Author Archives: Ben Lanin

I want to be clear about what I’m doing with these pieces. Our society is collapsing in conflict. Therefore it is important to me to do my best to write in such a way that someone who disagrees with me politically will at least listen, and perhaps even will take what I have to say into consideration. I freely admit that my political views are well to the left of the political mainstream in this country. Still, I’m doing my best to speak in the least partisan way that I am able, guided by a perspective in which I have a certain expertise, namely that of energy flow within a system. I have opinions about what to do about climate change, and immigration, and our tax system, and so on, opinions with which you may or may not agree. But our problem is not that we lack opinions, or that mine are right and yours are wrong or vice versa. Our problems run much deeper than that. So today I’d like to outline a series of observations that will guide my writing and my actions going forward.

Observation 1: Our political system is blocked on a fundamental, energetic level.

Observation 2: We’re past the point where this blockage can be ignored or worked around. We’re also past the point where this blockage can be easily fixed.

Observation 3: A clear manifestation of this blockage is that our system is no longer capable of bringing about outcomes that are for the good of the majority of Americans. More accurately and more strongly: only a small minority of Americans are benefiting from the system as it is operating now.

Observation 4: There’s a growing awareness that something is deeply amiss, that the problems run deeper than just who’s currently in office.

Observation 5: Hyper-partisanship is not just making things worse, it is leading inexorably to the collapse of the current system.

Observation 6: To solve the overarching problem, we’re going to have to create a new way of engaging with each other both politically and personally. That means building on an understanding grounded in flow of energy.

In coming weeks I will explore all of these observations in greater depth.

I followed my own advice last week, and so I quite forcefully stayed away from media of any sort. If anything came up around the inauguration, even as little as an image, I did my best to shut it down, to let it intrude in my consciousness as little as possible. One result of that was that I wasn’t aware of how much energy had developed around the protest marches that occurred the following day. Estimates of the attendance in Denver alone were in the range of 100,000 people. That’s impressive.

Wow, I thought. The guy has only been president for a day. He hasn’t even done anything yet. Well, except for saying all those shitty things, which is definitely more than nothing. But still, I wondered: what exactly are people saying with their protests, and what do they hope to achieve?

There’s a tightrope the protests have to walk. If the protest energy is nothing more than a mirror of the right wing’s approach of the last eight years–an assertion of the lack of legitimacy of everything the administration does, along with a concomitant sweeping up of the president’s voters into a *them* that’s in opposition to *us*–then the protests are only fueling dysfunction. The level of dysfunction in our system long ago became toxic, but fueling it will only make things radically worse.

On the other hand, the protests could serve as a line in the sand toward Trump himself–that people aren’t going to stand for his racism, his sexism, and above all the chilling Orwellian pounded-fist demand to control all discourse–while at the same time trying to create conversation with Trump supporters, to bring in rather than push away. If that’s the case, then the protests are doing good, important, constructive work.

It’s not clear which way it’s going to fall. In fact, right now, it’s probably both. But the goal has to be the creation of greater and greater unity, not greater and greater division. Division is a form of destruction. For the past eight years (at least), we’ve watched destruction win. It’s time for that to change.

Today is the inauguration. It is going to be a day of complicated turbulent energy in the world I inhabit, and probably the one you inhabit as well.

I believe a substantial majority of Americans have misgivings about Donald Trump. Obviously the people who voted against him–a majority of the people who voted, let’s remember–are, to put it mildly, uncomfortable with him. But I strongly suspect a substantial percentage of those who voted for him are troubled by him as well. I believe that most people are decent and try to do good in the world, so I suspect that Trump’s shenanigans–the sexism, the appeals to base racism and xenophobia, the tendency toward pettiness and vindictiveness, the lack of impulse control–have created some apprehensions for most people.

(Now please don’t take that to mean that I think most or even many Trump voters regret their vote. They could have misgivings about Trump and still legitimately prefer him to Hillary Clinton. They may still feel he has the potential to be a good president. I’m merely suggesting that a substantial percentage of Trump voters probably have some ambivalent feelings about the man.)

What’s more, the people who lack those reservations are proving to be the people who feel empowered by the basest elements of Trump’s rhetoric to behave in ways that most of us, irrespective of political affiliation, surely condemn.

And today the man who is the focal point of these emotions and energies will, amid great pomp and circumstance, formally take over the office of the Presidency of the United States, the most powerful office in the world.

So then, what is likely to be the feeling in the collective energy as we ceremonialize this transfer of power? Among those who strongly opposed the man and hate that he got elected, there will be great negativity. Among many of the rest, there will be not celebration but uncertainty. And the ones celebrating are the sort of people who thrive in conditions of dissonance. Add it all up and we can expect today to be a challenging day for most of us.

So how might we approach today so that we survive the day with as little energetic disruption as possible? The strategies I outlined a few weeks ago are as critical today as they’ve ever been. Avoid media of all sorts as much as possible, and avoid social media like the plague, which today from an energetic perspective it is likely to be. If you are inclined to follow Trump’s inaugural address, consider reading a transcript of it after the fact rather than watching it. That way you can best divorce the content from the energetic complexities of Trump himself, as well as the not-exactly-neutral energies of the media. Eat well today, avoiding foods that tend to push us out of balance like refined sugar and alcohol. Spend some time exercising. Spend some time meditating. Should you find yourself feeling agitated during the day, pause, center, close your eyes and take a few centered breaths. And, if at all possible, get out into nature. Trees and rocks and rivers and oceans will never be particularly disturbed by the gyrations and perturbations of humans.

In short, do your best to be a point of equanimity amid the chaos. In turbulent times, which the Trump years almost certainly will be, every person seeking to balance the collective energy rather than distort it is an asset. Be that person.

Back in the late summer of 2015, Jerry and I started the TTW project to test our hypothesis that using centering and other energy techniques would enable us to develop potential within ourselves that had previously laid latent. We spent a year playing with these techniques in the sports realm (mostly golf and tennis), and we saw real improvement. With our hypothesis thus confirmed, we began developing a program to teach to others.

And then the election happened. The world went completely out of balance, and Jerry and I both felt called to respond. Most of our work over the past two months has been in response to that call.

For both of us, it felt quite natural to write about our experiences and our responses to them, but this led to a question: what are the common threads between the work we were doing on the golf course or tennis court and what we’ve been doing since the election?

In two particular areas, the parallels are very clear. In both cases, everything starts with the practice of centering and exploration of the centered breath. Centering engenders a state of flow, grounds our energy into the earth, and enables us to move through the world in a more embodied state, so we can feel and respond to what’s around us while lessening the distortions caused by an over-reliance on our minds’ thoughts and opinions.

Secondly, in both realms, we bring an intent to *use* the centered state to enable and strengthen the foundation for change. In the world of athletic endeavor, centering gives us the opportunity to feel our way through the blockages that get in the way of improvement and excellence. Within the greater space of our lives, centering provides us the means to experience barriers to flow not as some vague, subconscious disquiet, but as a reality felt consciously within the body.

On the golf course, the tennis court, or the ski slope, the means to measure change is easy. We know what higher-level performance looks like in each of these arenas, and we can measure ourselves against it. But in the greater world, things aren’t so simple. The breakdown in our system is so great that we’re well past the point of any simple fix. We’re going to have to build something new from an entirely new consciousness.

The centered state creates the space for that change. As a society, we find ourselves without a map for how to proceed. Our political history tells us where we’ve been–tribalism, empire, feudalism, democracy–but it’s no longer clear where we’re going. All we can do is open to the energy of the situation. By using the practice of centering to move toward greater flow, we can begin to find the new truths that our present situation demands.

We need to seek flow not just in the gym and the playing fields, but in all of our day-to-day activities, from the conversations we have throughout the day to the types of information we allow into our minds and bodies.

We’re facing a great crisis–and a commensurate level of opportunity. We simply must seek and cultivate a state of flow. Our well-being, indeed, that of our entire world, depends on it.

Last year, my piece about wintertime goals was focused primarily on sports- and health-related objectives while keeping my focus on the need to stay in touch with the energy of the season. I aimed to stay healthy and uninjured. I pledged to ski with less stress and more flow.

With respect to my sports endeavors, I’ll declare similar goals this year. Staying healthy and uninjured, and the consciousness of the body’s needs that that requires, is a good goal. I struggled enough with injury in 2016, particularly that torn hamstring back in May, that I don’t want to suffer similar in 2017.

If you’ve been following TTW since the election, you’ve seen that our focus has expanded since then. The depth of anguish over the past two months has convinced us we need to actively connect our practices to the bigger picture in our lives. With that in mind, what might my goals look like for winter of 2017?

As I write this in mid-December, I haven’t yet taught a lesson this season. By the time it’s published I will have taught many. My students tend to be from all over the country. If last season is any indication, politics will not be spoken of much during our chairlift conversations, but I will probably get some idea that what people are going through is different from last year.

I want to be able to hold this space for my students. I want to find a way to broach or at least acknowledge that things are pretty challenging in our world right now. That the election seems to have thrown a lot of people off, irrespective of their particular political bent. I want to learn to speak more comfortably about the energetic aspects of what’s going on, and to tune people in to ways of dealing with it. I’ll be standing on a mountain as I do so, so I’ve got a pretty solid chunk of ground to teach grounding.

I also want to explore how to make things easier. A goal needs to be measurable if you want it to be an effective guide to behavior, and right now I don’t know how you measure *easier*. When I experience it, I certainly know it. In skiing, in snowboarding, in tennis and golf and soccer (when the weather rolls back around to allow those activities), I want to do what I do *easier* than I have done.

An exploration of cultivating ease will be something I will practice, and something I will to bring to my students this winter. People need it. We’re pretty addicted in our culture to making things hard. And it’s not serving us.

In myriad ways, I codify the energy of the season into my behavior. I am working quite a bit teaching skiing these days, but I observe that my relationship with the mountain in winter supports my energy. I am outside in the crisp cold air during the day. But as night falls I go home, eat dinner, do little of anything else. I go to sleep early.

With respect to my vocation, writing, I express the energy of the season by taking a sabbatical. My goal is to do no writing work of any sort during the two weeks around the solstice, the last two weeks of the calendar year, our culture’s holiday period.

So while I am working, I am still resting. The mountain supports my energy while I’m teaching. At night, in the morning, the computer will often stay off. I’m not reading drafts, I’m not revising, I’m not writing anything new. The closest I get to writing is in reading the writing of others. Some nights I sit by the fire and exult in the pleasure of the written word without demanding anything of myself except, as best I am able, a return to the pleasure writing gave me when I was a young boy, so many years ago.

I’m as quiet as I can be during this period. Thus I respect the energy of the season by respecting the intention of my sabbatical. And when the new year awakens in a few days, I can meet it with renewed vigor.

The solstice has passed. It is winter.

Did you, as I recommended last week, put down your burdens, for even a moment? Did you allow yourself a little space to breathe, to step out of the freneticism that our culture demands this time of year, to give yourself some repose? Did you notice the quiet behind all our culture’s noise?

In these days just on this side of the solstice, our energy should be at its quietest. One energetic year has just ended, the new one has just been born. Now is a time for quiet contemplation. We might look closely at ourselves: Who have I been? Who am I? We can even begin to ask, without demanding an answer, Who am I going to be?

Already now the days are getting longer. A small part of us looks ahead, already, to spring. Soon enough it will be time for planting. What, then, should our work look like in this time of quiet? How do we meet this moment?

Hold on to the quiet as long as you are able. Soon, it will be time to pick things up again. What tools are we going to need to sow and cultivate springtime’s seeds? Take your tools. Replace the splintered handles. Sharpen the edges. Rest and prepare so that you are ready.

Energetically, the time approaching the winter solstice is a time of consolidation. It is a time of letting things come to rest. Nature around us has substantially gone dormant. While we as a species obviously do not hibernate, we too are meant to respect the energy of the season.

In our culture, divorced as it is from the natural cycles that feed our energy, we make no differentiation between the short, dark days of winter and the long, hot ones of summer. Yet our bodies know the difference, and cry out for us to acknowledge that difference, to respect it.

As we separate more and more from the natural energy of which we are a part, we become less and less grounded. Ungrounded energy tends to float upwards, coalescing in our heads, strengthening our sense of the reality of our thoughts and taking us away from the here and now. Thus the danger of becoming too ungrounded: it becomes easier and easier to believe our own bullshit.

We are carrying so much at a time when the energy of the world is requesting that we put things down. It can feel fraught, dangerous, to acquiesce to that request. Won’t we fall behind everything that is going on around us?

Honestly, there is a chance that we will. But I wish to pose to a question: at what point does the damage to your health become a cost too great to bear? Does that our culture all but demands of you to behave in an unhealthy way mean that you should do so? Or should you set up boundaries against it for your own well-being?

I urge you to choose the latter. What would it feel like to take just one of your burdens, set it down for a little while and breathe? (If necessary, you can always pick it up again.) This is the energy of the season. Even a few moments of repose, of connecting with the quiet flow of the season’s energy, can provide us with an important respite.

Give yourself that respite. In myriad ways, these are very challenging times. To deal with them effectively, we’re going to need to take care of ourselves. Who else will?

Jerry has said that in his practice he likes working with people who are injured, because they are willing to make changes. The injury is evidence that something they’re doing isn’t working.

Expanding that insight out into the greater world, you can see that a crisis of any sort is also an opportunity. A crisis is clear evidence that something isn’t working, clear evidence that something needs to change.

I assert that our country is in crisis. Even if you supported Trump, you are surely aware that the level of dismay, even anguish, among those who didn’t is profound. Every day, Trump nominates another hard-liner to his Cabinet. While doing so is certainly his prerogative, it’s worth remembering that a majority of the electorate voted against him. A Cabinet far to the right of the mainstream promises only to exacerbate the conflict and ire that our country is rapidly succumbing to.

What we’re doing isn’t working. As Einstein said, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is insane. Sadly, no one in our political system seems to have the ability or wherewithal to respond intelligently and empathetically to what’s happening. The system and the people within it are clearly incapable of making things better. That leaves the rest of us with an opportunity. If there’s to be healing and better days ahead, we require new thinking, new ideas.

I’m politically liberal, and I live in a particularly liberal part of America (Boulder, Colorado), so I acknowledge I live in something of a bubble. Now, I might be wrong about this, but I am guessing that unless you were an enthusiastic Trump supporter and are surrounded only by enthusiastic Trump supporters, you’ve been aware of and perhaps been challenged by the feelings that have come up after the election. The levels of acrimony, conflict and distrust in our country have soared to heretofore unseen levels, and I can see that it’s affecting people, irrespective of where they’re living or their particular political affiliations.

If you’ve found yourself struggling with surges of unpleasant feelings and emotions since the election–despair, hopelessness, anger, disdain for those who think differently from you–know that you’re not alone. Even if the outcome of the election was to your satisfaction, we tend to resonate emotionally along with other people, and emotions, throughout our country, are running extremely high.

However, there are ways to moderate the effects that everything that’s going on has on your sense of balance and center. Here are four techniques that I find helpful.

1. Limit or eliminate media, especially commercial news media and social media.

The major problem with most media in our culture, be it old media like newspapers, magazines, and television, or new media like Facebook and Twitter, is that it’s commercial in nature–it derives its revenue from advertisements. On a fundamental level, you get the information you want–football game, sitcom, news, whatever–by trading some of your time and attention to someone who wants to sell you something.

All of these forms of media make more money the more eyeballs they can aggregate onto their content. And what grabs and holds our attention tends to be things that stimulate the emotions. Thus even the so-called "news" media, ostensibly reporting "facts," has an incentive to report things that excite the emotions (i.e. generally "bad" news) and to do it in such a way that it amplifies rather than depresses those effects. This is why so much news seems so sensationalistic: because it is.

Furthermore, the effectiveness of an advertisement is much higher when it reaches a psyche that’s out of balance. A centered person will tend to be more shielded from the emotional manipulations that are part and parcel of how advertisements work. So commercial media has an incentive to keep you from center.

Please note that I’m not asserting some grand conspiracy. Rather, I’m pointing out something that simply emerges naturally from a for-profit model in a competitive environment. The media that aggregate the most eyeballs and deliver them most effectively to their advertisers will make the most money. And that will naturally tend to be the kind of things that incite high emotions. There’s a reason media companies pay such enormous sums for the broadcast rights to sporting competitions.

Media in which the costs of participation are particularly low (in both dollar and effort terms) tend to be the most poisonous of all. Twitter and Facebook can be particularly destabilizing. It costs someone nothing to write a repulsive tweet or an agitating Facebook post, but the emotional effect on an audience can be profound.

I recognize that staying away from news media can be especially challenging for people. "But how will I stay informed?" people ask. I’ve asked this question a lot myself. I’ve found it really helpful to ask, of any story I’m considering reading in the news media, "In what way does this piece of information impact my life?" If you take that perspective, you’ll quickly notice that the vast majority of what fills our newspapers, magazines, and television screens is nothing more than unsettling noise. It has no real bearing on our lives at all. But our limbic systems evolved in a world in which any information we were given from an outside source ("There’s a pride of lions in the tall grass over there!") was apt to be immediately salient to our lives and, often, to our very survival.

2. Take a hot bath.

If you cut down a tree, it’s no longer a tree; now it’s just wood. If you kill a cow, it’s no longer a cow. But water is ever and always water. On a profound level, water is substantially imperturbable. A placid pool of water has the ability to wash off the harsh vibrations of a frenetic world.

Submerging ourselves in water will tend to smooth out and slow down volatile emotions, and relaxing in heat is extra calming. (Hence saunas, hot tubs, and steam baths.) Also, there’s never really anything much to do in a bath–you’re pretty much forced to slow down and stay in one place for a while, which alone can help settle the system. (If you’re inclined to read in the bath, bring along a book, not your phone or tablet.)

A bath is a really simple form of self-care. Don’t be afraid to indulge yourself.

3. Go for a hike in nature, especially among mountains.

The natural world has its own vibrational patterns. The more unspoiled a natural space, the less human energy there, the easier it is to experience nature’s energy. Thus a hike in a forest is more calming than a walk in a park, and both are better than jogging down a busy street.

The Earth is a giant sink for negative energy–there’s a reason we call generally unflappable people "grounded"–but there’s something especially powerful about mountains, places where the ground becomes figure, as it were. Maybe it’s that mountains demand our conscious attention. Too often we lose sight of the Earth as we walk upon it, but you’re not going to fail to notice the slope you’re walking up.

It takes no special training to let the ground ground you. Just go somewhere where your attention can let go of the ephemeral comings-and-goings of humans and meet nature in all its stability and beauty.

4. Center and breathe.

Once you learn to do it, the ability to center is something that’s with you literally everywhere you go. If you find yourself succumbing to deep levels of stress for whatever reason, give yourself permission to step out of the situation for just long enough to find your center and breathe for five to ten breaths. It takes little time, but the effects can be profound.

The techniques (if you can even call them that) that I offer here are all extremely simple to do, but the effects can be profound. If you find yourself struggling, try them. They can only help.

One final thing: during these trying times, do not intentionally scrimp on sleep.