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mindfulness

Things We Said Today

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There was a moment last week when I found myself standing on a beach I never could have imagined. Bookended by two cliffs was a great, smooth expanse of the most otherworldly sand. It was like a Neapolitan ice cream of fine golden sand, exotic black obsidian grains, and clear, saltlike crystals.

In the distance, perhaps a hundred metres away, a ferocious surf pounded, sending the occasional sheet of water sliding halfway up the beach and back into the sea, leaving different artwork in the sand each time.  Read More

by David Cain on November 30, 2009
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What Five Days of Silence Taught Me

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Mainland British Columbia, from the shore at Hollyhock

Just before flying to Thailand, I spent five days at a retreat community called Hollyhock. It’s a humble, rootsy little hamlet on the relatively remote Cortes Island. I knew very little about the program I’d signed up for, only that it was about Buddhism.

It turns out that it was a rather intense regimen of meditation. Our group of fifteen or so spent virtually our entire days (from 7am to 10pm) in some form of meditation. Sitting, walking, dancing and even eating. I’ve experimented with meditation, but never for extended periods. This was a bit of a shock, finding myself sitting in a candlelit hut with nothing to do for hours but stare into my own mind.

In the tradition of Theravada monks, we undertook several Buddhist precepts, including refraining from consuming intoxicants, and refraining from killing people for the duration the five days. We also observed “noble silence” which means we were not to talk or engage other people, even with mere eye contact. Read More

by David Cain on November 5, 2009
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How to Improve Your Handwriting (or Anything Else) at Will

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handwriting

When I was taking French classes a few months ago, we were each asked to write a composition in French and pass it to another classmate to read. It struck me then that I very seldom write more than a Post-It note’s worth these days. By the end of a paragraph, my hand is cramped and sore.

And what an ugly paragraph I created. My letters were inconsistent and strangled. To this day, after nearly twenty-five years of handwriting experience, I suck. With considerable shame, I passed my composition, which demonstrated both the penmanship and language skills of a six-year-old French boy, to another classmate.

As if to redeem me, I received an even uglier paragraph from the student to my left.

My generation is lost for handwriting. I’m a computer person. I write thousands of words a week, almost entirely by pushing buttons. My penmanship skills are rarely called upon, and I know I’m not the only one.

After a few weeks of class, I had a chance to see everyone’s penmanship at least once. It ranged from virtually indecipherable to pretty good, but none approached the elegant cursive one might see in a Christmas card from an aunt born before the war. Read More

by David Cain on October 15, 2009
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A New Relationship With Food – Experiment No. 4 Results

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light meal

Another experiment has come to an end, but as usual, I’m not going right back to what I was doing beforehand. Just like my last experiment, 30 Days Without Drugs, one of the habits in my life has been permanently renegotiated.

To recap, a month ago I decided I’d go thirty days eating defensively. That means no indiscriminate eating. I defined four rules to govern my eating during that month:

1) Eat whatever you like. There are no foods to be avoided outright, except foods that make you feel sick. Listen to your body.

2) Never eat until you are full. Always stop at a moment when you still want to eat a bit more. This is the most important part of the diet. Again, listen to what the body says, not the mind.

3) Eat only when you are hungry. Never out of comfort or boredom. Do not eat within sixty minutes of the last time you stopped eating.

4) Water is the only drink. You may still consume any liquids you want, but they are to be treated like food.

These rules served me well, and prevented a lot of needless and excessive eating, but each had its loopholes and grey areas. Read More

by David Cain on October 5, 2009
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Defensive Eating – Raptitude Experiment No. 4

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pastries

So I get on one wagon and fall off another.

My third official Raptitude experiment, 30 Days Without Drugs, was a resounding success in my eyes. I accomplished my goal and dismantled a persistent problem in my life. I’m now much less inclined to compromise my state of mind with the offhanded use of alcohol and caffeine. Now a month since the experiment ended, my lifestyle seems to be permanently changed for the better.

But during that time, I’ve slipped into an apathetic attitude towards food intake. I find myself eating more, and more often.

My workout routine also fell off the map, as it was already starting to by the end of my slightly less successful kettlebell experiment back in May and June.

As a result, I’ve put on an unappetizing ring of midsection fat. It shrunk while I was working out regularly, but now it’s back, trying to make me its permanent home. I want to get rid of it, which means getting rid of the habit that put it there.  Read More

by David Cain on September 3, 2009
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Ethanol Free — 30 Days Without Drugs Update

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alcohol shot

On July 6, 2009, David began an experiment in which he resolved not to use any sort of drugs for 30 days. View the full experiment log here.

Day 22

Well I’m down to little more than a week left, and it really has not been difficult. There have been a few brief moments where I felt a bit left out, but any angst always went away fast, and I don’t feel like I’ve missed out on any fun that only drugs would have allowed me to have.

I will say though, that part of the ease has been the knowledge that I will be allowed to indulge if I want after the 30 days is up. Not that it’s that appealing, but if my commitment had been six months, it may not have felt so easy on a day-to-day basis.

But such a lengthy abstinence is not necessary. Basically, I have two goals with this experiment:

1) Find out what I feel like physically after not having ingested any drugs for a while, and

2) Discover if my social life and working life have developed a need for caffeine and alcohol.

So far I’ve discovered that (1) I feel physically awesome almost all the time, and (2) I have been able to both work and have fun just the same without drugs.

I can’t say I’m not excited at the thought of having a few beers with my buddies after the experiment is over, or enjoying a traditional after-dinner coffee with my mom. I really do want to do those things, but mainly because I feel like I can bring a new sense of awareness and appreciation to the experience.

Of course, reintroducing drugs into my life means conscious moderation. Staying away from years-old habits for a month isn’t going to obliterate them. Read More

by David Cain on July 29, 2009
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The Essential Skill of “Want Management”

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donuts

If I told you to sit in the corner of the room, and get up whenever you want, how long do you think you’d stay?

Chances are, not long. From my meditation experiments I’ve learned that it takes about ten seconds of sitting still before one feels an impulse to do or change something. Wants begin to appear, and start barking orders. Stand up. Get a glass of water. Stop wasting your time trying to meditate. Go eat some grapes. Get something done, jeez.

It’s amazing how quickly and ferociously these wants arrive on the scene. The brain is constantly generating them, and they become especially apparent when you attempt to sit still and do nothing. It becomes almost unbearable, and relief happens almost instantly when you act. Doing anything at all keeps the mind busy so it has less time to come up with suggestions and demands about what you ‘need.’

This is why it’s easier to watch television than sit and do nothing, even though watching television doesn’t really get us anywhere better.  Merely distracting oneself from the incessant mental shouting of wants is probably the most common strategy of responding to them, and it does work to some degree.

Multi-billion dollar industries are built on exactly this impulse. Television, video games, smartphones, iPods. Distraction is easily one of the most profitable commodities of the 21st century. Read More

by David Cain on July 27, 2009
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Moments Can’t Be Captured

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Deer tracks

“We do not remember days, we remember moments.”

~Cesare Pavese

By six o’clock on a Sunday night, the streets of Invermere were deserted.  It was early fall, the middle of dead season for a skier’s town, and I was trotting down to the highway to hitchhike back up the mountain, to the resort where I lived and worked.  It had rained earlier, and the damp streets were glowing with one final hour of of sun before it ducked behind the mountains.

I’d spent the day in town, alone, on what was as much a photo-taking excursion as a grocery run.  Walking along a silent residential street, I passed an overgrown picket fence, peered nosily into the adjacent yard, and saw something that made me stop. Read More

by David Cain on July 16, 2009
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30 Days Without Drugs — Raptitude Experiment No. 3

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Alcohol

This experiment commenced on schedule on July 6, 2009.  See my progress log here.

As much as I don’t like so say it this explicitly, drugs have been a significant part of my life for some time now.

I know I’m far from alone.  Drugs use is very common.  Drugs are a part of human culture everywhere in different capacities: as medicine, as recreation, as escape, as tradition, as sacraments.

I try to avoid the common distinction between drugs that are legal or illegal, socially acceptable or not socially acceptable. A drug is a drug, regardless of the government’s opinion of it.

That unfair distinction creates a lot of undue prejudice and ignorance, it alienates people and ruins lives, but I’ll save that debate for later.  I know most coffee drinkers would not identify themselves as drug users, but they are.  It’s unfortunate that the term ‘drug user’ has come to be a condescending slur rather than just the objective descriptor it should be.

Partly because of the culture I live in, both the broader culture of North America, and my own local combination of friends and influences, I have become habituated to using certain drugs regularly.  People all around me use them to different degrees. Read More

by David Cain on July 6, 2009
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The Results Are In — Experiment No. 1, Day 30

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Buddha dog

David began a 30-day daily meditation experiment on April 6, 2009.  The original post is here. David’s progress log is here.

Well, the first official Raptitude experiment has come to an end.  I just got up from my final meditation session. As far as I can tell, I am not enlightened.  I can neither hear the mountain stream nor make the sound of one hand clapping.

But I will never be the same.

If you’ve ever had trouble meditating, you might appreciate this account.

I have wanted to try meditating on a daily basis for a long time and I am glad I did it this way, accountable to you, the reader.  Because let me tell you, if I didn’t tell anybody I was trying this, I would have quit in the first week.  I’ve left detailed entries in my experiment log, but I’ll recap the highlights here.

That first week was rough.  I could not decide on a method, so I tried a few, with discouraging results.  On Day 5, I decided to settle on a (seemingly) simple and well-known method called vipassana. I think I even announced in my progress log that my confusion about methods was over, because I’d found plain instructions for a tried and true method.  Hah! Read More

by David Cain on May 6, 2009
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