Clean: The Revolutionary Program to Restore the Body's Natural Ability to Heal Itself (24 page)

When your attention is flowing into your hand, it stays in the present. Your hand is right here in the now. It’s not the thought of a hand, past or future. This is the same for any part of your body; it exists in the present. Keeping your attention on your hand or any body part is a way of anchoring yourself in the present. Those cables you are using are now actively transporting electrons. Since you reclaimed these electrons back from the thinking mind, your thoughts naturally diminish in number and intensity and you start silencing your mind. Meanwhile there is friction in the new cables that are being used. Heat is generated; the cables warm up; the frequency of vibration increases. Your electrons are, ultimately, impulses of light; by sending them into your body, you are literally enlightening yourself.

Reclaiming the constant flow of attention that is flowing into thoughts and sending it through other pathways is the art and practice of becoming present. It is a powerful tool for quantum detoxification, one that starts with the individual but ultimately, one person at a time, redresses the collective insanity of toxic emotions, toxic relationships, and toxic lifestyles that know no borders. Living this way requires you to retrain new mental pathways. It requires conscious effort and is very hard at the beginning. But with time and constant practice it becomes easier and easier, until a new habit is formed, that of always being present. This practice is one form of meditation.

Here are some practical tools for thinking about quantum toxicity and practices to do during your Clean program.

Five-Minute Meditation. There are many schools of meditation worldwide that offer hundreds of different meditation techniques. The following technique is one that has helped me enormously, and I recommend it to my patients. You only need five minutes. It sounds like very little, but it takes great will and effort to sit quietly for even that long. The best time to do it is as soon as you wake up in the morning, before the thinking locomotive of your brain starts up at full speed. But doing it at any time of the day or evening is better than not doing it at all.

This meditation exercise is very powerful when done consistently. After doing five minutes every day, you may start noticing a shift in your awareness. Maybe you have a brief pause before your old automatic responses kick in, including reactions that tend to get you in trouble or cause more stress around you. It’s an opportunity to not contribute to more toxic thinking and relating. You become more present, and people around you may start noticing it as well. Time seems to be slower; you may find you can do more in the same amount of time than before.

FIVE-MINUTE MEDITATION

Sit up in a chair with your back straight. Place your feet under your knees. Rest the palms of your hands on your thighs and relax your arms. Look straight ahead but try not to focus anywhere in particular. Instead, notice everything in the room at once. Take a deep breath and start feeling your feet. Feel them touching the floor or the inside of your shoes. Feel the temperature, the humidity; feel the texture of your socks. Feel your feet intensely from inside. Do not “think” about them, just feel them, sense them.

After a few breaths, move your attention to your calves and legs. Feel and sense these in the same way for several breaths. Then move your attention from body part to body part, first to your thighs, then your bottom against the chair, then to your abdomen and lower back, your chest and upper back, your shoulders, your arms, your hands, your neck, face, and lastly your head. Then let your awareness cover your whole body at the same time. The idea is to “scan” your body with your attention, stopping for a few breaths on each part. This practice will strengthen your ability to intentionally direct your attention and hold it in place.

You may notice that the moment you sit down, you start remembering things and feel the urge to act on them. This is part of the process. When those thoughts come and try to steal your attention away from your body, simply say silently to yourself, “Thank you for sharing” and direct your attention back to your body. If you feel discomfort or frustration and want to stop, just keep sitting calmly. Know that the discomfort you feel is not caused by the exercise itself. It’s what happens when you become aware of your baseline state, that underlying anxiety of which you are typically not aware when the outside world is at full volume and your attention is far from your body. Becoming aware of this underlying state is the first step toward dissolving it, and claiming back the energy it consumes.

When you find yourself consumed in thinking, if for a second you can separate your attention from your thoughts, ask yourself, “Who is deciding that these thoughts appear? If I had a choice, would I be thinking them?” If your answer is no, and you understand that these thoughts just “popped” into your mind, grabbing and consuming your attention to the point of taking you away from where you are and whom you are with, say to your thoughts, “Thank you for sharing!” and immediately direct your attention to go somewhere in the present. For example, you can put your attention on your feet this time. Again, this does not mean “think” about your feet, but “feel” them. This small “shock” of awareness erodes the habitual pathways of attention that lead away from the present and into distracted thoughts. Do it randomly and as often as you can.

This technique can also be used in the middle of any stressful situation in which you are not alone, like a business meeting or a job interview. Nervousness comes from the unconscious thinking process of interpreting, judging, measuring, and expecting. This process takes attention. By directing your attention into your body or breath, you reclaim this unwanted use of attention and eliminate the effects it causes. It may be hard to remember to do this in difficult situations. Start with easy ones. Then try to do it in harder and harder ones. My personal experience is that if I have the presence of mind for a split second to remember and start doing it, immediately the energy of the situation shifts, usually for the better. When you become more present, the others in the room feel it as well. They may not be aware of exactly why, but they feel a sense of relief. More trust and more respect is the consequence. And the business meeting has a better chance of going well.

If you can’t instantly switch off your mind and feel the bliss that the yogis and Zen monks talk about, do not conclude that meditation is not for you. As my own teachers told me, this may not come for years, or even lifetimes of practice. But doing this exercise for five minutes every morning, for twenty-one days, will give you a taste of the transformation that is possible if you follow a consistent meditation practice. What this looks and feels like is different for everyone; it’s as hard to explain as the taste of a strawberry. You simply have to taste it yourself.

Meditation in Action. Many studies have shown that regular meditation practices greatly improve physical health. There are quantifiable reasons for this; there is a reduction in stress-related body chemistry and happier hormones get released, the body gets a chance to deeply rest and heal. But you can also think of it this way. You are reclaiming some attention or energy that is getting wasted or lost—in this case, thoughts that are streaming out of your mind with no real purpose or direction— and redirecting it to your body, where attention is often needed most. The sages say, “What we put our attention on, grows.” Let that object be your vitality and health.

THE ART OF SELF-MASTERY

Along my journey I have met some remarkable people. One in particular was key in helping me “order my library.” On my return from India, I was somewhat confused. I had dived into the practice of meditation and flirted with hatha yoga. I had read the teachings of many spiritual teachers and could almost see the common thread that tied them all together. But as soon as I tried to talk about it, I clearly realized I didn’t quite “get” it.

I met Hugo Cory by chance one day at Café Café, a trendy coffee shop in Soho’s Greene Street. Sitting with him and discussing these ideas for half an hour was one of the most enlightening experiences of my life. I discovered that he meets with clients in an office on Madison Avenue and 67th Street and I began to work with him. Hugo describes his work as developing integrity and character through the learning and practicing of Self-Mastery. In this work, the simplest advice, which sounds almost superficial during casual conversation, is a powerful tool for transformation. “Stop complaining,” he says, and then remains silent looking right into your eyes. As if downloading a program over a high-speed Internet connection, I saw with a jolt how any complaint is really the expression of a negative emotion or state. It gives the complainer a sense of immediate relief, even pleasure. This is perhaps the reason why it is such a common practice worldwide.

I realized that 90 percent of the time, people complain about everything and everyone. The weather, the government, the economy, their jobs, the basketball game, their spouse, the cost of gas. Complaints are not always obvious. There are masters of disguise who make them sound like a joke, or make them so intellectually complex that they fool almost everyone. Except Hugo. His radar for the subtle energy of complaining has become so refined that it surprises people who truly believe they never complain (when he points it out to them without judgment). He explains that negative emotions create a certain inner turmoil that generates a type of pressure. Complaining is like an exhaust pipe in a car, it lets out the pressure, relieving the complainer in the short term. But this negative energy pollutes your environment and is doubly toxic to the people who are listening. The almost victim-like quality that this energy carries generates a curious phenomenon. Most complainers expect you to join them in their complaint. Even if it is with a nod of your head, or a lowering of your eyelids. Most people are so blind to this toxicity that they are eager to join the complainer, sometimes going as far as to engage in criticism of someone they barely know. The apparent camaraderie that is generated by this interaction gives the one who joins the complainer a sense of immediate pleasure as well.

Hugo pointed out, and I confirmed by my own observation, that almost without exception, complainers and those who join them later on, when alone, feel depleted, somewhat depressed. Most never put these two dots together and have no way of ever breaking this cycle of quantum toxicity, both personal and environmental. Over the years, I have witnessed several people completely transform their lives and end eternal cycles of drama while working with Hugo on this one aim alone, to stop and master all complaints and expression of negative emotions. Along the way, some of them saw the resolution of apparently completely unrelated health issues that were resistant to conventional and alternative treatment approaches. Take this idea and run with it. First observe and see if you notice yourself complaining. Then attempt to stop complaining about anything. Learn about Hugo’s work by visiting his Web site at www.hugocory.com.

Dealing with Hunger

Dealing with hunger is a part of Quantum Detoxification. An obvious issue that comes up when food intake is reduced is, of course, hunger. The anxiety people feel concerning hunger can scare them away from even starting a detoxification program. The real battle is usually with the mind and emotions. The body can go for days without food if needed; it adjusts itself quite easily to changes in intake. It benefits so hugely from the break in digestion that if the body were completely in charge of things, there wouldn’t be a problem. But the mind can be very resistant, until, several days into Clean, it learns that you can function well and feel good on two liquid meals or juices and one solid meal a day.

When hunger hits you during the Clean program, it’s not an obstacle. It’s actually an excellent opportunity. Redefining what hunger means to you is one of the most important and life-changing aspects of Clean. Examining, questioning, and redefining that thing we call hunger will free you from the traps you might be in around food. Maybe you eat too much of it and are overweight, like the majority of the population today. Maybe you eat the wrong kinds of it, and your moods and physical functioning suffer, but you lack the discipline to change your diet. Or you eat without awareness, because food fills some other roles in your life beyond nourishment. Almost everyone in some way uses food to provide more than just “building blocks” for the body and brain. This is a chance to contemplate what purpose food really serves in your life.

As hunger creeps up during the day or evening, ask yourself, what does being hungry actually mean? Do you really know? Have you ever truly been hungry, or have you ever actually been “starving”—the word we unconsciously use when we’re telling our friends that we really feel like eating right this minute? Probably the truth is that you have not.

That body sensation that you recognize as “being hungry” and that makes you eat whenever you feel it coming on may have nothing to do with your body’s actual need for calories. Most likely, if you just stay with it and watch it, it will disappear within minutes. How many times has the following scenario happened to you? You’re driving and you suddenly feel hungry. You’re starving, in fact, and you are certain that you need to eat immediately. But there’s nowhere to stop on the highway. So you keep driving. Twenty minutes later, when you finally approach a rest stop, you realize you’ve forgotten about that hunger. The intensity of the thought had faded and your body was quite able to continue functioning. Knowing that this happens naturally can help you during your program. When the sensation of hunger rises up in you, if it is mild or moderate, drink a glass of water slowly. This can often dispel the urgent need for food until your thoughts change. If the sensation is so strong as to unsettle you, try this exercise.

Take a moment before reacting to the hunger to ask yourself, what is it that I’m feeling right now? This thing I’m calling hunger, where is it? Is it in my stomach, my guts, my chest, my heart—where is that body sensation? Then ask, what is the sensation? Everyone has a different description of this experience that they name “hungry.” Stay with it, watch it, and try to distinguish its qualities. Is it hot or cold, does it feel like pain or pressure, is it fixed or moving, is it in waves or is it constant? By asking yourself those questions, you are directing your attention to this body