Our 3 speed limits
Insights from reading "Why We Meditate" by Daniel Goleman and Tsoknyi Rinpoche
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Hello, dear friends,
I grew up in a book family, and I live in a book family now. There are books everywhere, ceiling-high bookcases, stacks of books in the hallway, piles by my side of the bed. I love living around books, each of them a portal — to a new understanding, an adventure, a different taste, a time travel, a remedy, another world.
Sometimes I buy a book, and it’s not the right moment. I read a few pages, and nothing catches me. I put it aside, back into a pile, and weeks or years later, I try it again.
I recently re-picked up Why We Meditate by Daniel Goleman and Tsoknyi Rinpoche, and suddenly, it was just the fascinating book my brain was craving. Tsoknyi is a Tibetan Buddhist meditation master, and Daniel is an American psychologist, New York Times science reporter, and long-time meditator himself.
In the book, they take turns writing, with Tsokyni offering “the explanation” guiding the reader through practical techniques, and Daniel offering “the science,” with details about related research. It’s a nice pairing, and makes the book feel part handbook, part worldly dissection.
“If I had to pick one word to capture the most challenging aspect of our modern lifestyle it would be speediness.” — Tsoknyi Rinpoche
Speediness
One part that caught my attention was about the pace of our modern lives.
Tsoknyi calls this “speediness” — and notes that we have three speed limits:
our physical speed limit
our mental speed limit
our feeling or energetic speed limit
He explains: “Looking more closely into stress, I’ve noticed that our physical bodies and cognitive minds are not so much the primary problem. We can only move as fast as we can move. We are usually able to think quite fast if we need to. So where is the problem? What gets [us] so stressed out? It’s our energetic world—our feelings, emotions, sensations, and flow.”
He continues later: “That feeling—of restless, anxious energy—is not healthy. It’s distorted because it’s not rational; it’s out of touch with reality.”
In essence, our anxious energy is telling us lies: that we are in danger, that we must hurry now or else, that something is going to go wrong, that something is right now going wrong, that this shouldn’t be that way, and so on.
Sound familiar?
Our self as a three-story house
I love a good analogy. Tsoknyi suggests we can think of our human self as a three-story house.
Bottom floor: your physical body
Second floor: your energy
Third floor: your mind
He explains:
“When the second floor, the world of feelings and energies, is imbalanced, it keeps banging ‘upward’ on the mind, triggering those restless, anxious thoughts. It also keeps banging ‘downward’ on the body, triggering various symptoms of stress. When the second floor is balanced and calm, we can move our bodies fast, think quickly and creatively—and still remain relaxed and healthy. The second floor of feelings and energies is where we accumulate stress and where we can learn to be calm.”
Does this make sense to you? Or not? How do you think of the buzzy, anxiety, low-grade hum of modern life?
So what to do?
Tsoknyi offers four gentle breathing techniques in the book, ways to calm the second floor, the energy, to show your mind and physical body that you are safe. The lies are not true.
One of the breathing techniques is Gentle Vase Breathing, which he explains in this video. I still don’t quite get it, but it’s intriguing …
I’ve found that “box breathing” makes an immediate difference for me and my energy.
Box breathing is so simple, it seems like nearly nothing. And yet it works. It shifts the body into a calmer state. It steadies the second floor.
Breath in for 4.
Hold your breath still for 4.
Breath long out for 4.
Hold your breath still for 4.
Repeat
The science
You may have already guessed that this “speediness” is about our sympathetic nervous system getting revved up too often.
Designed to help us in emergencies by rallying our whole body to respond, and designed to then be reset back to safety through an act of running, this system now gets set off by comments on the Internet and headlines on TV news and imagined thoughts by others, and other non-emergencies all day long.
The key is to calm ourselves (see related post: How to complete the stress cycle), and then to learn how not to be triggered unnecessarily so often in the first place.
Easy to say, hard to learn. Still, we have to start somewhere. Understanding what’s happening is the first baby step.
Do you feel this speediness sometimes? How does it affect you? What do you do?
To our journeys,
Brianne
p.s. Here are a few more delightful Tom Gauld comics, from his Instagram @tomgauld.
