Face the wind with equinimity. Strong wind comes, weak wind comes. Recovery comes with the wind. Recovery goes with the wind. Equinimity (balance) supports recovery.
The universe contracts and expands. We breath in and out. All the contractions and expansions are done with less suffering if done with balance or equanimity, rating none better or worse. This balance brings recovery like the wind. All are lessons to be learned in the once-happening participation in being. The funding comes, the funding goes. The weather comes, the weather goes. Life comes, life goes. “Mental illness” symptoms come and go. Mental health recovery comes and goes and and comes again.
Equanimity comes with meditation and mindfulness practice. These practices bring recovery.
The universe itself is of such a nature that it balances, that it has equanimity.
“The rain falls on the good and evil alike.” as Jesus said in the Sermon from The Mount. Rain gives not a whit whether the person on whom it falls is good or bad. Whether it is a “flower” or a “weed”. It just falls. And a few lines later Jesus suggest be like the rain, be like Abba, The Father. The word in Greek Jesus used for mental illnesses was not “demon possessed” but “moon stuck” because of the coming and going as the moon does. That is all moon struck meant, all lunacy means. It comes and goes. Mental health recovery is supported by this realization. Clinging to passing good moods brings on suffering.
Jesus was a non-dualist. These passages show that clearly. Fr. Thomas Keating especially his Daily readings for contemplative life helped me realize that. This book was essential to the Christian view of my recovery. To stop the guilt tripping. The self indulgence of guilt tripping hinders equinimity. ( Here is a link to that book).
It is also a thing to remember. When we are doing well, the rain falls on us. When we are doing poorly, the rain falls on us. The great Christian Meister Eckhart of the 13th century pointed out that the door of love swings on a hinge of indifference. The rain and the hinge are alike in this quality. Eckhart taught a form of silent prayer similar to mindfulness meditation. Link to Meister Eckhart: Selected Writings (Penguin Classics)
If one is overly involved one suffers. if one is not involved at all one suffers. And we like the rain fall on all. We are happy recovery comes. We are sad, recovery comes.
We need not be controlled by the tyranny of mood. Then like the hinge, we swing the door of love open.
Meditation on the breath, connecting with the breath and letting go of thoughts, concepts, images, judgements, justifications brings balance. It is the letting go. The balance in the face of suffering or happiness comes from the non-labeling. It is in the labeling that the pain or suffering resides. So as the universe expands and contracts let us breath in and out. And let go.
Extreme mind body states (symptoms) quite down with letting go.
This kind of balance support mental health recovery. Mental health recovery is possible for all. Do not forsake the course because moods, or symptoms, or “mental illnesses” or mental health recovery come and go. Persevere in equanimity and recovery will be there. Persevere in mindfulness meditation and recovery will come. Breathe and let go!!! Breathing brings recovery. Breathing brings equinimity.See also Healing Objectifying Self
We unwittingly take our “self” to be an object we can manipulate. However, it is not an object.
Taking the self as object is a basic process by which we unwittingly produce stress for ouraelves and thus one of the ways we create our own suffering especially anxiety. Taking ourselves as object is not a skillful means to end suffering. It is based on ignorance of the constantly fleeting notions we have of “self” changing each moment.
Now “I am worse than her because she has a better car.” Now “I am better because I am more fit the he is.” We think we can capture a constantly changing “self entity” we actually construct moment by moment with our comparisons to others and manipulate it to be what we want, our pre-designed notion of ourselves.
This leads to all kinds of fears and anxiety. We are attempting to grasp something that cannot be grasped.
Mental Health Zen Dharma Recovery skillful means will be discussed in a moment. Now let us see a little more about the manipulation process.
For example I am having trouble learning how to post a blog with my computer!!!
Now I could manipulate “myself” to feel better. I could tell my self various things. How smart I am. Or how others can’t do this. Or just “so what”. Or I could figure out how to use this thing called a computer to post this blog.
This manipulation of self is called retroflection in the psychotherapy of Fritz Perls website.
The process consists in “identifying” ourselves by thinking we are this or that image or set of thoughts and clinging to them. Then one manipulates how the body/mind feels to fit the image or set of thoughts.
The process of trying to take ourselves as a object keeps one’s body/mind in a constant state of stress.
One is always straining to be something other than one is at the moment. This strain wears one out.
The process of taking the self as object is also the core of separation and thus is the source of suffering. There is always an image in our head between us and the persons around us. Instead of talking to the pretty woman or handsome man our attention is on an image we think we need to be. Not on the person in front of us.
Mental Health Zen Dharma Recovery Meditation, a skillful means to heal from taking yourself as an object:
What to do? Be one with one’s self . Instead of an object.
How to do that?
Let us do an example, an awareness experiment. Hold your right hand in front of you. Stare at it as if it were an object. How does that feel? Pretty strange for most of us.
Now put your left hand in your right hand and rest them in your lap. Feel the right hand as part of you. This is the feeling of “being one with”.
When you meditate on the breath, let your awareness meld with the breath. If one counts the breath, “one” on the in breath, “two” on the out breath, “three” on the in breath, “four” on the out breath and so on up to 10, one merges with the inner sound of “one” “two” and so on. This comes with practice. The thoughts of the next number fade away the more one practices. One is the sound of the number. Once learned this begins to pervade one’s experience and one joins with what one is experiencing like the right hand merged with the left.
One lets go of thoughts and images as they arise and no longer “identifies” the “self” with images or thoughts. One’s mind settles down, peacefully abides.
Another way of describing the basic skill for letting go of ourselves as an object is simply letting go of thoughts and images. This is done with Zen Mindfulness and Ujjayi breath if one has difficulty letting go of mental stuff.
As a student of Bernie Glassman for a short time I was able to deepen giving up making an object of my self. Infinite Circle is a classic commentary on basic Zen texts. Very difficult to comprehend. Instructions to the Cook and Bearing Witness are basic instruction and easy to understand. Bernie is a clear writer. Very helpful in getting into the Zen life style.
We is no longer an object.
I maintain this page at considerable cost to myself as a promise to God to give away all i know about mental health recovery. I firmly believe recovery should be free. If you want to support this work please buy from Amazon through this page. I get about 3% of the sales. it is small but helps considerably with my costs.
First Attempt TransformingAnxiety: The Gateway to Zen Dharma Recovery
Prologue
Much of what is discussed on this page about anxiety and meditation is part of a training being manualized and piloted at UCLA on an NIMH grant by Ed Knight,PhD. Specific meditation instructions are linked from this page and will be indicated as such.
Kierkegaard said that anxiety was his greatest spiritual teacher. I find for me this is true. Anxiety was a dharma gate to zen dharma recovery.
Anxiety mindfully approached can teach the basic truths of the dharma: impermanence; no self or the lack of substance in our experience; craving, grasping or greed; aversion or pushing pain away. And ignorance or belief that the substantiality of our experience will bring security and happiness. All these are on the path of anxiety.
For more the Zen Skillful Means of meditation to achieve anxiety recovery see: Zen Not Knowing Ujaya Breath Meditation Anxiety Recovery Indeed “psychiatric symptoms” which are most frequently numbed are an enlightened path. There is great controversy in the Buddhist and Yoga communities about whether to allow psychiatrically labeled people in their midst. To deny this is to deny the dharma. Either everything is liberating or not. Either we are all capable of mindfulness or not. Either we are all fully human or not.
We are indeed the “untouchables” in America , “the mentally ill”. No person there in that phrase. Just “the”. As Howie the Harp used to say “I have the same middle name as Winnie the Pooh”. He was a street harmonica player and a great early leader of the mental health recovery movement. Founded one of the first mental health client owned 501c3′s.
The path of zen dharma recovery includes not only anxiety but “hearing voices” and other hallucinations, mania, depression and addictions. The use of meditation for anxiety recovery is a key to all mental health recovery. Anxiety in my experience is part of the experience driving all symptoms. See for example Bipolar Mental Health Recovery Patterns Recovery from all of these conditions is not only possible but probable.( see What Is The Actual Schizophrenia Recovery Rate) Life has been good to me. God has given me many knots to untie. He has made me brave enough to pursue mindfulness against all the opposition and oppression and now to teach zen dharma recovery to others in many venues. By Abwoon’s (Father in Aramaic) grace, this wisdom path has brough mental health recovery to many. The following is a talk I frequently give. I wrote it down for the desperate mother of a young lady labeled with Borderline personality disorder. BPD is mostly a labeling of the angry reactions to abuse or some other form of trauma. The mother had seen all medications fail and make her daughter’s condition much worse. I am the steward of the Zen Peacemaker Circle, The Healing Circle and a senior student of Ken Tetsuji Byalin. I also am a mentor with the Prison Dharma Network of a person in a psychiatric unit of a high security prison.
Ed Daigu Knight,PhD,CPRP is currently manualizing his mindfulness meditation-based peer mental health training at UCLA with a team of psychiatrists, led by Alex Young MD, on an NIMH grant and at Nathan Kline Institute also on an NIMH grant, led by psychologist Mary Jane Alexander,PhD. The UCLA project hopefully will be piloted in the fall of 2011 in the Los Angeles area.
I was overwhelmed with anxiety to the point i could not carry on any meaningful activities at times. With this constant anxiety I found mental health recovery impossible. At least it seemed constant.
Anxiety is perhaps a limiting word. It is hard to describe the various kinds of emotional pain i felt. It was at times rage. At times disorientation and at times feelings for which words have not been invented. But they often would lead to panic or angry verbal outbursts. I was on a third floor ward with large trees out the window. I finally thought if i could pay attention to the underlying terrible anxiety i could begin to free myself. The psychologists and social worker had refused all help for various reasons. I had thought often of suicide and begun to act at times but stopped short but this is another story. I began to reason that if I could pay attention to the intense feelings of which I was terrified I could figure out what they were about and do something.
I knew from testing it out that the anxiety over what i was feeling was almost impossible to pay attention to. It was way too painful.
i needed strength to do this. How to develop this? A Sufi Murshid or teacher had taught me basic concentration exercises as part of my meditation training. Pay attention to something for 5 minutes that you love with eyes open and then close eyes and draw the object into your mind’s eye and produce an image of it. It is ok if the image shifts, changes is only very vaguely there. It is ok if all you can get is a vague sense of the object. He suggested doing this for 5 minutes a day and then work your way up to 15 minutes eyes open and 15 minutes eyes closed. With this beginning insight mental health recovery and dealing with anxiety seemed more possible. It was a dharma gate to the world of mindfulness although i did not yet know that word.
It seemed possible that meditation especially with anxiety instead of being a problem could be a source of mental health recovery.
Well there were trees out the window. I love trees so i had an object to pay attention to. But 5 minutes? No way. I would start with a minute eyes open and an minute eyes closed. If this were too much i would do less but i would begin and persist. Constant daily effort. I also reasoned that the feelings of anxiety had to be in my body not in some abstract place i called mind. They were mental physical so to speak. I would try to locate the anxiety in my body and thus begin to learn how to recovery my mental health. So this was my beginning understanding of mind body a term Dogen uses often. A unity.
I immediately discovered the feelings of anxiety were slippery.
They shifted as i paid attention. I could not pin them down. They seemed like a cloud as the Buddha said.
So i thought perhaps i could paid attention to a broader area like my whole chest or upper body. That gave me some success. It allowed for the constant shifting or the impermance of the feeling I was calling anxiety. Meditation I found was a skill that required practice and honing to apply to feelings of anxiety.
A psychiatrist who was fired shortly after I came, for being too friendly to us, had mentioned i might flood with uncontrollable emotion just talking about the painful events in my life. So i figured I could flood and flip out if i paid attention. Psychologists call this abreaction and fear that we will get psychotic. Thus the fear of losing control of my mind and body was involved. This is a very basic primitive fear. But living my life with so much pain was worse. So how could i deal with flooding? Meditation needs to be I found carefully applied to mental health dharma recovery. (Seeking the Heart of Wisdom by Joseph /Goldstein later helped me with using Insight meditation in mental health dharma recovery. It helped me to further the process of mastering anxiety and symptoms.)
This book helped transform my life
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If I was using concentration to learn about my terrifying feelings of anxiety and panic, i thought i could also use the skill to stop paying attention and pay attention to something else. I was concentrating on the tree eyes open and eyes closed. When i sensed flooding coming on or just too much emotion to handle, i could pay attention to the tree out the window. Or a pattern on the wall or anything. So i began. It took months of work. Slowly learning to concentrate to build my mind muscle. Slowly paying attention to different parts of my anxious body. Beginning to flood. Paying attention to the tree. Slowly i learned the nature of my anxiety and other weird and or painful feelings.
I took steps to deal in my conduct with what came up. This is the ethical dimension of recovery, often overlooked.
Like learning to hold peaceful short conversations about something other than myself and my problems. I figured people would like me better if i could converse about impersonal topics. I learned many other skills. All on my own. The most important thing i learned was the nature of feelings especially anxiety. They are simply impermanent shifting body sensations which we like or don’t like and label pain or pleasure.
They are constantly changing sensations linked with ideas or images mostly from the past or an imagined future. The form or pattern of anxiety producing thoughts is “I think I can’t handle how i will feel if what I think is going to happen, happens.” These thoughts are all imagination which produces anxiety or fear. (Some of these techniques are discussed inZen Recovery Mental Health Video )
They are sets of conditioned responses to what we perceive to be similar situations to one’s we have been anxious in before. I have learned to let go of ideas and images, to pay attention to my breath or a tree or flower and just let go of thoughts and images. I learned to ride through painful sensations which are indeed painful but when letting go of thoughts and ideas the sensations themselves are more tolerable. I learned that the label “pain” or “anxiety” was at times bringing on or intensifying the suffering. Indeed the term “self” is a label. We create it temporarily all through the day with the comparisons we make. “He is in better shape than I” “She has a nicer car”. (Related article Healing Objectifying Self Mediatation Making the self an object is a basic anxiety process. Methods of dealing with anxiety and self as object are discussed in this article. )
I learned that some ideas are sticky. They are hard to let go of. Why? Because i am gaining something from them somehow.
Like fear of losing a job. Part of me wants too. I hate parts of my job. Or my anxiety can gain me sympathy from some people. But it screws up my life to live this way. The gain is not worth the cost. Being mindful of the hidden benefit by itself helped untie the knot of these ideas. Slowly over a long period of time i became comfortable in my body. Now i am mostly ok. I like life and how i feel and if i don’t i can ride it out and learn skills. Finally i learned that when I pay attention to feelings by trying to push them away I give them strength. If I in other words fear fear it gets worse. This is the cyclic nature of feelings first discovered to my knowledge by Abraham Low MD in the 1930’s. ( His basic book Mental Health Through Will Training has an Amazon.com link just below. He called them vicious cycles. Now we call them “strange loops” as in the work of Steven Hayes Acceptance and Committment Therapy. See Steven Hayes Amazon book link below. Or if I cling to what changes, I get burned by constant disappointment.
So meditation became a skill that I honed and was one foundation of my mental health recovery. Dealing with anxiety is a principle way I practice zen dharma mental health recover.
Abraham Low MD, who wrote in the 1930′s, founded the peer run mutual support group Recovery International and was in my opinion the most brilliant and overlooked psychiatrist of the 20th century. He anticipated the entire cognitive behavioral approach. And as a matter of fact did a better job of implementing behavior change methods than cbt. There are free online and phone peer mutual support meetings available at the Recovery International website. RI has excellent research outcomes for ‘serious mental illlnesses’ and is also excellent for dealing with anxiety.
Victor Frankl MD a Nazi concentration camp survivor discussed taking the self as an object as a process in those labeled with schizophrenia.
Victor Frankl wrote Man’s Search for Meaning while in a concentration camp in WW II. It was the way he survived. He wrote it and memorized it as he went putting it on paper only when he was released. Many of my psychiatrically labeled friends as well as my self have found it an important book for recovery.
Steven Hayes, PhD the psychologist who founded contextual therapy and its principle application Acceptance and Committment Therapy is excellent. A.C.T is recognized as an evidence based practice for the treatment of schizophrenia by the Veterans Administration.
Rollo May’s book The Meaning of Anxiety was very important for me when in a hospital. I was taught nothing about anxiety by the hospital staff. Rollo May was very helpful in understand something about anxiety.
Fritz Perls teaches basic self help applications of Gestalt Therapy in this book. Very helpful for anxiety and treating the self as an object.
About A.C.T. for anxiety.
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Take steps to protect your self. Mind Freedom says about Mind Shield “Members of MindFreedom International use mutual support to help protect one another from unwanted coerced psychiatric procedures. Current MindFreedom members may register for the MindFreedom Shield for free.”
Icarus Project members helped my stay out of an emergency room when I had a non-psychiatric emergency. In ER’s labeled people are often mistreated. The Icarus Project
Will Hall, psychotherapist from Portland Oregon(website WillHall.net):
Read some on Kindle. The best buy to me is the $189 because it includes free 3g and is available in most places like your home if you can’t afford a monthly expense. You also get wifi capability and can access it free at places like McDonald’s. This gives you internet access cheaper than a computer.
The $139 model of Kindle gives you access to internet where wifi is free like McDonald’s and is less than a computer.
Kim Hopper PhD. A research study covering 18 countries. Showing 40% of people with schizophrenia work for pay across these countries and 20% with moderate to severe disability work for pay. Another %20 do meaningful household work as measured by scientific standards. This means that a meaningful contribution was made and would on the open market be paid for. So the total doing work is 60% with schizophrenia. Certainly a different picture than the media labeling and stereotyping.
Ralph and Corrigan reach the same conclusion that the actual recovery rate is 90% using a different method which gives further verification.
On the unnecessary and costly tragedy of “hospitalization”.
Anxiety is a feeling that is hard to stand. Knowing something about it helps deal with it, helps us recover. Anxiety recovery is very possible. But we don’t think so.
Thinking anxiety recovery impossible we don’t try and it then is impossible to recover.
I was driven by anxiety itself to seek a solution, to seek anxiety
recovery since my life was controled by it. Medications were only somewhat effective and have side effects I did not want. Bensodiazapines are addictive and only are effective for a short time. The anti depressants cause weight gain. And they can cause sexual side effects making it difficult to have a romantic relationship … and so on.
Seraquel and other drugs like can kill you from metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, and high colesterol.
. And all these drugs can interfer with the ability to pay attention and cause fatigue. They for anxiety supression and certainly were not anxiety recovery.
So i sought a more healthy way. Being a trained research scientist (a sociologist), I knew how to find out what i needed to know to begin anxiety recovery. And being at the time a Sufi initiate (and since then an Vipassana and Zen meditation student) I also knew a few skillful means
to support me in finding anxiety recovery. For the account of how I learned anxiety recovery and a fuller discussion of it see First Attempt Transforming Anxiety, Zen Dharma Recovery Gateway A little of what I discovered to live my life in recovery from anxiety follows.
Anxiety comes and goes but seems constant. We give it more constancy than it has by focusing on it trying to push it away. Negative attention called in Zen aversion is attention nevertheless. Aversion stops anxiety recovery. And aversion is like pushing on a cloud of steam. It doesn’t work.
We fear that anxiety will grow worse. This prevents anxiety recovery. This fear of fear is a self fulfilling prophecy and hence anxiety does grow worse. Fear of fear creates more fear of course, spirals out of control. At this point anxiety recovery just does not seem likely to us. And therefore is not.
It builds to panic. Or lingers as general anxiety about seemingly everything (generalized anxiety disorder). It may be very specific, about open spaces (agora-open space, phobia-fear), about people (social anxiety), or a phobia (fear) about anything that for us has been associated with trauma.
It may last after the fear of trauma even though the traumatic event is over
(post traumatic stress disorder). We may feel better if we develop rituals to calm ourselves from fear creating ideas we can’t get our mind off of(obsessive).
The rituals are often addictive and the calm lasts only a short time. The rituals may interfer with our lives, become compulsive (obsessive compulsive). Anxiety recovery is possible from all forms of anxiety.
The ideas that accompany my anxiety usually seem to make it impossible to deal
with it. “It will get worse.” “I can’t stand it.” (perhaps the most dangerous
thought for me. “It will last forever.” “I must end it.” “I can’t… (fill in
what ever).”
For me the general structure of anxious thoughts is “If that (I think) happens, ( I think) I will not be able to stand it, and (i think) I will not be able to deal with it and it will ( i think) cause ( what ever catastophy we cling to).” Letting go of these thoughts as they arise supports anxiety recovery.
The body sensations that we label anxiety are just that, body sensations. In a
famous experiment, the Two Factor Theory of Emotion, body sensations were only felt as emotion as a result of our mental labelling of them.
To quote Wikipedia, “The two-factor theory of emotion, or Schachter-Singer theory,is a theory of emotion suggesting that human emotion has two components (factors): physiological arousal and cognition (a conscious understanding of that arousal). According to the theory,”cognitions are used to interpret the meaning of physiological reactions to outside events.”
So body sensations plus images and thoughts are producing anxiety. And can cause it to spiral out of control. Not exactly anxiety recovery.
Letting the images and thoughts move by like clouds in the sky is what anxiety recovery is about. How to do that? In a moment we shall see that.
There is a physiological limit my psychiatrist informed me to adrenaline responses like anxiety. Adrenaline is released to receptors. Once the adrenaline
receptors are full they can receive no more.Knowing this assists anxiety recovery. Once we are at the peak of anxous feelings, there is no physiological increase. But we think there is. So we continue to think we can’t stand this. It will only get worse. and so on.
How do we step out of this spiral? By letting go of mental boxes, ideas, images, concepts. By letting of the “cognition ( a conscious understanding of that arousal)”, the set of ideas and images. AND by learning to ride through the sensations. This is the essence of anxiety recovery. The riding though will be discussed in detail in another post in the near future. Once however the we learn to let go of the ideas the riding through is not that difficult. In Zen dharma teachings, the practice of letting go of ideas, images, concepts, mental boxes is zazen or the art of thinking non-thinking. Roshi Bernie Glassman (Bernie’s Homepage) calls this not-knowing. Not knowing is the heart of anxiety recovery.
Zen Not-Knowing.
Not knowing is letting go. It must be practiced. In beginning Zen, one pays attention to sensations of the breath. At the tip of the nose, in the throat, in the lower abdomen. Where ever one choses. The practice is in the Theravada lineage called Vipassana or Mindfulness Meditation. For mindfulness meditation see: Joseph Goldstein. Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation (Shambhala Classics) Jon Kabot-Zinn. Mindfulness for Beginners
These books assist with learning letting go for anxiety recovery.
It is simple. Pay attention on the sensations of breathing. And count the in and out breaths. One in, two out, three in, four out… Do this up to ten. Then begin at one again. I have many times found myself at 40 or 50. Or off thinking of something else entirely. Ok. Don’t punish yourself. This is a work out. It is mind exercise. The more you exercise the stronger your attention gets. Let go when you notice a thought or image and return to the breath. Again and again and again. The physiological and health benefits are many. AND THEY DO NOT DEPEND ON THOUGHT STOPPING. No one completely stops thinking forever. But we can let go of each thought or group of thoughts as we notice we are thinking them.
This is the practice of not-knowing. Or of “thinking non-thinking.” It is very powerful. It brings anxiety recovery.
I will describe the bare bones of ujaya breath here and why it is effective for anxiety recovery. We will give a fuller account in another post. The technique is similar to Kazuki Sekida’s bamboo breathing. See his book: Zen Training: Methods and Philosophy (Shambhala Classics)
There is recent research on this form of breath. Here is a link to a report on the research. I have been doing and teaching this for years. Panic Treatment Targets Breathing Symptoms
It is simple and should be for free!!! So here it is. NOTICE if you read the article it didn’t say a word of how to. You don’t have to pay a fortune to someone to teach you this. Anxiety recovery should be free.
Just very slightly close your throat muscles and breath without effort otherwise. A simple way to do this is to silently say “hum” or “ha” to yourself as you breath in an otherwise unrestricted way. In yoga full ujjayi breath is much more controled. Silently say “hum” or “ha” instead of counting. Or count silently with the throat slightly constricted or slightly closed. See a dharma talk on letting go of thought boxesf that is useful for anxiety recovery. Zen Dharma Recovery Mental Health Video And hear some more methods of silent body oriented meditation. Mental Health Zen Dharma Recovery Guided Meditations Audio. Staying in contact with the body helps anxiety recovery.
This closing of the throat muscles cuts way down on thinking. Why? Well thinking is subvocalization. We very very slightly move our throat muscles when we think. And this type of breathing interfers with subvocalization. Hum a melody and see how much you think. Ujjayi breathing does the same thing. Or counting the breaths with a slight pressure on the throat muscles. And as I learned from a mountain climber, a slightly closed throat balances the blood oxygen and carbon dioxide. This stops the development of hyperventalization. This accomplishes anxiety recovery.
An excellent video by Jon Kabot-Zinn on Peaceful Abiding or Mindfulness Meditation is found at Mindfulness Meditation. As a regular practice this aides in anxiety recovery. Ujjayi breath needs to be practices but a regular mindfulness practice with a completely natural breath in addition is very useful for anxiety recovery.
Daigu uses Zen Dharma in his own Mental Health Recovery. He was labeled with schizophrenia in 1969 and has since also dealt with mania, depression, several anxiety disorders and addictions.
Zen Dharma is usually thought of as applying only to addictions recovery. But Zen Dharma Mental Health Recovery is possible.
Ed’s life shows Zen Dharma applies to mental health recovery as well. This is of importance as Zen is seldom thought of in these terms. As a matter of fact there is prejudice against its use in mental health recovery. Though modern research does not support this stereotype, early anecdotes in the late 70s and early 80s which were called case studies brought on this stereotype. These were largely reports of someone going on a 10 day intensive retreat. No report if on or off medications or of the preparation for such an intensive.
Dr. Knight’s Sensei Ken Tetsuji Byalin is the founder of Staten Island Zen Community: Multi-Faith Zen.
Ed has studied Zen with Tetsuji for several years and applies it in his understanding of Zen Dharma to Mental Health Recovery.
Ed first began studying Zen Dharma to apply it to Mental HealthRecovery with Roshi Robert Joshen Althouse in 2002. He continued his studies of Zen Dharma to apply to Mental Health Recovery with Roshi Bernie Glassman. He studied with Roshi Bernie for about a year.
Prior to this Dr Knight had studied Insight or Theravadin Meditation for 7 years with Tempel Smith and Peter Doobinin.
He began using Dharma for Mental Health Recovery on his own by an intensive study of a book by Joseph Goldstein.
Zen Dharma Mental Health Recovery is the use of the art of thinking non-thinking.
Zen Dharma Mental Health Recovery is applying non-thinking to symptoms (preferred term extreme mind body states).
Zen Dharma Mental Health Recovery is primarily letting go of attachments to concepts, labels.
Zen Dharma Mental Health Recovery is balance and tolerance of very uncomfortable sensations.
Ed taught Zen Dharma Mental Health Recovery as part of his training at ValueOptions where he was Vice President of Recovery, Rehabilitition and Mutual Support until he retired on May 13, 2011. Daigu also was an Adjunct Professor of Rehabilitation Counselling at Boston University until 2008 when the department closed.
Non-thinking discussed on the video can be used with bipolar “diagnoses” if one awakens to the thought patterns driving different kinds of mania. see Bipolar Mental Health Recovery Patterns
Non-thinking or as Roshi Bernie Glassman says not-knowing was the way Ed recovered from schizophrenia. Here is a beginning discussion of non-thinking and schizophrenia. Zen Dharma Schizophrenia Mental Health Recovery, Hearing Voices Coping A student of Roshi Bernie’s Dharma Holder Jim Daiken Bastien said to Ed when he was having a difficult time ” Schizophrenia is the Enlightened Way.” Daiken also relieved much of Ed’s suffering by his pith saying “Mind states do not exist.” Ed struggled for about a year to penetrate this pith saying and let go. Though Ed had been practicing for a number of years with letting go of voices, Jim’s wisdom released him from exploring unnecessarily the origin of “voices” and painful states allowing him to just move on.
Daigu’s approach to mental health system transformation is based on Bernie’s description of the One Body. Is That Me Bleeding? Full recognition of this led to Ed’s leaving managed care and devoting his life to research, consulting, lecturing and training.
Ed Daigu Knight,PhD,CPRP will be posting how he uses the 12 steps in his schizophrenia recovery. Keep an eye out for these posts. He has now taught this to many other people with mental labels and disabilities. He is manualizing his training at UCLA and it should be available in the fall for free. Ed is also working on a mindful mental health recovery project at Nathan Kline Institute. He will have an accompanying autobiographical book on serious life style changes needed for serious Zen Dharma Mental Health Recovery efforts.
Here is a link 6 guided silent body oriented meditations on audio for zen dharma mental health recovery. Guided Meditations
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Jon Kabot-Zinn. 
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