Nal and a Manual
Transcript of Nal and a Manual
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StreSS-reduction & Self-Healingthh M, ish & imy
Basic Program Manual
n is for conteMplative Science
J lzz, M.d., ph.d.founder and director
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NALANDA INSTITUTE FOR CONTEMPLATIVE SCIENCE
STRESS-REDUCTION
& SELF-HEALING
EDUCATIONAL MANUAL
Joseph Loizzo, M.D., Founder and Director
Ina Becker, M.D., Assistant Director
Copyright Joseph J. Loizzo, M.D., Ph. D., 1998
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………..3
II. THE NALANDA TEXTBOOK/WORKBOOK…….…………………...…9
Week 1…………………………………………………………..……..9
Week 2…..……………………………………………………………11
Week 3…..…………………………………………………………...14
Week 4…………………………………………………………….….16
Week 5………………………………………………………………..18
Week 6………………………………………………………………..20
Week 7………………………………………………………………..22
Week 8………………………………………………………………..24
APPENDIX: ON MEDITATION……………..…….……………..26
APPENDIX: ON YOGA………………………….…………………38
APPENDIX: LITERATURE ON MEDITATION &MIND/BODY MEDICINE..……………………………………….41
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I. INTRODUCTION: The NALANDA Educational Program and Manual
1. The NALANDA Educational Program
On behalf of the faculty and staff of Nalanda Institute for
Contemplative Science, we would like to welcome you to the eight-week
program in self-healing, the core of the Institute’s educational program.
Congratulations! You have made a decision that cannot help but have a
positive impact on your health and quality of life: the choice to take a
more active role in promoting your own health and well-being through
meditation and yoga. We suggest that you approach the next eight weeks
as an experiment in healthy living, and that you enter the eight-week
program as a learning laboratory where you will find all the principles,
tools, guidance and support you need to change the course of your
lifestyle. We offer this manual as one source of tools and guidance. But
before we get down to the nuts and bolts of the class, we offer a brief
introduction to the history of mind/body medicine and Nalanda Institute
for Contemplative Science for the curious. The more practical among you
may want to skip to page 9, below.
In recent years, there has been a growing awareness in both the
popular and professional consciousness in the U.S. that safe, effective
alternatives are needed to complement conventional healthcare. As the
social and human costs of American medicine mount with the power and
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complexity of our treatments, healthcare consumers, professionals and
policy-makers share a growing interest in alternative healing strategies
and modalities, especially those aimed at our medical Achilles' heels:
rehabilitation and prevention.
The need for alternatives was first recognized in the so-called
“diseases of civilization” such as stress, addiction, heart disease and
cancer, where conventional medical-surgical treatments are only partly
effective and involve prohibitive risks and costs. It is now clear that the
need for alternatives is equally critical in all areas of health, mental as
well as physical. While biomedical research continues to promise much
more precise and effective treatments for a wide range of diseases, its
focus on the mechanics of illness and health has increasingly been
recognized as only partial. Since learned habitual attitudes and
behaviors play a key role in all illnesses, the need for complementary
methods of health education, prevention and rehabilitation means a
growing demand for coherent alternatives to help people recover from
illness and adopt healthy lifestyles.
One natural place to look for rehabilitative and preventive
alternatives is to the traditional systems of healing throughout the world.
These traditions should be treasured by all humanity because they hold
a wealth of non-invasive, self-care regimens that have stood the test of
millennia of human use. In American medicine, the most successful early
programs to address the need for health-education, rehabilitation and
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prevention were based on modern scientific study and application of
ancient techniques of meditation and self-healing used in traditional
healthcare.
The first programs in behavioral medicine and stress-reduction
found relaxation and mindfulness techniques derived from the ancient
meditative and healing traditions of India especially effective in reducing
pain, illness and stress in various medical disorders, as well as for
promoting self-healing attitudes and behaviors (see Benson and Kabat-
Zinn). Later researchers found that meditation techniques can help
people use their central nervous systems to consciously regulate a wide
range of bodily functions, including blood pressure, blood flow, heart-
rate, metabolic rate and immune response (see Goleman). When
meditation was used as part of a comprehensive system of ongoing
health education, diet and lifestyle change such as those prescribed in
yoga, Ayurveda, Tibetan and Chinese medicine, the effects were
especially dramatic, allowing people not just to stop but even to reverse
illnesses like coronary artery disease and certain cancers (Ornish &
Siegal).
As medical awareness of the impact of habitual attitudes and
behaviors on the health of the nervous system and body has grown, so
has understanding of their critical role in mental illness, health and
treatment. Alongside the rise of behavioral medicine, research on how
learned habits shape the mind-brain has lead to a new behavioral
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approach to mental, emotional and life problems. The same relaxation
and meditation techniques used so successfully in behavioral medicine
were found as or more effective than conventional psychotherapy in
treating common mental problems like anxiety, depression, habit
disorders and personality disorders (Beck, Linehann et al). The rise of
learning-based models and methods in cognitive neuroscience and
cognitive-behavioral therapies in turn has reinforced the learning
approach emerging in behavioral medicine, where psychological states
including anxiety, depression, competitiveness, hostility and self-
involvement have been found to be the prime preventable risk factors in
stress-related problems like heart disease (Scherwitz, Williams).
To use a computer analogy, current research indicates that
meditation techniques provide teachable methods for consciously
changing not just the psychological “software” of fundamental habit
patterns, but even the physical “hard wiring” of neural networks and
“wetware” of neurotransmitters, hormones and other chemical
messengers. Given what neuroscience has been teaching us lately about
the central organizing role of mind-brain-behavior patterns in health,
modern medical science is beginning to understand why the medical
systems of the classical world put educational self-healing methods like
meditation at the heart of their theory and practice. In the last three
decades, these trends in medicine and psychiatry have converged in a
new mind/body medical paradigm. The old, conventional medical
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paradigm is called “allopathic” (literally “disease-alien”) or “biomolecular”
because it tries to reduce illness and treatment to warring mechanisms
at the level of molecules and cells. The new, alternative paradigm is
called “holistic,” “integrative” or “multi-disciplinary” because it sees and
treats illness and health in many dimensions at once, tracing
preventable factors in mental, physical, family and life problems to
common behavioral roots in “disease-prone” habits of behavior and
lifestyle. The focus of treatment in the new paradigm is on
comprehensive educational programs that help people learn to use yoga,
meditation techniques, nutrition and exercise to develop “self-healing”
habits of mind, personality and lifestyle (Friedman).
The Nalanda Institute for Contemplative Science was founded to
apply the new medical paradigm to the current challenge of developing a
modern art and science of self-healing. Based on its eight week program,
it provides an educational environment designed to help individuals
learn to better care for and heal themselves---in body, speech and mind.
The educational program teaches traditional self-healing ideas and
methods in an experiential learning format. Weekly two-hour classes will
expose you to some of these basic ideas and techniques but are only part
of the program. For optimal learning impact, the classes must be
enhanced by “homework,” that is, daily meditation sessions which can
help the “seeds” planted in the class take root and grow in your
mind/body process and life. At least one forty-five minute session six
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days per week is required, a second, shorter session is strongly
recommended. These sessions will not only give you a real taste of
meditation and its potential, but also serve as a laboratory to explore and
practice things discussed in class. In addition to homework and classes,
we will ask you to schedule at least one brief check in with one of the
instructors, and also recommend optional individual consultation during
or after the course for those who are serious about designing and
implementing a self-healing program.
Before going on to the workbook, we would like to make two simple
suggestions about how best to approach the program. First, keep an
open mind. Much or all of the material may be new to some people. For
others, the material may be familiar but the particular ideas and
techniques may differ from those they have previously heard or learned.
Please bear in mind that the framework and methods introduced here
are specially designed for self-healing. If the material sounds or feels
unfamiliar, just speak up and take it as part of the learning process.
The main point here is to try to maintain an open yet inquiring attitude
and a willingness to experiment. What is presented in this course is
presented neither as absolute science or gospel nor as a rigid formula or
ritual but as a living process of ideas and methods to be critically
understood, contemplated and put to the test by each of you. Second, be
curious and brave. The more active, motivated and focused you can be
on pinpointing why you came to his program and what you want to get
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out of it, the more likely you are to get some lasting benefit from what we
offer.
II. THE EDUCATIONAL MANUAL: Workbook
WEEK 1---WHAT PATTERNS DO I NEED TO MIND/STOP?
In traditional medicine and psychology, suffering—whether it be
physical or mental pain or just plain stress---is nothing to be denied,
avoided or feared, but is “the first truth,” a call from our bodies, minds or
souls to wake up to reality. The challenge of mindfulness meditation is to
stop running from problems or towards preconceived goals long enough
to simply face the reality of our lives we experience them in the present
moment. Most of us find that “just being present” or “just being mindful”
is just about the hardest thing we can do. Yet once we take the time to
try our best to be with ourselves, most people find it is probably the
single most important step we can take to improve the quality of our
lives. Reflecting on the first class and your first week of mindfulness
meditation, make some notes about what brought you to the program.
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3. How/could being mindful help you reframe/change these patterns?
WEEK 2---WATCHING AND SLOWING THE HABIT-CYCLE
Although genetics and environment play a definite role in illness,
health and temperament, a large part of most stress and disease
processes has to do with learned habits of mindset, behavior and
lifestyle. Many of these habits are so ingrained and resistant to change
that we are taught to see them as determined by biochemistry or
character. Meditation offers a powerful system of conscious self-healing
and self-change, based on a fundamental discipline of attention. By
learning to pay close attention to familiar habit-patterns in our lives, we
can slow and reverse the constant reinforcement needed to keep them
intact. All human beings have a unique capacity for conscious self-
regulation and change as part of our natural equipment for life-long
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learning. Meditation can help us exercise our learning muscles and
gradually override the automatic habit-patterns set up and reinforced in
the past. Mindfulness is the most basic discipline of meditative attention,
and it starts with using breath-awareness to be mindful of our bodies
and sensations. In your practice of sitting meditation and/or the body
scan, you have a laboratory to watch your habits in “real time” and get to
know the steps that trigger, support and reinforce the habit process.
1. What feelings, thoughts or acts trigger/support/reinforce your habits?
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WEEK 3—BREAKING FREE/LETTING GO OF UNHEALTHY HABITS
Recently neuroscience has begun rediscovering the truth found by
ancient meditative traditions: the human mind and nervous system are
far more free to overcome biological and social conditioning than
creationism or materialism would have us believe. The self and world we
experience are not fixed or objective but the product of the collective
activity of all our minds and brains. Each of us is freer than any other
form of life to become aware of exactly how we shape our own identity
and environment, and to exercise the boundless potential of our
consciousness for growth and change. By learning to tap and use the
deepest sources of mind and life energy, we can gradually let go of old
identities and lifestyles and create new ones. Concentrative meditation
shields our insight from the lure of the familiar, and taps the most open
and focused core of our mind/life process for free choice and growth.
1. Recall any times you or others went beyond limits you saw as fixed.
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2. Describe any past successes/failures letting go of self-limiting habits.
3. How/could concentrative meditation help free you from such habits?
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WEEK 4—LEARNING TO LIVE A SELF-HEALING LIFE
Unlike conventional medicine, traditional and modern mind/body
methods see healing as a natural process we each must learn to nurture
and cultivate for ourselves. To avoid or complement traumatic medical
interventions, self-healing is based on orchestrating many non-invasive
factors whose concerted effect is to gradually restore vital balance and
foster natural healing. Since this process depends on people learning to
change unhealthy ways of seeing, responding and acting, self-healing is
traditionally framed as a lifelong path of higher education. And, since a
healing outlook, attitude and lifestyle requires freedom, peace and
strength of mind, self-healing involves yoking the development of insight,
concentration and discipline to a continuing educational process of
mind/body learning at the rational, emotional and visceral levels.
1. Where/have you joined intellectual, reflective & experiential learning?
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2. How have partial or quick fixes limited you with stress/illness?
3. Sketch your ideal continuing educational approach to stress/illness.
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WEEK 5---ANALYTIC INSIGHT: THE DOOR TO INNER FREEDOM
Of all our habits, the most stubborn is the habit of clinging to our
sense of self. Only natural, it is reinforced by social messages that this
sense is our inalienable right, divine soul or true self. The trouble comes
when our familiar self-sense anchors the very habits that threaten our
health and happiness. Thinking, “This is my nature,” “This is what I am,”
we lock ourselves into self-defeating habits based on little more than a
self-fulfilling prophecy. Modern science has rediscovered the key insight
of traditional self-healing: that no fixed image or sense of self can fully
comprehend our life process. Analytic meditation tests this insight
against the evidence of personal experience, freeing us from the instinct
and conditioning that most limit our potential for change.
1. List any breakthrough insights that freed you from an old self-sense.
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2. Recall any efforts at change which have confronted your sense of self.
3. How/could insight meditation help unlock your full potential?
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WEEK 6--INTERCONNECTEDNESS: THE ART OF SOCIAL CHANGE
The “self-habit” leads to self-preoccupation, the most malignant
and neglected source of stress and illness in our lives. Clinging to an
unrealistic sense of self as more important than anything else alienates
us from the world our lives depend on, predisposing us to bias, conflict
and disease. Anxious, hostile and depressive reactions, obsessive,
compulsive and addictive lifestyles all are maintained by this instinct to
cut ourselves off. Self-healing begins when we embrace our inter-
dependence and rebalance our relations with all around us. Meditating
on our interconnectedness with other people & things counters the self-
defeating habit of “looking out for number one” and primes us for the
real challenge of living well with others in tune with nature.
1. Review times you’ve felt most open and alive with others & nature.
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2. Recall problems caused by alienating yourself from others/nature.
3. How/could meditating on interconnectedness reduce stress/disease?
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WEEK 7---CREATIVE MEDITATION: THE WAY TO EFFECTIVENESS
The modern sciences have rediscovered the traditional finding that
we shape our world by brain activity coordinated through conversation.
Like a virtual reality generated by computer, the consensual reality of
our lives and worlds is created in real time as our brains act on input
and interact through the social software of language. The only difference
between our reality and a dream is that, when awake, we are open to
fresh input. The good news is that the self and world we see as
independently real are as much our product as a work of art. By de-
programming our brains with healing images and affirmations, we can
break unhealthy perceptual habits and use the natural creative freedom
artists and poets enjoy to revise our personal and social experience.
1. Recall ways you have learned to see beyond your given worldview.
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2. List problems or limits in your self and world that seem fixedly real.
3. How/could healing images/affirmations help you see through limits?
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WEEK 8---INTEGRAL MEDITATION: COMPLETE EFFECTIVENESS
Fully yoking the creative mind and nervous system to the aims of
personal freedom and self-healing is the ultimate “yoga.” Modern
neuroscience confirms the traditional finding that every human mind has
the natural capacity to consciously regulate mind/body functions via the
nervous system. Research shows that meditation and yoga are among
the most effective methods of developing that natural capacity and
cultivating mind/body integration. The gateway to this integration is
extending the natural control the conscious mind has over normally
unconscious habits of breathing. By coordinating breath-control with
images or letters visualized at key points in the nervous system, the
creative mind can slowly disarm unhealthy stress-reactivity and align
mind/brain processes and states with its creative vision/affirmation of a
healing self and world.
1. Recall times you have used your mind to override bodily habits/limits.
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2. List responses like panic, rage, etc., that drive your stress-reactivity.
3. How/could breath-control of reactivity help you heal stress/illness?
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WORKBOOK APPENDIX: ON MEDITATION
SELF-ANALYSIS THROUGH CONCENTRATIVE/INSIGHT MEDITATION
1. Honestly identify your key weaknesses
What are the 2-3 habits you most want/need to change?
What aspects of your past/familiar identity anchor them?
What aspects of your life experience/current identity anchor them?
What are your most self-defeating identity habits?
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2. Understand/observe your obstacles to change
What mental habits (negative thinking) reinforce your worst habits?
What emotional habits (negative attitudes) reinforce them?
What lifestyle habits (negative action patterns) reinforce them?
What kinds of stimuli trigger your negative habits?
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What relationships/environments trigger your negative habits?
What kinds of subjective states (hunger, loneliness, etc) are triggers?
3. Understand/access your freedom to change your identity & life
List past challenges you have taken as opportunities for self-change
List mental, emotional, lifestyle habits you have changed or overcome
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List forms of knowledge, taste or skill you pursued and acquired
Describe/envision your hidden/potential self-healing personality
qualities of body/action
qualities of speech/spirit
qualities of mind/heart
lifestyle and environment
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4. Devise a threefold path of life-education for your self-healing
What kind of reading/intellectual study does you aim require?
To analyze and overcome your negative thinking patterns
To clarify and cultivate positive thinking
To build inspiration, confidence, know-how, consciousness
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What kind of contemplation/meditation practice do you need?
To reflect on, clarify and resolve your self-analysis
To develop and incorporate positive ways of thinking/outlook
To protect you from your own obstacles & help overcome them
To access and nurture positive attitudes, skills & life habits
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What kind of ethical guidelines/lifestyle qualities must you practice?
To avoid indulging negative mental, emotional & lifestyle habits
To avoid triggering stimulation, relationships, environments, states
To adopt & reinforce positive outlook, attitudes & behaviors
To nurture the personality, lifestyle & environment you want/need
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Identify healing/cultural/spiritual traditions you plan to rely on(list their strengths and limits, types and conditions of your reliance):
Identify healing teachers/friends/guides/mentors you plan to rely on(list their strengths and limits, types and conditions of your reliance):
Identify healing communities/networks/institutions to rely on(list their strengths and limits, types and conditions of your reliance):
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BASICS, PROCESS &AIMS OF CONCENTRATIVE/INSIGHT MEDITATION
The purpose of meditation is to put therapeutic insight to work, by
helping us gradually integrate it into all areas of our minds and lives. In
order to shed light on our work, insight, the spark of wisdom in all of us,
needs meditative techniques like mindfulness, just as a candle needs a
shield to be a practical light-source.
The basic stages and techniques of developing meditative
concentration or equipoise (our shield from winds of distraction and
dullness, anxiety & depression) can be mapped as follows:
9 Stages 6 Forces 4 Attitudes ________________________________________________________________________
1. Focus Learning Forced Control
2. Steady focus Reflection “
3. Repeated focus Mindfulness Intermittent Control
4. Increased focus “ “
5. Discipline Alertness “
6. Calm “ “
7. Quiescence Effort “
8. One-pointedness “ Unbroken control
9. Equipoise Expertise Natural control
________________________________________________________________________
Stages of Quiescence, called “Mindfulness” MeditationAdapted from R.A.F.Thurman’s Central Philosophy of Tibet
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As for insight meditation (the flame that sees through innate and
learned habits of mind that anchor unhealthy attitudes and behaviors),
the five main stages outlined in the Indo-Tibetan tradition are:
Stage of Insight Path of Practice ________________________________________________________________
1. Develop experience of
Intellectual insight insimulated insight meditation Path of Accumulation
of “store” of wisdom
2. Simulated insight with
Simulated quiescence
3. Real insight with Path of ExperienceReal quiescence (Heat, Peak, Tolerance, Triumph)
4. Direct realization of Path of Insight/Path of Meditation True nature of reality (Self-Transcendence Stages 1-8)
5. Self-Transcendent Insight Path of Mastery/Full Enlightenmentin context of creative/ (Self-Transcendence Stages 8-10)integral meditation
________________________________________________________________________
Adapted from Thurman, p. 134.
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THE LOGIC OF SELF-ANALYTIC INSIGHT MEDITATION
1. Analytic insight is indispensable to real freedom and lasting
happiness because it cuts the unconscious roots of resistance to free
choice and change. Consider this from the King of Concentration :
Ordinary people who cultivate concentrative meditationYet do not rid themselves of the notion of self
Get very frustrated when their addictions return…Yet if they discern precisely the selflessness of thingsAnd if they meditate on that exact discernment,
That causes the attainment of Transcendence,No other cause whatever will bring peace.
2. Insight is the active ingredient in liberative/self-healing education.
Remember His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s analogy: the educational
process is like a missile targeted at self-limiting identity habits, the
root of preventable disease. In that missile, behavior consistent
with values is the launching pad and guidance system;
concentration is the rocket; and insight is the warhead.
3. It has five stages that may be reduced to three general phases:
a. It begins with a clear and precise intellectual analysis.
b. It deepens with reflective and contemplative internalization.
c. It culminates in profound meditative realization.
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4. Insight can be rationally developed using analytic frameworks like
the “four keys:”
a. Precisely identify and focus on the false self-habit to be
analyzed, as in the intense sense of self-evidence we have when
falsely accused “not me!”
b. Commit to the shared conventions of common sense, “either its
objectively real or its not;” “It’s either identical with this or its
something separate.” Recall the spider in the house analogy.
c. Show yourself the absurdity of the self’s being identical with
your thoughts, feelings, motives, percepts & body-states.
d. Show yourself the absurdity of its being separate from them.
5. Understand the oscillating modes of insight
a. space-like equipoise where one breaks through the self-evidence
of familiar self/world and feels dissolved like water in water
(preliminary sign of breakthrough, within meditation sessions.)
b. dream-like aftermath where familiar self/world reappear as
before breakthrough but now seem dream-like, less fixed/real
(growth opportunity after/in-between meditation sessions.)
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APPENDIX: ON YOGA
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