Google kindly and generously films and web-publishes classes it offers to Google staff, here is an excellent talk by Jon Kabat-Zinn where he even leads you in meditation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch%3fv=3nwwKbM_vJc&feature=related

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So funny, since my back pain that laid me out for a week and a half, I read books about back pain and its “new found” relationship to stress. Some western doctors and physical therapists and chiropractors are scratching their heads over it. I start describing the books by telling people there was this amazing discovery that the mind is connected to the body and we laugh. It seems so obvious. Still it really is not. We want either one or the other, either it is all “in your mind” or “my trouble is different, it’s physical.”

The books (Back Sense (is my favorite), Divided Mind, etc.) spend much time defending the idea saying, “this is not saying it is all in your head.” For example the stress reduces oxygen to an area of your body and voila creating illness, muscles to clinch, bones to move, etc. It is very much about breathe and body awareness and mindfulness.

The impluse seems to be, well the body is hurting the mind or the mind is hurting the body, one or the other. Why not see it is all on a spectrum?

The other day I scrapped my ankle somehow and it hurt and using my training I went right into the pain and got very curious about it, is it pulsating, warm, etc. Then I thought oh it is physical pain, wait that must mean I am stressed about something! Ha! Of course how absurd. Still my stress level met the pain and was a part of this new pain and my experience of it and the physical result from there. The mind and body are meeting. The effects of each blending together and mingling like watercolor pigments.

Just want to quickly put a shout out for a book just published in 2008 written by Tsultrim Allione, called Feeding Your Demons. She is an American ordained a Buddhist nun after living for several years in the Himalayas and has founded a retreat center in Colorado. Her name is Tsultrim Allione and the book: Feeding your Demons. VERY INTERESTING method of meditation where you find the place in your body where you issue (anger, jealousy, etc.) is manifesting then personify your demons. Personifying opens them up to you, their habits become more in your sight and I really should stop there because I just got started in the book this morning on the bus. Apparently this method (Chod) was pioneered by a woman who lived about a thousand years ago.