STRESS MANAGEMENT

Breathing out is the basis of a useful technique for dealing with stress more generally. The technique I want to describe now is based on a "misogi" exercise used by Zen meditators. "Misogi", as I've said, means "ritual purification".

Sit in a chair with your spine straight. Or sit in "seiza" (the Japanese kneeling position, where the feet are tucked under the buttocks, the back is straight and the hands rest naturally on the thighs or in the lap). Let your shoulders relax. Close your eyes. Breathe out gently through your mouth for a number of counts, perhaps six or eight. Your head will naturally want to fall forward a little. Let it.

Then pause.

Then let your breath flow in through your nostrils. Aim the breath at the back of your head. Straighten your head up as you breathe in. Use about the same number of counts as you did breathing out.

Let your breath sink down your spine into your "hara" (your body's mind-centre and its centre of gravity). Let it rest there for a few counts before breathing out again. Repeat the whole sequence. Keep breathing around this mental wheel for a few minutes, then continue whatever it was you were doing.

There is a second breathing exercise that can be used for stress management. It is called "gassho". The word "gas-sho" is made up of two Japanese characters, one of which means "to fit", the other of which means "palms". This exercise is often done before and after aikido practice to steady the mind and to concentrate "ki", or energy-awareness. It is used to help energise the present and to let go of the past.

Shut your eyes and watch the centre point between your brows. (Alternately, you can keep your eyes slightly open and look towards a point two or three metres on the floor in front of you). Next, bring your hands gently together, palms facing and level with your face, in the attitude of prayer.

Breathe in and out naturally, without force, as if you were breathing up and down your spine. Breathe to and from the deepest part of your abdomen. Quietly and mildly, The rhythm should not be too fast or too slow. The in-breath should be about 7-10 seconds long. The out- breath should be a little longer and should leave most of the air still inside. Let your body hang off your shoulders like a coat on a coat-hanger.

The purpose is not a physical one. You're not cycling air mechanically through your lungs. The purpose is to purify the mind and the spirit. It's to feel the universal life force that is called in aikido "ki".

Another thing you can do for stress is to use mental images that allow a feeling of expanded awareness. You can send your awareness outwards, for example, in the form of an expanding

sphere of light with yourself at the centre. Or you can extend your physical strength in a powerful stream in any direction you like. When you stop extending your physical strength your mind will relax too. Your conscious mind will let go as a reflex response. This is the same effect, by the way, as that achieved by massage techniques that dispel deep muscle tension to relieve deep mental tension.

You can even use mental reasoning by turning the brain back on itself. You can remind yourself, for example, in the most intellectual and rational way, that you can't ever know what's in your own best interests. This intellectual insight, rigourously applied, will quickly make clear that no matter how hard you plan, no matter how much you try to fore-guess the future, you simply can't do it.

Let's say you're faced with a problem, a dilemma, or a conflict. How will you cope? You think of three different options. Let's call them Life A, Life B, or Life C. Which will you choose? You think the options through and you decide on Life C. But by choosing this option you've made sure that Life A and Life B never happen. They will only ever exist in your imagination. You won't ever know what they actually were. You can't live all three lives and then go back to the original choice-point and say: "I think I'll have Life B now. That's the one I liked best. That dealt with the problem best".

The fact that you can't ever know what's in your own best interests takes some of the pressure off you to "get it right". The course of action you didn't choose (but maybe thought later you should have) might have had you falling under a train or contracting a deadly disease. You can't know. You can't check the alternatives later to see which of them was right. You can't ever know which of them was wrong, including (and this is the key point) the one you did choose.

This doesn't mean you should act at random. Nor does it mean you ought to throw dice whenever you have to make a decision. Nor does it mean playing an endless Pollyanna glad-game (making the best of the conditions you live under just because you seem to be stuck with them). Nor does it mean you should become a fatalist, deciding you can't do anything because you can't know what best to do.

It simply means seeing how complex life is and how you are not always to blame for something that's gone wrong. This in turn can give you options you never thought of, options that thinking alone could never have given you. It can give you a much deeper insight into the nature of right and wrong so that when you do act, you do so naturally and effectively.

The simplest thing you can do to manage stress, however, is not to think of breathing out, not to think of letting go of the desire to get it right, but to trust. That is, to give over to intuition the choice to be made about how to respond, and to feel for some more universal flow and simply to go with that.

Again, this doesn't mean being passive or fatalistic or doing bad things because you feel like doing them. If you go with the deepest flow then you will act, but you will act with a clearer and more caring sense of purpose - caring of both yourself and of others. You will act more freely, with greater energy and efficiency, and you will act more compassionately. You will do more with less. And what you do will be good.

To quote my colleague once again: "My training has given me the feeling that life would best be lived without fear, embracing life and death as one, without a sense of conflict and where all kinds of relationships are felt as a greater whole within universal change and movement. Living like this one's mind (spirit) expands and constantly changes without attachment to the past or future. Everything becomes love".