Is Meditation for You? Here Are Our Personal Experiences

Mara here. I’m not very good at meditating. I’m not sure when my parents started meditating, maybe when I was in junior high? But I remember suddenly there were what seemed like long periods of time when they would shut themselves in their bedroom and we would have to be quiet. They would meditate in the mornings and in the evenings, and the household fell into a routine of knowing that if my parents’ bedroom door was shut, it meant they were meditating and so questions, favors—all the stuff kids bug their parents about would have to wait.

Growing up in a small town in Northern California, there weren’t many people who meditated regularly. In fact, I didn’t know anyone else whose parents did it. It seemed kind of exotic and strange.

I remember asking them what meditation was and thinking it sounded crazy. Why would anyone want to sit and be still and quiet? How could that possibly be enjoyable? Being a kid, it sounded like torture. But as I got a little older, I began to understand the concept of being still and removing the judgment about our thoughts. 

And eventually I tried meditating. For me, it was the opposite of calming. It was pretty much exactly as I imagined it was when I thought about it as a kid. It felt awkward. It was too quiet. I was too aware of everything. My hands itched. My breathing sounded weird. Maybe it’s from years of dancing, but I had too much awareness of my body. I couldn’t stop thinking about where my hands were and if my back was straight. I stopped after about 5 minutes and didn’t try it again for a couple of years.

Meanwhile, my parents got very serious about their meditation practice. In addition to meditating twice a day for about 50 minutes each time, they started going on silent meditation retreats...spending days, even weeks, meditating. I simply could not wrap my adolescent brain around this concept. I wanted to think about things. I wanted to get answers. I wanted action, not stillness. 

But since then, meditation has become much more common—even trendy. It’s no longer something tied to Buddhism. There are now apps that help guide your meditation and millions of people are integrating it into their lives. Even my husband meditates. And every so often I try it again. But I have yet to enjoy it. It still feels uncomfortable. I have not discovered how to meditate without spending almost the entire time listening for the sound of my alarm to let me know it’s over.

Despite this, I could tell that I was yearning for something that would allow me to create some stillness in my life. Maybe not complete stillness, but enough to slow down my anxious mind that races uncontrollably most days.

What I have discovered is that I can do other things that soothe me the way I imagine meditating soothes other people. If I feel particularly anxious or worried, I’ve started doing things very slowly. Normally I like to get things done quickly. I will rush around multi-tasking, being as efficient as possible. 

But one day several years ago, I realized I didn’t have to do things quickly. I could do them slowly and take time to experience what I was doing. So now sometimes I choose to do things with no regard for how long it takes me. I take a task like doing the dishes and turn it into an experience to try and clear my mind of extraneous worry. I take time to focus on the feel of the water and the sight of the glossy surface of the soap suds. When I’m doing a task with purpose, I don’t try to rush through it to get to the next chore, I take time to really pay attention to every detail because I find that, when I do, I can’t think about anything else because I'm focused on things like the shape of the food that's stuck on the plate or the sound of the water hitting the pan. 

If I’m nervous about something—for example, a meeting or an event I’m going to—I take the 15 minutes before I leave and do something that I have to completely focus on. I'll write words on paper over and over, focusing completely on how I’m forming the words. Or if I pick a word that is meaningful, I will simply just repeat that word to myself as I write it. I will go for a walk and keep my entire focus on what I’m seeing: trees, sky, pebbles, dog. And I find that this does calm me. This stops the swirling thoughts in my head. It removes the emotional cloud I feel trapped in because I purposely choose to focus all my attention on something that has no emotion attached to it.

And I like to think of this as my own form of meditating. 

I’m sure some people will scoff and say it’s not meditating, but I guess it doesn’t matter what anyone wants to call it. Particularly because it’s a very personal thing that will be different for everyone. For me, I am looking for ways to remove some of the chaos in my mind that I create for myself. And that’s what it took all these years for me to really understand. Meditating isn’t the process itself. It’s not the sitting in a certain position. It’s not about what incense is burned or what chime is played. I’m sure that ritual and routine is very helpful for people. But mediating is not about what is done, it’s about what the result is. It’s learning how to free our minds from the burden of thinking. And there isn’t just one way to accomplish that.

And now, a few questions for my mom...

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Note from Toni: I could talk for an hour about meditation—my ups and downs with it, all the different techniques, etc. I'll try to keep my answers short though!

When did you start meditating?

I started with Buddhist meditation in 1991, but many years before that I learned a technique called Transcendental Meditation (although it wasn't transcendent for me...just relaxing, maybe because it was only for 20 minutes!). I did that for a few years but stopped because I had a toddler and always felt too busy and distracted.

There are dozens of meditation techniques, even within Buddhism, partly because there are so many different schools of Buddhism. For example, Tibetan Buddhist meditation often involves visualization and mantras. Zen meditation can be very simple: just sitting (called shikantaza) and seeing what happens, or it can be quite challenging: sitting and repeating a koan over and over, such as "Who Am I? In my own tradition (Theravada) there are also several different techniques.

And Mara, what you describe as slowing down and giving all your attention to whatever you're doing at the moment is, in my view, as valuable a practice as formal meditation. I write about this type of mindfulness practice in all of my books and I wrote about it in a shorter piece that's turned out to be a very popular at Psychology Today: "Six Benefits of Practicing Mindfulness Outside of Meditation."

And I love your 15 minute practice for calming yourself before doing something you're nervous about. Brilliant! I'm going to call it "meditation outside of meditation."

How long did it take for meditation to feel comfortable for you?

It's been over 25 years since I've practiced Buddhist meditation, and it's still not always comfortable. People assume that meditation makes you peaceful. Well, not always. The reason is obvious if you think about it: You may have arranged to be in the most quiet environment possible for meditating, but you know what's not usually quiet? Your mind!

When I used to go on silent retreats, people would ask me afterward, "Are you all calm and peaceful now?" Sometimes I was, but other times the retreat had been tumultuous for me. One time I went on a silent 10-day retreat right after I'd had an interaction with my boss (the dean at the law school) that left me concerned that he thought I wasn't carrying my fair share of teaching responsibilities. I spent the entire retreat fretting and worrying about it. I was anything but calm. As soon as I got home, I called the dean. It turned out he'd meant the very opposite—he was concerned I was carrying too heavy a load. At least, that retreat experience taught me how my mind can make me miserable for no good reason, and that inspired me to continue working on "taming it" (an expression one of my teachers used to use).

What I am comfortable with is technique. In other words, I know what I'm doing when I sit to meditate (although these days, I do it lying down). I actually have three different Buddhist meditation techniques I use, depending on which one I feel like doing or which one I think would be the best for me at the moment. One of the techniques is called "choiceness awareness," which I describe in my book How to Wake Up. And I describe some other techniques ("mindfulness of breathing," "the body scan") in my latest book How to Live Well with Chronic Pain and Illness. I also practice a meditation technique called jhana, which is a concentration and insight practice that's best learned on a retreat with a teacher who is knowledgeable about it.

What advice would you give to someone interested in trying meditation for the first time?

Well, even though I've said there are dozens of different meditation techniques—Buddhist and otherwise—my advice is to find one that suits you best and stick with it for several years. There's a tendency for people to flit from one meditation technique to another, always thinking that the next one will bring peace and contentment. But none of them contain that magic pill. At first, it's important to settle on one technique and let it deepen. That's when you begin to see the benefits.


How has meditation helped you?

Meditation has benefitted me in lots of ways. Mainly, it tunes me into what's going on in my body and in my mind. With my body, meditating might let me know that I need to slow down—that I'm not taking proper care of myself. 

With my mind, meditation provides an environment for deepening my understanding of how the mind works so I can respond more skillfully when I'm not meditating. For me, this is the main reason I value meditation. That said, it took several years for this to bear fruit. What I mean by bearing fruit is that I'm now more able to take what I learn inside of meditation to my life outside of meditation. 

And what have I learned? Well, for one thing, I've learned that my mind is almost always out of control. I don't control what thoughts pop into it. I don't control what emotions arise. Meditation has shown me that it's possible to watch the mind "do its thing" and not identify with thoughts or emotions because I see their impermanence—how they arise and they pass, arise and pass. 

This insight enables me to hold thoughts and emotions more lightly inside or outside of meditation, and this brings with it a measure of peace and calm. This is the peace and calm of equanimity that I write about so much—developing a mind that responds to life's ups and downs with an ease-filled balance. (Most of those "downs" center around  either not getting what we want or getting what we don't want—what I call "want/don't want mind.")

I have one more thing I want to add. Many of you know of the Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh. In the January 2012 issue of Shambhala Sun, he was asked what he would say to someone who finds meditation painful and difficult. His answer: "Don't do it anymore." I admit that I was shocked when I read this. But he went on to say: "In life, there's a lot of suffering. Why do you have to suffer more practicing Buddhism? You practice Buddhism in order to suffer less, right?" 

Perhaps not all meditation teachers would agree with his comments, but I offer them as words from one of the most beloved and respected Buddhist teachers on the planet today.

Finally, I'd be happy to answer any questions people have about meditation. If you leave a comment on the blog, I'll be sure to see it.

How To Be Sick

Our first official blog post. (It's the second post, but the first topical one.) It made sense for it to be about How to Be Sick, the book that brought my mom's story to the public. To give you a little history about the book, my mother, Toni Bernhard, was always an amazing writer. She has a gift with words that makes you feel like you are living the experiences that she is describing. As a law student and then a legal writing professor she learned impeccable grammar (something I have yet to learn much to her dismay) but there's also a compassionate and loving quality to her writing that makes her stories extremely accessible. Growing up I never doubted that she would eventually write a book. I never imagined it would be a book about being chronically ill.

When my mom first got sick in 2001, it was just 5 months after my daughter was born. The Tonies (my parents are named Toni and Tony which should probably be a whole blog on its own) went off on a trip to Paris and when they came back, mom was sick. They assumed it was a virus and that she would get better. But she didn't. In fact, she got worse.

Months went by and I was distracted by being a new mother and a little out of touch because I don't live near my parents. The knowledge that my mom was still struggling with this mysterious sickness she'd picked up in Paris floated around in the back of my mind, but I just thought she'd get better. I figured they would discover what was wrong, she'd take some medicine, and she'd get better. After about 18 months it became clear that wasn't going to happen.

Becoming sick challenged my mom in every possible way. It still does. It limits almost every aspect of her life. But true to who my mom has always been, she has never stopped looking forward. She has days that are harder than others, but she still challenges herself. She doesn't give up. She learned to love listening to opera. She learned to love watching tennis. She learned to crochet. She learned to embroider. She created a network of friends across the globe through email and Facebook.

And she wrote books.

I'm guessing I wasn't the only person to suggest that she write a book, but I'm going to take credit for it because I very specifically remember telling her she needed to write a book and she needed to try and have it published. I firmly believed that her story about being sick needed to be told. I knew that she could make people feel better by sharing her experiences. Being a person who naturally expresses herself with writing, she admitted to me that she had in fact been keeping notes about how to cope with being sick. Those notes became the basis for How to Be Sick.

Buddhism was a practice my parents developed when I got older. Even though I no longer lived with them, I could see the changes it made in their lives. My mother, always kind and loving, was more peaceful. She became more accepting. She was more skillful at offering insights and suggestions. And while the book isn't really about being a Buddhist, the knowledge that she learned from her many years of practice definitely provides a nice framework for how to handle the obstacles she faces from being sick. 

I believe one of the reasons my parents eventually ended up practicing Buddhism is because of its non-judgmental approach to the world. My parents were hippies. They've always believed in being open to people and experiences. Buddhism allows her to do that while also giving her tools to accept the everyday grievances we all face.

The books have touched many readers over the years. Even before she was an author, my mom was the type of person my friends just liked being around. If you're having a bad day, you want my mom to be around to boost you up. She'll love you up and make you feel better. So the subject of creating a blog has come up before, but was always dismissed as too taxing for my mother to handle. She does write articles for Psychology Today, but the thought of tackling a regular blog felt like too much of a commitment. 

Then we came up with the idea to work on a blog together so that I could handle the bulk of the work and allow her to participate in a way that wouldn't feel too burdensome.

One focus of the blog will be my interviewing her, using questions from readers so that they can hear directly from her. We thought we'd start with an interview about her book: How to Be Sick. Enjoy!

As always, feel free to email us at bloghowtobe@gmail.com with questions you might like to have answered in future blogs!
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Interview with Toni about How to be Sick:


Can you describe some of the symptoms of your illness?

Start with how you feel when you're extremely jet-lagged: sluggish and exhausted. Add to that the feeling that you have the flu without the fever and without many of its acute symptoms such as a sore throat. But you have aches and pains and very little energy. Think of how, when you have the flu, you can’t stray far from the bed and how the smallest tasks and interactions wear you out, and how you sleep 9 hours and still wake up feeling sick. So, combine jet lag and the flu and that’s me. 

So what happens when you get an additional sickness?

I rarely get an acute illness. For that reason the main theory of what's wrong with me is that my immune system is constantly on. It reads me as sick, even though I may not have an active virus. They call it “up-regulated.” As a result, I'm able to fend off most of the acute things that come my way. I’ve been sick for 15 years and rarely have had an acute illness. But when it does happen, I call it “sick upon sick,” and it's awful.

Why did you decide to write a book?

I didn’t set out to write a book…as you mentioned, I’d just been taking notes on what might help me adjust to the shock of my life having been changed so dramatically.  You were, in fact, the first person to suggest I write a book. I'd made some friends on the internet who were also chronically ill—the internet is great for people who are housebound—so I sent the notes to them. They loved them and told me, “This is a book!” So I took their (and your) word for it and started organizing the notes, coming up with chapter titles and the like. And it’s funny because when I was originally just keeping notes, I'd called them “How to Be Sick” so the title of the book came very easily. The titles for next two books were so much harder to come up with.

How did you write it while being sick?

It was hard. And there were days when I would start crying and think to myself "I can’t do this." What I did was to put my laptop on a stool next to my bed and keep a notepad nearby. Then I'd grab one of them and write when I wasn’t feeling too sick. Sometimes just for five minutes if that’s all I could do that day. That’s how I still do my writing today.

One thing that made it possible to write How to Be Sick was that during any given session I only wrote about a subject that I was inspired to write about at that moment. Of course, as I neared the end of the manuscript I had to fill in some of the gaps. For example, there's a chapter in the book on isolation and loneliness, and that was hard for me to write about so I kept putting it off. But as I neared the end of the manuscript, I finally had to force myself to compose it to complete the story. But in general I don't force myself to write in a particular order or on a particular subject.

How long did it take you to write the book?

If I don't count the notes I made and just count from the time I said, "Now I'm going to write the book," I would say about a year. Tony, my husband, thinks it was closer to 18 months. And then of course the publishing process takes another two years or so.

How did you get it published?

That was not easy. I had no connections and no name as an author. But I'd given the manuscript to Sylvia Boorstein who is a Buddhist teacher and a good friend. She loved the manuscript and, as a published author herself, was kind enough send it to three different publishers she was connected to, along with a cover letter. All of them rejected it, saying there wasn't a market for a book on chronic illness.

I thought well, that's that. But I had another friend, Shaila, who'd had a book published by Wisdom. She loved the manuscript and asked if I'd like her to send it to her editor. I said “Sure” not thinking anything would come of it. Soon afterward, her editor (who became my editor for my first two books) called me and said he really liked what he'd read so far and he'd be back in touch in a couple of days—as if I had publishers lined up, vying to publish my book. So I really got lucky because normally preparing a book proposal is a huge amount of work. For example, you have to research all the books in your category and explain how your book is unique. 

How would you describe the book?

It's a practical book. As much as the term is overused, I guess I'd have to say it's a self-help book. It's organized around my understanding of the human condition—its joys and its sorrows. And it contains dozens of practices to help people live a life of purpose and joy no matter what their circumstances. Some of the practices come from Buddhism, but I made up many of them (which is why the subtitle says it’s Buddhist-inspired—Buddhist-inspired usually meaning “I made it up”!).

Do you have to be Buddhist to understand it?

No, and that's been such a surprise and joy for me. I'd say that about 90% of the peole who write to me about how much the book has helped them are NOT Buddhist. People say things to me like “I’m Methodist but your book helped me so much.” I think it works for everyone because it’s not a religious book. In fact, I don’t practice Buddhism as a religion but as a practical path to help me live well. The Buddha was a human being…just like us. He wasn’t a god even though over the centuries some cultures and schools of Buddhism have turned him into one. But he wasn’t. So, to me, Buddhism doesn’t conflict with any religion.

Have you ever practiced what you would consider a religion?

I guess not. My parents were Jewish, but they weren't religious. They were so not religious that we weren’t even members of a temple. There was a short period in high school when I rebelled against not being raised in a religious way. I put aside a specific time each day to read the Old Testament and I went to temple with one of my friends. But that's the only time I recall when I thought of myself as being religious.

Are you surprised by the number of people who aren't chronically ill themselves who relate to the book?

At first, I was completely surprised! I’ve come to realize, though, that many of the struggles faced by people with health problems are the same struggles that others face: money issues, relationship issues, not getting what we want issues!

Is there one particular part of the book that people write to you about the most?

Yes. It's the fact that it never occurred to them until they read How to Be Sick that it's not their fault that they have health problems (mental or physical) and that they deserve self-compassion, not self-blame. Many people tell me that until they read the book, they’d never thought of treating themselves with kindness and compassion. They'd been plagued with feelings of guilt and anger toward themselves, but reading my book allowed them to feel compassion and understanding for themselves for the first time.

That sounds pretty amazing.

I know. It really is amazing. Many people have said that How to Be Sick has become their bible in that they leave a copy by their bed and read it regularly to help them with their struggles.

How does that make you feel?

Really good! Sometimes I think to myself that it almost makes me feel thankful that I got sick, so that I could be of help in this way. Every once in a while I actually do have that feeling—that if I hadn't gotten sick I never would have been able to help the people the way I have. But I have to admit that I would like to wake up tomorrow morning and not be sick. 

We are going to be doing a separate blog about the role of caregivers, but is there anything you would like to say about dad and how this has affected him?

I would say this, and I'm sure he wouldn't agree with me. I think that being mostly housebound for 15 years has been harder on him than on me. Think about all the experiences that couples share. It's not just that I can't go out, but he can no longer go out and have his partner along to experience it with. 

We can't go to family events together, and we can't travel to new places. And it's not just that we can't do the things themselves, but we no longer have them as shared experiences to talk about and to exchange ideas about. We're not creating new memories about the world outside the house. It's changed his life as much as it's changed mine. 

Was one of your motivations in writing the book to get him to understand what you were experiencing?

No, I didn’t think of it that way. He sees the effects of my illness every day. So he knows what I'm going through. I didn’t need to write the book for him to understand. He can see how sick I am. He knows all the nuances.

Do you think though that’s partly because you two have a special relationship and he’s so compassionate and understanding? Maybe other people aren’t as fortunate to have as understanding a spouse or partner.

Yes. Absolutely. I know how truly fortunate I am. I recognize that a lot of people don't have the support from a partner that I have. I've heard from many readers who've been abandoned by spouses. Sometimes their spouses abandoned them with small children. I appreciate how fortunate I am to have a spouse who supports me, and I also appreciate that we don't have to worry about having the money to pay for our home or for my medical bills. So yes, I am extremely lucky and my heart goes out to those who don't have the same support and I do.

If you had to identify one main thing that you hope people take away from reading How to Be Sick, what would it be?

Everybody's life takes unexpected turns and nobody's life turns out exactly as they expected it to or wanted it to. But you can take the life you've been given and, using the practices in the book, learn to be at peace and find joy in your surroundings. Not every day perhaps, but peace and joy enough. That's what I hope people will take away from the book.

For more about How to Be Sick, please visit www.tonibernhard.com.

Toni's books translated into several different languages.

Introductions

Hey everyone, it's Mara. Welcome to the HOW TO BE blog.

For our first post I thought I would just do a brief introduction about me and my mom. Many visitors will be familiar with my mom, Toni Bernhard, author of How to Be Sick, How to Wake Up and How to Live Well. For those of you who don't know her, she was the Dean of Students at the UC Davis Law School, a mom and grandmother when she was suddenly struck with an illness on a trip to Paris 15 years ago. She has never recovered. Years of doctors visits and research have gone by and she has never gotten a definitive diagnosis or "cure." She wrote about her experiences coping with chronic illness in her first book, How to Be Sick, detailing her struggle with sickness, being forced to retire from work decades earlier than she would have otherwise, and the hardship of missing out on most social aspects of family and friendship. She's very excited that her publisher has asked her to do an expanded second edition of How to Be Sick. It will be published in Fall of 2018 and she's really enjoying updating it.

Her years of Buddhist study and her kindness and compassion give her a unique perspective on life. She is truly one of those people who make you feel better to be around. If you are interested in reading one of her books, you can visit her webpage www.tonibernhard.com.

About me—my name is Mara. I live in Southern California with my husband and my teenage daughter. I was adopted by Toni and Tony from Seoul, Korea in 1977. (They were awesome parents in case you were wondering.) And although I don't suffer from chronic illness in the same way my mother does, I have spent years researching and reading books about how to deal with life. Life has always felt a little bit mysterious, often complicated and—well, for me, difficult. I have always felt as if I wanted to be happier, I wanted to be more successful, I wanted to be popular, I wanted to be left alone, I wanted to be less tired, I wanted to be less bored, I wanted to be less busy...I just always wanted to be something other than I was. Starting in high school I began suffering from severe depression and as an adult I suffer from depression and severe anxiety. So my search for relief from my various struggles is never-ending.

Now that I'm older, I'm coming to grips with the reality that there are no magic answers, that there is no easy fix. And that even if you don't have obvious hardship, you can still struggle. And that struggle is still valid even if nobody else understands it. And there have been times when I really struggled with the thought that I wasn't sure I could make things better for myself. But when truly faced with the stark choice of survive or don't survive, I chose survive. And once I chose to survive I had to decide if I wanted to survive in misery or try and find another way. I am choosing to find another way. 

I'm inviting you to come with me on my journey because I don't have answers. There's no ending to my story yet. so hopefully you can help me and I can help you too. Fortunately one of my coping mechanisms has been to turn toward humor and sarcasm, so the journey will at least be funny.

Facts about Toni: Breast cancer survivor, Sociology major, law professor, married for a long time, obsessed with her dog Scout, artist, has literally crocheted me about 100 scarves, has a left-handed son.

Facts about Mara: Cut my own bangs every week, Political Science major, dance teacher, married for fewer years than Toni but still for a long time, have two cats and a dog but would also like a pig and a goat, own at least 100 scarves, have a left-handed daughter.

So one of the things we want to do with the blog is give visitors a chance to ask Toni (or Mara) questions. The questions can be about chronic illness or not, about her books or not—anything! Please email us at bloghowtobe@gmail.com or comment on our posts. Let us know what's on your mind!

1996 at Mara's Wedding