The Amiel Blog

Heart as habit

Daily practice of feeling the heart is having this impact: I'm now feeling my heart several times a day without trying to. Example: right now, sitting at gate E1 at Portland airport, waiting to board my flight to SFO for Wisdom 2.0. The heart sensations: tingling feeling rising up and out. Feeling of tenderness. Softening of heart and belly. Still feel powerful and energetic but also sweetness. A nectar.

I don't think the heart opening has made me more loving to others-- yet-- but I definitely am experiencing more love, a pleasant new addition to my day.

February is Heart Month

During a two-day retreat in late January in Berkeley with my friends, Jon and Michael, I had a powerful insight: my heart matters. No, not just the physical heart, but the experience of feeling my emotional heart. The key part of the insight was that feeling love is (a) key to guiding me professionally, because my purpose is shaped by and expressed through love and (b) something I don't want to die not having felt fully.

So I have declared February Heart Month.

This has led to a couple of new practices (yes, there is still space to add more to the day!):

• Daily heart-opening practice. Could be poetry, writing, listening to an inspirational speaker, movie, or music. The Meditations for Thais that I listen to twice (10 min total) after my workout evokes warmth in the heart. But the best practice has been simply pausing in the midst of activity to feel sensations in the heart and send the breath into them and observe the result. For example, last night Jacob took an hour to fall asleep. While I was sitting with him and then laying next to him, I started to notice my heart and granted myself permission to feel it. A warm, silky feeling entered my experience
• Daily wordcentric practice. Worldcentric means embracing everyone in my sense of self. The idea for this came from past experiences reading or listening to inspirational people who call me to my highest self, particularly while discussing what's happening in our world. A piece of writing by Parker Palmer is one example. Ken Wilber's book One Taste is another. Yet I'm finding it difficult to quickly access sources. Interestingly, my own writing seems to do the trick as well as anything...

Lost bodyfat despite long cold and holidays

Yes, my friends, the bodyfat continues to burn, baby, burn. The numbers:

• August 23, 2011      24.5% bodyfat, 160.7 lbs
• October 27, 2011    22.8%, 160.6 lbs
• January 3, 2012      20.5%  156.7 lbs

Still on our way to the ambitious target of 10% bodyfat and between 155 and 165 lbs.

I'm proud of these results because they came despite a 5-week cold during which I worked out only one or two times some weeks--evidenced in the fact I only gained 0.5 lbs of muscle in two months! And then there were the ever-tempting holiday sweets, a temptation I avoided except on cheat days and the time I forgot to eat an amazing fudge on my cheat day so had a couple pieces the next day. 

 

New daily breakfast

My Diamond Approach buddy introduced me to what is now my daily breakfast: a mix of hot oatmeal, quinoa and millet coupled with a mix of nuts, seeds and berries. Each week I make a big batch of the hot cereal and store it in a mason jar.

Four things I've noticed:
1. I enjoy the taste
2. It feels freeing to know what I'm eating each day (freedom from the anxiety of choosing)
3. Warm food is comforting in the cooler weather, even in this mild winter (40s and 50s every day)
4. A high protein and healthy fat breakfast fuels the first part of my day

Bavarian Mountain Mud Mask

My sister, Valerie, announced it was time for her to do one of these to remove impurities. So I agreed to join the fun. A slight burning sensation followed. 15 minutes later it was time to rinse. A new man (?)

Opting out with TSA

If strangers are going to look at my naked body, I want to get paid for it. And if I'm going to expose myself to radiation, I expect to get a diagnosis out of it. These are two of several reasons I chose this morning to declare "opt out" while approaching the relatively new TSA full body scanners.

What happened next? I walked through the old machines, received a full body pat down ("back of the hands on the sensitive regions"), and was done. It took all of three minutes. and I felt content by this small experiment.

Then I saw three adults stroll through the old machines without needing to get the pat down for the simple reason they had babies in their hands. Makes sense from a humanity perspective but is utterly nonsensical from a security point of view. If our country is truly committed to eliminating security holes, do we really think a clever and determined terrorist would not find a baby to carry through?

The obvious answer is no. This is why so many experts on security and quality journalists refer to TSA's airport procedures as security theater. It doesn't actually protect us, just puts on a show. Some would go a step further and argue it's a Bush/Cheney test of our willingness to surrender our liberties that Obama has perpetuated.

As Julie knows all too well, every time I experience this farce the different parts of my brain battle and fortunately the part that governs patient thoughtful response wins. Today was the first time I actually tested the system.

The twin benefits of truly feeling emotion

During a two-hour drive to Olympia yesterday, I saw evidence of an essential truth: my capacity to be kind and patient when triggered is directly related to my ability to truly own the emotion. Conversely, the less aware I am that there is a strong feeling arising, the more likely I am to be harsh, critical and even mean. Consider two scenarios:

Scenario A

1. I feel afraid, sad or angry
2. The witness capacity evokes an awareness that I'm having an experience of some kind
3. Curiosity leads me to wonder what this experience is
4. I notice my physical sensations and/or emotions
5. I name them to myself
6. Once I name them, an awareness arises in me that this is an Amiel moment, i.e. stay connected to Amiel
7. I may or may not reveal this experience to the other person (using "I" language and naming the emotion). Either way, my response is calm, dignified, and respectful
8. Things turn out well

Scenario B

1. I feel afraid, sad, or angry
2. There is little or no witness capacity
3. I respond quickly and often angrily
4. The breath shortens, the mind narrow, and the vision contracts
5. Things turn out poorly

Question: who or what controls whether or not the witness capacity arises in such moments?

Where the body holds tension

Two weeks ago I had my first session with a Strozzi-trained somatic coach. The experience is hard to describe. It was a subtle inquiry into my current experience while the coach moved and touched different parts of my body (lifting the arm, pulling the leg, etc.). The insights came after the hour was over when I asked her to tell me what she observed. She confirmed what I already sensed: that I hold tension in my head, face and jaw. She said that my face is unusually smooth (few creases) so it's not easy to immediately tell I hold lots of tension. I agree that it can be smooth, but she's only seen me in relatively relaxed situations. I mentioned that I also hold a lot of tension in the pelvic region. She said she didn't notice this when I walked in but it started to become apparent during the session. 

The big insight was a new interpretation of something I understood. I've known for a long time that my shoulders pull in and understood this could affect my breathing. What I learned in this session is that this positioning of the shoulders also compresses my ability to feel my heart. Never thought of that before!

Body weight over past week

Two pieces of news to report on the body weight:

1. I'm switching from daily measurements to weekly measurements. Rationale: I'm more concerned about the long-term trendline and am realizing my weight fluctuates from day to day. Read: daily measurements weren't adding sufficient value.
2. My body weight decreased from 155.6 to 154.8 pounds in seven days. I am pleased because this 0.8 lb decrease is near my goal of 1.3 pounds per week and happened during a week when I only lifted weights due mostly to my cold and when I did a big cheat day (last Saturday--pancakes, great Greek dinner, and Ben  & Jerry's ice cream for dessert). I did stick to the nutrition program quite diligently and limited my overall calorie intake to the "lose weight" regiment from Happy Body.  

Also, one thought on the target of 165 pounds and 10% bodyfat: do you realize how much easier the next two years would be if I set the target weight at 155 pounds? The amount of muscle I would need to gain would be nearly halved, yet I'd only need to lose a bit more body fat. This is a moot issue for the next 12 months, which is about how long it will take me to be 155 pounds and 10% body fat if all goes as (ambitiously planned). At that point, we can reassess the situation.

Staying connected with the little guy

Today I stayed connected with Jacob as much as I have in a long time

Today Jacob had a smooth day full of positive transitions, multiple trips to the toilet, and a very easy path to sleep at night.

Any connection between these two?

I think so. Sure, correlation is not causation, but my gut tells me that the more Jacob felt me attuning to him, playing with him, listening to him and being present with him (while setting appropriate boundaries), the more he felt comfortable doing what he needed to do. This was particularly true this afternoon/evening when he willingly sat on the toilet three times (in contrast to his resistance yesterday and this morning), enthusiastically went in for the tooth brushing, and went to sleep with zero crying (though I did rub his feet for a long and strenuous fifteen minutes--where's the toddler massage table when you need it?)

Two things we did a lot of today: wrestling  and Jacob sitting on my lap.