Meditation Resource List

If your illness or life circumstances prevent you from attending meditation classes it can be very helpful to have a good book or CD course to guide your practice.

Below are some resources that might be useful. They’re divided into two groups – the first is specifically aimed at illness/pain, and the second is a list of general resources.

Resources specifically for people with chronic illness or pain

Darlene Cohen - a Zen teacher, who has rheumatoid arthritis. One of her books is Turning Suffering Inside Out (A Zen approach to living with physical and emotional pain). She has a website with podcasts, written talks, and more books.  Darlene’s work tends to be thought-provoking, funny and wise.  She’s a real straight-talker, and shares a lot of her personal experiences with pain in her books and talks.

Toni Bernhard – an ex-law professor now living with CFS.  Toni has written a book called ‘How to Be Sick’, which will be released in September 2010. The book is a beautifully written Buddhist-inspired guide for the chronically ill and their carers.  I’ve read a few chapters of it and found it eloquent, moving, and very down-to-earth.

Jon Kabat-Zinn - One of his books is the well-known, Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain and Illness.  His website sells CD’s of his books and meditations.

Miriam Greenspan – Healing Through the Dark Emotions: The Wisdom of Grief, Fear, and Despair .This is a fairly intense book, and beautifully written.  Miriam talks about the usefulness of feelings such as despair, and offers many different techniques for working with the ‘dark emotions’.

Pema Chodren –   When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times.

Shinzen Young -  books, CD’s and a website specialising in meditation for pain management. His Book/CD set Break Through Pain contains a series of guided meditations with step-by-step techniques to help with pain management. I find some of Shinzen’s guided meditations to be a little clinical and dry, but they are certainly thorough and he's developed some interesting meditation techniques.

Steven Levine - a renowned writer and meditation teacher whose work focuses on death, dying, illness and the spiritual journey. He has written many books and has a personal website which sells CD’s of his guided meditations.  Steven’s books are intense, and can be heavy reading at times.  They are also profound, deeply moving, and very human.

Vidyamala Burch -  a UK teacher who lives with a spinal cord injury. She has a website, and a book, Living Well with Pain and Illness: The mindful way to free yourself from suffering.

                                                                                                                        

General  meditation resources

Bodhipaksa – meditation teacher with a very friendly and informative website with free on-line tutorials. He will  answer e-mail questions about meditation and also has an excellent CD called Guided Meditation: for Calmness, Awareness, and Love.  I’ve got the CD and highly recommend it for anyone looking for guided meditations.

Meditation Oasis – free meditation podcasts and a written meditation guide. The meditation podcasts  are short, simple and easy to follow.  The website also sells an online medition course (US$95) and CD's of meditations.

Plumline – an on-line Buddhist meditation group, conducted through Yahoo Messenger. Useful for people who want to connect with other meditators, but can’t leave their home to do it. Currently they meet on Mondays at 10:00 AM and 6:00 PM US Mountain Time Zone. (The 6pm group is 11am in Australia).

Sharon Salzberg  - a down-to-earth teacher focussing on insight and Loving Kindness meditation.  Has a website with books and CD’s and here is a link to a podcast of a full-day workshop with Sharon.

Sounds True – on-line store selling a wide variety of meditation and spiritual CDs and downloads. Has an excellent free weekly podcast interview series called Insights at the Edge. Many of the teacher s and writers listed in this article have been interviewed in this series.

Tara Brach  - Tara is a psychologist and teacher of Buddhist insight meditation. She has a particular focus on dealing compassionately with issues such as shame and anger. Her website has books, cd's and podcasts. A very gifted teacher who combines psychology and Buddhism.

I hope this list is useful to you.  Please feel free to e-mail me if you have any more resources I could add to this list. 

Just Relax!

This post was written in December 2009, when I was spending a month staying at a Buddhist monastery near Sydney, Australia.

7th December

At lunch today I was talking to a woman named Jacqui who’s come up from Sydney to stay here for a few days.  Over our dhal and rice, we talked about my experiences with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and the time she’d spent with an auto-immune disorder.

She made a comment that I thought was really interesting. She’d been to see a psychologist, who was also a Buddhist and he told her that her illness was caused by stress.Jacqui’s face became animated, and she talked about how this comment made her feel.

‘I asked him why he said that,’ she said. ‘Because it’s just not helpful!  It might be true, but for the person who’s having the illness it’s not helpful. It’s up to the person themselves to come to some sort of realisation about what their illness is caused, or not caused by.’

‘That’s so true.’ I said. ‘It’s like someone wagging their finger in your face saying ‘just relax!’ – that’s not relaxing at all.  All that happens is that you have your original problems and then on top of it you feel ashamed because you think you shouldn't be stressed, but you are!'

Of course, that doesn’t mean I’m not guilty of thinking other people should ‘just relax;’  my sister and I have often fantasized about dropping a valium in my mother’s cup of tea in the hope it would calm her down -  or at least make her sit down.  (We never used it; you’d need a bulldozer and a ten battalion fascist army to subdue my mum – I’m fairly sure mere pharmaceuticals couldn’t do it).

Jacqui and I talked about the best way to get the ‘just relax’ message across without making the other person feel judged. We both thought that it was important to be able to support and encourage people to relax, not to just wag a finger in their face telling them what to do.  Better still – just provide the supportive conditions and encouragement without even telling the person you think they should be more relaxed.  After all, what’s more delightful and helpful to hear?

a)    You’re so stressed out...just relax!
b)    You’re a great friend and I really care about you. Life seems hard for you at the moment – would you like to spend a week chilling out in my multi-million dollar Byron Bay beachhouse?

OK – obviously a rhetorical question, but as I was typing I spent a few seconds imagining a friend in front of me saying a) and b).  When I imagined someone saying a) I had tightness in my chest, and feelings of disappointment and not being understood.  When I imagined b) I felt relaxed, delighted, and very connected to my imaginary property tycoon friend.

I also winced at the thought of how many thousands of times I’ve told someone to ‘chill out’ or ‘just relax’ and how this might have made the other person feel.  Because my illness causes a lot of adrenal problems and anxiety, I probably order myself to relax many more time than I say it to anyone else. So, maybe I’ll try to take a break from telling other people – and myself – to ‘just chill out.’  (Because it’s probably the least likely thing to induce any chilled-ness!)

Coming back down to my little caravan in the bush after my conversation with Jacqui  I lay on the wooden deck outside the van, and started listening to a Tara Brach talk. She said, ‘ I sometimes get impatient with the instructions that are given traditionally for meditation which is ‘just relax, just relax, be in the present moment’...as if that’s, like, an easy thing to do!’

Relaxing is not, like, an easy thing to do – or we’d all be walking around in a state of calm equanimity.  I must try to remember that next time I’m with an uptight person (such as myself!) and am thinking impatiently to myself, ‘Could you just relax!’

My fantasy Byron Bay beach house. Boy...could I relax there!