Sunday Stillpoint: Learning to Sail

"We can use the pressure of a problem…to propel us through it, just as a sailor can position a sail to make best use of the pressure of the wind to propel the boat. You can't sail straight into the wind, and if you know only how to sail with the wind at your back, you will only go where the wind blows you. But if you know how to use the wind's energy and are patient, you can sometimes get where you want to go. You can still be in control."
--Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD, in his book: FULL CATASTROPHE LIVING: Using the Wisdom of Your Body & Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness


When you are a control freak and a fighter by nature, like me, learning to use a problem to help solve that problem is a concept as foreign as figuring out how to use chopsticks to eat rice. (The trick, I'm told, is sticky rice--the stickier, the better. Clumps are easy to pick up with sticks, you see. There's a metaphor in that too, but not as good as the one about sailing.)

Confronted with life's challenges, what most of us tend to do, first of all, is react emotionally. We get angry, or we get upset, or we panic. We cry or rage or pace or slam doors or pound on our computers or yell at people or animals or drive dangerously. We bite our nails or grab a drink or simply sit and fret, chasing the problem round and round until we are dizzy with it but nowhere near solving it. We get headaches and backaches and stomach aches, and we develop more serious health problems like heart trouble or other diseases.

Dr. Kabat-Zinn is a pioneer in something called "mindfulness." Mindfulness is a user-friendly term for a Western form of meditation, but his New England clinic has gained national medical attention for the health benefits his training provides, which has been adopted by many hospitals in conjunction with traditional medicine, with impressive, documented results.

The brilliance in Dr. Kabat-Zinn's approach is the way he teaches us to deal with those powerful emotions. He doesn't tell us to talk them out, or stuff them down, or bury them in vigorous exercise. He doesn't scold us for having them in the first place, and he doesn't insist that we learn to control them.

Instead, he shows us how to USE our emotional reactions to stress, in much the same way a good sailor uses the force and power of the wind to take his (or her) boat where they want it to go.

His metaphor is an extremely easy one to grasp and understand. If I want to sail across the lake, and strong west Texas winds are blowing against me, what do I do? Wait for the winds to die down? (Not in west Texas.) Hope they'll change direction? Set sail against them and fight them all the way? Or just give up altogether and sit on the dock, wondering hopelessly what the other side is like?

Or, I could just lower the sails and try and row under my own steam across that lake. Don't think I'd get very far that way, either. I'd probably wind up getting caught in the undercurrents and dragged someplace I didn't even want to go.

"If you hope to make use of the force of your own problems to propel you in this way, you will have to be TUNED IN," Kabat-Zinn explains, "just as the sailor is tuned in to the feel of the boat, the water, the wind, and his or her own course…"

We have a friend, Ken, who was an avid sailor until a motorcycle accident left him paralyzed from the chest down. Undaunted, he spent several years designing a sailboat--a trimarand, I think it's called--and a sheepskin harness that would enable him to fold up his wheelchair, hoist himself aboard, and set sail. He also put himself through law school, and when he's not lawyering, he's island-hopping in the Caribbean with a bevy of beautiful young ladies always in tow.

It is essential, of course, that Ken knows how to read the wind and the water, because, should his boat ever capsize, well, he would have an even bigger challenge getting to shore, to say the least, especially if he were caught in a storm.

"No one controls the weather," Kabat-Zinn points out, "Good sailors learn to read it carefully and respect its power. They will avoid storms if possible, but when caught in one, they know when to take down the sails, batten down the hatches, drop anchor, and ride things out, CONTROLLING WHAT IS CONTROLLABLE AND LETTING GO OF ALL THE REST." (emphasis mine) "Training, practice, and a whole lot of firsthand experience are required to develop such skills so that they work when you need them."

The thing is, we all have stresses in life. Some stressors are chronic in nature, such as caring for an ailing relative or a challenging child, financial problems, health issues, marital difficulties. Some stressors are acute but temporary, a crises that must be dealt with immediately, such as an accident or sudden surgery or illness. Others have long-term consequences, such as a death in the family or a divorce or a natural disaster or fire.

It is how we REACT to that stress that makes all the difference in the world with the effect that it has on us.

We can be completely crippled by an event, such as our friend's motorcycle accident--and I'm not talking about the PHYSICAL. When Ken realized that he would never walk again, he could have given up on life altogether. Since he was in the military at the time of the accident, his medical bills were covered and he was provided a disability pension for life. He could have spent that life huddled in an apartment somewhere, watching television, growing bitter and mean.

Instead, he designed a sailboat. He became an attorney. He bought a convertible. He decided to live life at full-tilt boogie.

Does that mean that Ken didn't feel the same rage and hopelessness after the accident that other paraplegics go through? Of course not. He just decided to use those emotions creatively. He even helped found a group, called POINT (Paraplegics on Independent Nature Trips), that provides adventures to other paraplegics--sailing, mountain climbing, skydiving--the only limits are their imaginations and willingness to go for it.

Dr. Kabat-Zinn says that we often allow our first emotional reactions to the stressors in our lives TRYRANNIZE us. Our fear, panic, and anxiety get out of control, like waves in an ocean storm, and soon, we get swamped. We begin to sink, which brings on more panic, so that the emotions themselves actually become the problem--while, all along, we're nowhere near finding a solution to the situation that provoked the emotional reaction in the first place.

To avoid getting overcome by our own emotional reactions to life's challenges, Dr. Kabat-Zinn suggests a very simple response. We should, "Stop. SIT WITH THE HEART, breathe with it, feel it, not trying to explain it or change it or make it go away," he says.

In other words, we should observe what is happening--the stressor itself--as if it is a problem that is happening to someone else. How would we help a loved one deal with this problem? Would we panic and cry and rage, or would we attempt to inject calm into the emotional whirlwind, for their sake? Shouldn't we at least be as compassionate with ourselves?

Using the catch-phrase, WATCH AND LET GO. WATCH AND LET GO, Dr. Kabat-Zinn teaches us to, first of all, NOTICE OUR OWN EMOTIONAL REACTIONS.

For example, sometimes war news will upset me or frighten me or enrage me, because my son and my nephew are in Iraq right now and I'm worried about them. I can give in to that fear and panic and rage, or I can CATCH MYSELF--realize that, Deanie, you're getting upset again, and take a moment just to BREATHE.

Sometimes, I actually place the palm of my hand right over my heart and take several deep breaths. My hand spreads warmth to my chest, and the deep breathing slows the racing heart and panting breaths. I think about the love I feel for those boys, and I am soothed.

When I do get upset, I have deep respect for those reactionary emotions that I feel--they are legitimate and I have every right to feel them.

I just don't let those emotional reactions bully me or tell me what to do.

What mindfulness does is, it either reduces your physiological arousal AT THE TIME IT IS OCCURING, or it helps the body RECOVER from it more quickly.

"By definition, stress reaction happens automatically and unconsciously," explains the good doctor, "As soon as you bring awareness to what is going on…YOU HAVE ALREADY CHANGED THE SITUATION DRAMATICALLY."

This is a very important point. By being mindful to our own emotional reactions to stress--just by noticing when it is happening and taking a moment to calm ourselves--we are already changing the nature of that stress.

We are tacking our sails.

"The stressors now become like the wind, here for you to use to propel you where you want to go."

There are other benefits to this approach than just lowering our blood pressure. We also clear our minds from the clouds of emotions that have been fogging our thinking, and this enables us to work at finding a true solution to the problem itself--not just a new way to cope with the stress reaction to that problem.

And that's how we get from one side of the lake to the other in record time.

Dr. Kabat-Zinn continues the sailing metaphor: "We come to see (our emotions) as individual waves on the ocean…each one rises up to our awareness for a moment, and then falls back…"

The waves are there. They're just not washing over the boat and drowning us.

The longer we practice mindfulness, and if we can train ourselves to do it every day, for more than just a few breaths, "As we practice watching our thoughts come and go, we are cultivating an ability to dwell in the silence and stillness behind the stream of thought itself, in a timeless present."

In this way, we do not become VICTIMS of our own emotions--or of the situations that provoked those emotions. Behind every powerful emotion, there is powerful energy. We learn to harness that energy like a sail. Our friend Ken harnessed his own rage and frustration after the accident to accomplish things in his lifetime that would astonish most able-bodied people, and to have a damn good time doing it.

I found a way to channel my own fear and rage over the war right here, using my voice and what talents I have to make people think and perhaps, to change a few minds in the process. It doesn't change the reality of the situation--my son's still in Iraq, still in danger, and my nephew too, but it changes my REACTION to it. It helps me feel less helpless--and that is the true nature of all real stress.

We may not be able to control what happens to us, but by controlling our response, we can change the nature of what happens to us, make it more manageable. We don't become part of the problem. We don’t make things worse.

We don't sink, and we don't drown. We sail.

"We find our own way, sailing with the winds of change, the winds of stress and pain and suffering, the winds of joy and love, until we realize that we have also never left port, that we are never far from our real selves."