Where should I send the audio and video series?
Where should I send the audio and video series?
Walking my dog in the winter, each day is a discovery in new ways of falling and bruising myself. Most winter mornings Kobi and I walk 5 minutes down the street from our home to one of the frozen rivers that cuts through our city. Kobi loves to run free-range in this unofficial off-leash park.
Now to picture the scene, you need to realize that part of the disease I am facing is, in part, a movement disorder. If you haven’t seen someone with Huntington’s disease, you might imagine someone with full-body Parkinson’s disease on steroids. Lots of erratic, involuntary movements. I’m at the beginning stages of this, but the nature of involuntary movements is that I cannot control or completely trust my body.
So you can imagine walking on snow and ice trying to hang on to a one-year-old Golden lab puppy is sometimes quite a funny site. Lot’s of falling. Sometimes it feels like the dog and I tap dance our way down the sidewalk for the entertainment of our neighbours. Walking on the frozen river may seem like a collision decision to some, but to me I love the quiet, more peaceful setting, with less of an audience to watch my dance.
Recently, Kobi and I were doing our morning river walk and got to a part of the walk with uneven ground. To make matters worse, the night before the temperature dropped creating an extra icy surface. In the morning we got a light dusting of snow, the kind of snow that polishes the ice making everything extra slippery.
So, of course, I fell. I fell backward on my ass, elbows, back, and head. I am not sure what I said as I was falling. I am trying to embrace falling. If I am going to enjoy life, I have to figure out how to enjoy life with falling. I‘ve wondered if falling could be like a mindfulness bell – gently calling my attention back to the incredible gift of life. So on this day, I fall hard. I lie still, alone on the ice. I scan my body. Feels alright. So I stay on the ground. I know I need to make friends with the ground. Cursing the ground won’t help me, much. So I lie still on the ground and think about the gift of life.
Just at this point, a man with a dog comes down to the river and sees me. In an instant, my mindful falling is forgotten. I realize I’ve become someone else. I’ve become that strange man who falls on the ground and doesn’t get up. What’s wrong with him? I am flooded with memories of mom with Huntington’s disease. Or, more specifically, of people talking about my mom. “Yes. I saw her in the park and had to help her up out a snowbank,” I remember them telling me. And I start to see how they saw her: What’s wrong with her? Who sits in a snowbank? Should she be outside? And I start to see how I saw my mom: What’s wrong with her? Why can’t she remember to put proper clothes on before going out? What do the neighbours think?
All these thoughts flood my mind as I lie on the ground. Not wanting to be looked at the way people looked at my mom, not wanting to be looked at the way I looked at my mom, I jump from the ground.
Screw making friends with the ground. I look stupid. Get off the ground. Get on two feet and look normal. I’m sure that the worst way to “look normal” is to heap shame and embarrassment on yourself and then to try to force being normal, whatever that is. However, that did not stop me from trying. I met a new neighbour, Erwin. He was very good about it. Kind in every way. This made me angry at first. Really, deeper down, it made me more embarrassed. To fall by a stranger whom you don’t care what they think is one thing. To fall by someone whom you do care that they think is another.
If you have been following my blog you know that, in my own mind, I am conducting experiments and trainings in losing your mind in style. It is my own self-training in becoming a mindful village idiot.
In the Christian tradition from where I have come, there is a wisdom teaching that goes like this: “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.” In my new location – Falling Mindfully For You On My Ass- I am seeing this wisdom in a new light. When I was a university professor, I learned to live plenty. Plenty of friends, plenty of affirmation, plenty of money, plenty of mind-filling activities, plenty of right livelihood.
Now, I don’t claim to live in want or real hunger. We still live with more than enough money. However, I am learning to be happy without hungering for and wanting the things I will not have. Perhaps falling is a practice of learning the “secret of being” mentioned above.
Perhaps falling can also be a dharma door. In the Buddhist tradition, Dharma (teaching) doors are paths of awakening. They are teaching doors that lead to wisdom, or perhaps the secret of being. Through Thich Nhat Hanh (LINK) I learned that the Buddhist tradition holds that there are 84,000 dharma doors! I really like this. To claim one door is not to deny the many others. This got me thinking about falling as a way of a teaching door that can be used for awakening. We can call this “mindful falling.”
In my experience with this practice, falling when no else is around is easier than falling in the presence of others. So falling by yourself is a good place to start this practice. At first when I fell, even by myself, I would get angry. I would smack the ground with my fist and curse. But now I laugh at the thought of me doing that. The ground did nothing wrong. In fact, no one did anything wrong. One of the things I have learned from mindful falling by myself is that I have to discard any notions
For me, those notions lead to anger and hating myself. I need to find ways of falling that leads to loving, not hating. If I keep practicing this kind of angry, hating falling I will become anger and hatred and this will deeply scar those closest to me. I must learn kind of mindful falling that leads to love.
An early way of working at mindful falling alone is to just imagine yourself falling angry and keep meditating on that picture until you break out in laughter. Laughter is the process of letting go of that part of the self that wants to hang onto the impossible, and live in a world without cause and effect.
A next step is to fall and watch your inner voices. Pay attention to them. Ask where they came from. Ask if you want to give those voices power over you. Stay on the ground on till you can honestly say “I do not blame the ground, I do not blame myself. Letting go of blame, I love the ground. Letting go of blame, I love myself.” These words may not work for you. Find your own words. But, every time you fall, use it to learn to love yourself. This will also do wonders for the people around you.
I find this one much harder. As a student and as a university professor, I became very good at the art of impressing others. I was deeply rewarded for this art and became addicted to it. It is that addiction to impressing others that I feel rise up when falling in front of someone like my kind neighbour Erwin. I want him to like me, to affirm me. This is my addiction. Who affirms a falling person?
As humans, we do not seem to like falling or fainting. It sometimes even traumatizes the frozen bystanders. We do not like to see people out of control. Perhaps the falling person looks like they are dying. Maybe our bodies reject falling as a knee-jerk safety mechanism to avoid perceived life-threatening situations.
When I fall and then lie still on the ground, I know I am not in a life-threatening situation. But others don’t. We know how hard it is for others to see us out of control, and so we get up as fast as we can to make it better for the others.
In truth, I am just a beginner at the practice of mindful falling in the presence of others. I still find it hard to just picture it in my mind’s eye and smile at the situation. I am not yet laughing. So I have much practicing to do yet. I think if I can embrace falling in front of others, this will decrease fear in me and perhaps also in them. Fear calls out more fear.
But I don’t really know what it takes. What should have I done when my neighbour Erwin called out to see if I was ok as I lay on my ass on the frozen river? Are there ways to use this kind of falling in the presence of others as a teaching-door that leads to love? I think so.
Next time I fall in the presence of others and am asked if I am ok, I hope I stay there on the ground and say, “just practicing falling in love.”
Falling, breaking a hip, being immobile are my worst fears, and your wisdom gives me a new and optimistic outlook for that lurking old fear. Your creativity and openness to letting love in while dancing with fears and suffering light up my heart.
Thank you and blessings on the journey.
I have practiced falling for a long time, because I love aikido (“the wa y of harmony”, a non-aggressive, non-competitive martial art). I do not currently have a known severe illness — other than being alive, which always leads to death. The other day at work I was sitting on a rolling chair in a shared area, reaching for something under a desk, and the chair rolled away, so I fell into a back aikido roll, which leads to no pain later, fortunately. Everyone was very concerned – I told them I was okay, got up, and showed them how I can fall from standing, there on the hard linoleum floor in my work clothes. I’m sure it has added to my being thought of as a little different. I like the play, and knowing the support of the earth, which the molecules of my body will eventually fully rejoin. I have just read your work for the first time today, and I love it, the combination of Christian and Buddhist wisdom, and finding ways to the openness of love and joy and peace in the midst of life’s difficulties and wonders. Thank you.
Maybe try embracing your mother when you fall? Lie there with her and laugh together? “Look at us, mom! I see you now. You don’t have to be angry any more, mom, I’m with you and we can laugh. Did you see that one?”
I remember when my grandmother was having some balance issues and slipped off the edge of her bed. Her son who would have been able to help her had gone for groceries. When he returned he felt dreadful.’ Oh’ she said’ I was able to make myself comfortable but I so wish I could have reached my book.’ I thought it was a kind way of phrasing a an awkward situation for both of them.
Another FANTASTIC entry Jarem. Shared on FB page for Dementia Symptom Perspectives at https://www.facebook.com/dementia.symptom.perspectives/posts/1245077075508566 . — Tru
Thanks, Jarem, as the above comments attest, your thoughts lend themselves to analogies of life everywhere. I have been trying to practise “peace” instead of practising my habit of anxiety, and that too is a Dharma door for me. The peace is there, I just am not very used to accessing it.
So I’m wondering why your posts often move me to tears? I think it’s because your honesty simply disarms me. Thank you for being so vulnerable, Jarem. Keep writing. You have more students than you realize.
Wow, Jarem, you touch the deep and sensitive part of me as I age – in reality just a much slower but equally terminal journey. I fell hard at the bottom of a long cross-country ski hill here in Whitehorse. I was OK – or so I persuaded myself. When Susan and a doctor friend skied up, I jumped up covered with snow and insisted I was OK as I skied off down the trail. Susan turned to the friend and said, “Until this evening!” She was right – I was very sore and now, three weeks later, I’m still sore despite two sessions of acupuncture. I no longer bounce. I hope you will help me learn to laugh as I gradually weaken. That will be my dharma door. Stu
Love this post – very thought provoking – If you replace falling with failing, is the line of thought you are following something we can all learn from as I found myself seeing an analogy.