices such that one’s lifestyle does not make it impossible for others to live on the Earth, either now, or in the future.  Today, if everyone on the planet lived as the average American consumer does, driving gas-guzzling automobiles, and living a consumerist lifestyle that generates so much trash at such large volumes, it would require nine planet earths to fuel this lifestyle for everyone. The off-planet harvesting of mineral resources depicted in James Cameron’s Avatar film is not a fantastic fiction; it will be a necessity if we keep up our present modes of consumption.  But I just cannot imagine what we’d do to our own planet before we start harvesting others. One-planet living is about the hope that we can each set an example, at home, work, and in society, in how we practice meeting our own needs and those of our family — to share the earth fairly with the rest of life on this planet.

    One-world government, as the Foundation for World Government conceived, was about seeking an end to international conflict through a fair, federalist union of nations.  The Woffords wrote:

    Within a week–a staggering week in which human misery hit us from every side–our world government glasses were knocked off, and for many months, lost.  Overwhelmed by the immediate economic problems that meant life or death for millions, we were swept away from the world federation idea by the heart-wrenching poverty, ignorance, and disease surrounding us.  World government seemed a thousand miles down a road littered with tragic immediate problems crying for solution.  In the end we were hunting a prescription for a new kind of lens which would cure our former nearsightedness to such problems without obliterating the old insights.  We wanted glasses that would keep the world’s misery in sharp focus and show as well the longer-range but inescapable road of world unity.

    World unity or world peace seems a good bit less inevitable today. I’ve been testing out the notion with my friends — who are broadly a profoundly hopeful, broad-minded, forward-thinking bunch — this notion of the inevitability of world peace.  I get one response: bewilderment.   In America, we are profoundly conditioned to predicate our entire lives on its impossibility.  So just act locally goes the argument.  
    I do not feel this way at all — while the intuition has been with me all my life, it only became a real, deeply-held conviction recently, in the past few months: world peace is inevitable, and it is very possible. 

    I am working on a fuller discussion of how and why that’s really so, but my basic case is premised as follows:
    1. The world is a profoundly interconnected system, that tends toward various states of durable, but dynamic, equilibrium, which, with great reliability, tend to overtake unstable states.  
    2. There are tipping points in the development of these equilibria, in which the dynamic forces of conversion are in rapid realignment toward stability.
    3. We have now enough examples of how such conditions have arisen in various local contexts to reasonably apply these lessons in the establishment of equilibria to the entire system to create rapid, effective interventions that change the course of equilibrium.
    4. The fundamental underlying theme of all these interventions — ranging from political to scientific — is the loving application of our attention and knowledge to the solution of immediate problems in everyday living, while holding firm to the principle that we do no harm to the greater good in the process. 
    5. We will certainly not be right in every case, but with persistent effort over time, we will be far more right than we will be wrong. 
    So, in essence, my case for world peace is technical — grounded in making smarter everyday choices, as individuals and as social groups, states and nations — but also aspirational — grounded in the faith that life and love will win out in the end, and that our only real choice is whether we want that end — world peace — to come sooner or later. 
    The Woffords wrote a great treasure of a book; I just read the chapter on their visit to Andhra Pradesh, then simply called by its capital city’s name — Hyderabad, my birthplace. At the time of their visit, it was the center of the Communist movement in India.  They visited a Gandhian who had returned to a small village to teach and help uplift it through Gandhi’s vision.  I’d never before had as direct narrative contact with what that vision was.  

    Ranga Naikulu, who had left Gandhi’s ashram Sevagram three years prior, to set up camp in a village outside of the city of Warangal, in what had then become a Communist stronghold:

    At first everyone was suspicious and kept their children away from the “new teacher.” They feared that the Nizam Government would punish them if they cooperated with anyone associated with Gandhi.  With no room made available and no students, Ranga opened his school under a tree by the edge of the village, after persuading a few poor children from nearby villages to sit with him. The villagers watched cautiously, and then slowly began sending their children to him….  By now Ranga taught fifty-seven village children, most of those from two to fifteen in the little hamlet of 345.  Those whose families insisted that they work in the daytime he taught at night, along with some of the willing adults…   He had already prevented many child marriages and eased others by getting them to school even after they were wed.  

    His success, moderate as it was, stemmed from his emphasis on village living instead of literacy.  He began with lessons in baths and cooking and health.  He dispensed antimalarial drugs and information.  Now this village had no malaria, whereas those nearby had a rate of probably 25 percent.  Ranga and his students were constructing a drainage system: while we walked through the ankle-deep mud, his students were trying to fill in the bogs and level off the road.  Through the school he hoped to awaken public service and village planning.  He had many ideas for the future: movable trench latrines, dairy and grain co-operatives, elective village councils, and the introduction of cottage industries.  Already he was spreading the use of the charkha, through his regular school periods of hand-spinning.  And some peasants were now using cow dung as fertilizer for the first time. He had started paper and glucose-making and beekeeping, but the raiders had destroyed his equipment.  Soon, however, they would start again now that the new school buildings were finished.

    This sounds remarkably like the life of a number of Peace Corps volunteers I have known, the world over.  It had never occurred to me before there could in fact be a very direct link between the Gandhian program and the Peace Corps program — but it seems obvious now, considering the Woffords and others subsequent involvement with the Peace Corps, and the Agency’s emphasis on respecting local culture and tradition, and upliftment through providing trained men and women.  I wonder where they got the idea?  This is something I’d like to ask Senator Wofford about.   

    I will report back on what he says.  

    There are many more wonderful things I could share about this book, but I’ll stop here for now; it’s been a beautiful session of meditation, connecting to the cause of peace in the sweep of history, in my birthplace and in my homeland, and to the Gandhian and American visions for it world over.

    I sign off feeling deeply grateful to be alive.

  • Freedom of Information in American Government

    This week, I have had much occasion to meditate on the Obama administration’s approach to openness in government.  Accountability is only possible through transparency, and this has become a basic premise that is central to my own commitment to open-source living.
    So it was a great relief to see that the first Executive Order of Obama’s first day in office was this:
    http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Transparency_and_Open_Government/
    In it, President Obama says:

    My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government.  We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.

    In President Obama’s next official order as our President, he says about FOIA, there is to be a new ‘presumption of disclosure’, described here beautifully:
    http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/FreedomofInformationAct/

    Government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears. Nondisclosure should never be based on an effort to protect the personal interests of Government officials at the expense of those they are supposed to serve.

    OMB Director Peter Orszag’s supporting memo on how each Agency is to carry out such a policy is at:
    http://www.whitehouse.gov/open/documents/open-government-directive

    In it, he articulates three interrelated principles:

    The three principles of transparency, participation, and collaboration form the cornerstone of an open government.  Transparency promotes accountability by providing the public with information about what the Government is doing.  Participation allows members of the public to contribute ideas and expertise so that their government can make policies with the benefit of information that is widely dispersed in society.  Collaboration improves the effectiveness of Government by encouraging partnerships and cooperation within the Federal Government, across levels of government, and between the Government and private institutions.

    And he directs, in a good deal of detail, that all Agencies to do the following:
    1. Publish Government Information Online
    2. Improve the Quality of Government Information
    3. Create and Institutionalize a Culture of Open Government
    4. Create an Enabling Policy Framework for Open Government

    Unfortunately, political orders and directives do not remake a bureaucratic culture, and it is the work of the leaders and workers at various agencies to fulfill on the vision of transparency, and to trust both their own and the nation’s interests are best served by bringing the Truth to light.

  • World Peace

    What does it even mean?

    No world war?
    No nations warring each other?
    No nations preparing for war?
    No nations embroiled in civil war?
    No violent organized opposition to standing governments–guerrilla war, drug cartels, and separatist movements?
    No violence between groups within a nation–gang war, ethnic cleansing?
    No violence against disenfranchised groups–women, gays, children, minorities, the ill?
    No violence inflicted by one individual on another–murder,assault,rape?
    No self-inflicted violence?
    No lack of love, security, water, food, shelter, respect, justice, information, or opportunity for each and every single member of the human race?
    No violence toward the planet–air, land, sea, and the balance of all life?
    No violence toward future generations?
    No question mark after the words “world peace”?

    Yes.

    Yes.

    Yes.

    All of it.  All.

    World Peace.  I pray.

    World Peace. I believe.

    World Peace. I try.

    Or I cannot have real peace even with myself.

    World Peace is the natural state of the Earth.  It is what brought us into being, our birthright.  And it is inevitable.

    The only real question is, will we allow it in our lifetimes?  Or will we persist in the tragic, devastating lie that is despairing of it altogether?

    We have a choice.  Time to make it in favor of the truth that was here before us and will be here long after:

    World Peace.

    Time to put away the question marks I say.

    Yes — World Peace — yes.

  • Vishada Yoga

    My dear auntie Gita posted a question on Buzz, remarking on the sadness of searching for a teacher — I commented:

    http://www.google.com/buzz/gita.madhu/1NDBJpprn66/The-search-for-a-Guru-is-rather-sad-One-drowning

  • What’s my bias?

    This earlier post on media bias led me to think, perhaps it’s best to abandon objectivity altogether, and instead be totally, even painfully, subjective — but with self-awareness.   Also, it reminded me that this blog is itself is a media outlet of sorts, and so I should be clear for myself and for you, the reader — what’s my bias?

    The graphic is from an Australian Computer Science education conference — referring to experimental bias that creeps into the work of computer scientists — but it’s useful generally as a way to visualize the cyclic, self-reinforcing nature of bias….

    My bias? Well, as much as none of this ‘should’ matter according to the objectivist view — the reality is that I was  born into a Hindu Brahmin family, of the Telugu 6000 Niyogi subsect from Andhra, who were originally, of all things, known as good public administrators.  My family is descended from the sage Mowdgalya, a lineage of rishis said to have authored the Atharvaveda Upanishad. Today, in addition to the philosophical foundation of the Vedas, and extensive influence from Buddha’s teachings, we practice in Ramanuja’s strain of Vaishnavism, with deep connections to the Tirupati Balaji temple and its tradition of Vishnu tantra. 

    I was born in Hyderabad, India, but raised in Woodbridge, New Jersey, and McLean, Virginia. I went to public schools, but was always in gifted and talented programs, honors classes and magnet schools, including the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Virginia. My father was a strong Democrat when it came to American politics, and a Congress Party of India supporter, with strong Marxist/socialist philosophic leanings. My mother was one of India’s first women electronics engineers, and bought me my first computer at age 9, and she’s been in government service all her life, both in India and the US. Of all public thinkers and leaders, perhaps the most formative was Gandhi, whose autobiography I read at age 17 while traveling in India and doing research on HIV/AIDS epidemiology — and that’s changed me forever.

    These facts are the core of the deep spiritual, scientific, political, and social convictions that are with me today. Of course, I am very much my own man, but it’s surprising, for as much of a rebel as I’ve been in my life, how little I’ve really strayed from that basic foundation of belief.  All those influences were really baked into my source code, so to speak.  Today, I have the engineer’s conviction that the world’s problems are solvable; the scientific conviction that they’re understandable; the spiritualists’ conviction that they — the whole world over, each and every single person — matters; and the political conviction that, with the right leadership, it’s all possible — real transformation …

    I also have the experience in adult life of, many, many times, getting stuck — wanting, needing, believing I needed to be doing something different, but not finding the ability to, long after it no longer really ‘made sense’.  It’s the human condition in a sense, not just to err, but to keep erring because a known error can be less fearsome than an unknown one. But it’s probably the main lens through which I see myself and my life and human life in general: flowing versus stuck. Growth or stasis.  And having spent my entire adult life addressing this divide in myself through the very scientific, technical, spiritual and social predispositions I described above it’s brought me around to the same belief: real transformation is possible.

    It’s not just possible — it’s necessary — to transcend our lesser selves and the ‘laws of biological behavioral gravity’, as my great-uncle Dr. N.C. Surya termed it .  It’s only by knowing what weights we bear, what our karma has shaped us into, that we can transcend.  ‘With skill, determination and scientific sincerity, we can fly.  No mystery is involved in airplane flight, he wrote.  Similarly, the flight of a human being into their better selves.

    So that’s it, my biggest, most basic bias — by training and experience — I believe we can utterly surprise ourselves.  In fact, it’s the one thing we can really count on.

     

  • Media bias in America including this blog

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    I had an interesting conversation with a friend and freelance reporter for NPR last night.  She will rename nameless here — interesting when a blogger has to protect the anonymity of a journalist source, isn’t it? 

    In any case, she told me she felt like to rise there she had to think and act like a 40-year-old white liberal male.  Her view was enlightening, because I’ve considered myself an NPR listener and supporter.  Her interest and connection to international issues had to be subdued because simply put, America was more important, by a lot.  This really got me thinking about their reportage because I’ve listened to NPR on and off for many years.  While it’s a markedly better mental diet than say CNN, Fox or other so-called ‘major’ American media outlets – it really is not very balanced globally.  I’d like to look at this issue of media coverage, and explore whether it’s more informed by humanism versus Americanism further.

    The Wikipedia entry on media bias in the US has a lot of great references as a start. It also makes the interesting point that professional journalism didn’t really exist before the early 1900s. Before that correspondents were often those who corresponded with the publisher, and newspapers were always understood to represent the interests of the publisher.

    Professional journalism, it seems, suffers from the same illusion of objectivity as much of the rest of academia.  This is a deep interest of mine when it comes to how science is practiced, and is the central life’s work of my friend and colleague of Professor Patrick Heelan, SJ, at Georgetown.  The hermeneutics of science is something few scientists are taught to consider at all.  They are trained into the seductive notion that there is an absolute scientific truth which they are revealing.  Journalists, writers of all kinds, are not so different…. 

    I don’t strive for that sort of objectivity, but for balance within myself, within the range of my own voice — I ask, am I speaking with compassion, appropriateness, integrity, and clarity?     But what defines what that is for me?  What’s my bias?

     

  • Quick Review of You Are Not a Gadget by Jaron Lanier

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    At least, it works as a piece of creative pop philosophy, along the lines of Nicholas Negroponte’s Being Digital. Both books stimulate thought while affirming the conviction and creativity of its author and offering some fresh insight into the nature of our society’s relationship with information technology. Here is Chapter 2 of Lanier‘s book entitled “What is a Person?”.  And the overly glowing, albeit confused, Washington Post review.  The review is a bit confused because the book is, because there is a fundamental problem with the larger social discourse about the nature, meaning and impact of information technology. 

    We are not yet looking deeply enough into its intellectual foundations, which can be traced to the Greeks, to the interplay between Platonic idealism and Aristotle’s metaphysics — this was where the still-standing intellectual edifice of divorcing form and substance began. From it, we have now put ourselves in the strange posture of having ‘information’ be one of the most real, defining aspect of our day-to-day lives, but no clear notion of its right relation to reality in a philosophic or intellectual sense. Lanier’s work takes a worthy cut at the resulting hyperbolic claims that have been made about the power of information in the Web 2.0 age, but doesn’t get altogether to the heart of the matter.

    In the East, this divergence between form and substance never hardened.  It was a distinction held much more lightly, so that the term for the material universe, prakrti, encompassed, in addition to gross matter like earth and water, also mind, intellect and ego.I will have a good deal more to say on this …

  • Haiti’s Tragic Earthquake of 2010

    It’s just unfathomable to me the scale of the impact the Haiti earthquake has had. If America had woken up with 2% of our population dead, and 10% homeless, the numbers would be 6.2 million to bury and 31 million to house.

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    This photo-essay in today’s Washington Post on this weekend of prayer vigils held across Haiti is beautiful and touching. Out of this pain and loss, I pray — may God bless them with a road to peace and prosperity, and may we all do the needful not only now, but as a way of life, to assist.

  • Healing Visualization Meditation

    If there’s any part of my body in need of healing, whether from a fall or other injury, from being ill, or tension caused by stress, sadness or resentment — there’s a simple healing visualization meditation using the breath that I’ve found always helps me feel better.

    ·         In a quiet, private place, sit in a comfortable seated posture that you can hold for a long period with your core supporting you (not against a backrest), or, if you’ll be more comfortable, lie down in savasana. Close your eyes throughout the meditation, and bring the focus of your mind’s eye to your body.

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    ·         Breathe deeply and steadily in through your nostrils into your tummy, then into your chest and heart space then up to your shoulders and neck — and slowly and intentionally release down in reverse order from the neck through the bottom of the tummy.  Inhale only through the nose, but you can exhale through both the nose and mouth, allowing whatever is most easeful for each breath.

    ·         Make the length of your breath on a 1 to 2 ratio.  So if you do a 4-count inhale, do an 8-count exhale.  Find a comfortable, sustainable pace, and don’t focus too much on the exact timing – it’s just a rough guide – but don’t forget to remind yourself either when needed.  Your body will inform you with each breath what it most needs. 

    ·         Once you’ve found a steady pace at about this 1:2 ratio, continue breathing long, deep breaths in this manner, and, as you inhale, visualize sending the breath all the way to the place in your body that needs healing and allowing that part of your body to fill up with healing energy, as your torso fills with breath.  As you exhale, visualize the body gently releasing some of the pain, resistance, anxiety,  sadness, or toxins from that part of your body, and the out-breath carrying it away, out of you.

    ·         At  any point, it may happen that the part of the body you are focusing upon suddenly feels much more easeful or less painful, and seems to have had ‘enough’ healing for now, and  some other part of the body will register the need for healing energy. When it happens, honor it, give thanks to that part of your body for healing itself – and with your next breath, you can shift your visualization of healing energy to the next point in your body asking for it. 

    ·         This works on any part of the body, not just over the parts over which you have conscious control —  even your brain, your heart, the insides of your bones, your eyes, anywhere — you don’t need to be able to consciously control the function of a part of your body in order to send healing energy there.

    ·         Continue for at least a few minutes, as long as you wish, up to a few hours even. 

     

    If at first you can’t feel your healing energy focusing itself where you’re visualizing, don’t worry – it’s in you. This will become more apparent the more you relax into it.  Often, I know it’s beginning to work because I feel a mild tingling in that region of my body I’m focused on – quite literally, my cardiovascular system is relaxing in that area, allowing more blood to flow in, and with it, more healing happens – more nutrients, oxygen, and white-blood cells go to that part of me — and more red blood cells to carry away by-products and toxins.  With some practice, you will be able to focus your healing energy wherever it is most needed with ease, and the sensations will be unmistakable. 

    If you’re comfortable with this simple practice, you can experiment — as you breathe out, while keeping focused in the flow of healing energy through the body with the breath, you can experiment with different out-breaths and sounds — nose-only, mouth-only, sighing, cooing — whatever is most easeful, whatever provides the most release.  One that really helps me is to sigh like I’ve just finished a big job.

     

    For those with old emotional wounds – often currently expressing themselves through depression, anxiety,  compulsivity, or trouble focusing or sleeping — coupling this exercise with yogic postures can help accelerate the healing process tremendously.   Deep emotional releases may occur, as there are often many tensions held in the body from un-processed events over the years.  For example, bodywork healers have long known there is often tension stored in the deep musculature of the hips to do with old injuries to one’s emotional security.

     

    One such experience I have had is of emotional memories coming up of the loss of my grandfather, who was I’m told was my ‘best buddy’ as a small child, until I was two years old, when my family emigrated to America.  He died shortly thereafter. I have no visual, cognitive, olfactory or other memory of my grandfather, but I did have emotional memories of my loss of him held deep within my body, that came up through the combination of this deep releasing breath and pigeon pose on my left side.  I found myself quietly crying tears I had needed to for nearly thirty years, re-connecting with the spirit of a man I had long thought I’d lost, and feeling my load in life is a good bit lighter ever since.

     

    As soon as you’re just a bit comfortable with this practice and can quickly focus your healing energy  —  you can try to do it any time of day while doing anything – simply taking a deep breath and directing the healing energy to whatever part of your body may be tight or troubled.  For me, it works especially well to direct the healing energy to the front of the brain when I’m a bit mentally astir about something, and the tummy when I’m anxious.   I’ve done it often at my desk at work, in the line at the store, walking down the street, even in the middle of a challenging conversation.  When I can do it, it always helps me — let me know if it helps you too!