The Higher Haven's Fearless Response to The Corona Virus

Cause I'm as free as a bird now and this bird you'll never change… Lord help me, I can't change (said Heyoka style).

The Corona Virus is upon us, leaving everyone everywhere stunned and shuttered. It’s like a slow moving natural disaster, shaking us all to our cores, ripping down and through our institutions and pulling people apart. Daily life suddenly feels flooded with unpredictability like we’re in a weird new world-wide war. To quote my sister’s, physician, “We’re on the front lines, we’re not sure where the enemy even is, and they’re not providing us any bullets for our guns.” A strange kind of spell has ominously bound us, clearing out our schools, sporting events, restaurants and towns and scrambling our lives.  

At the same time, our community appears to be meeting the situation with a staggering amount of collaboration and compassion, coming together and caring for one another like improvisational players, with an impulse that felt largely inaccessible during ordinary times. Everything that’s happening now will expose certain people, enlighten others, and reflects the rising tide of spiritual awareness that’s sweeping the entire planet. My personal opinion is that some of the powers that be are losing their stranglehold on the people, and while outwardly expressing concern, have taken the opportunity to wield what’s left of their influence by shutting us down and scaring us near to death. Wait — isn’t the government in charge and don’t we need them for our well-being? Actually no. You’re in charge of your own well-being. And now is the time to take full possession of your health and life to assure your own personal security and future as well as the collective’s.

As to social distancing, I attended a wonderful sweatlodge Ceremony way out in the country side Sunday, with a circle of folks and now new friends living the traditional indigenous, Ceremonial way of life. Everyone appeared bright eyed, happy, and plenty of jokes and laughter were bandied about. We got low and prayed hard, raising up our now even more critical earthly concerns, enjoyed some great grinds, and four hours later I boogied home across the sun-lit rural landscape relaxed, renewed and at ease. I’m well aware that close togetherness may be problematic at this abnormal time. I’m also acutely alerted to the responsibility and even ethical duty to others who are most vulnerable, especially our elders. But the practices we have in place here are always positive, guiding and protective, providing an awareness that is not reliant on the external world, while offering internal resources galore, even and especially in the face of death, dust and seeming disarray. Our ancient rituals are certainly not going to fail us now. This is the unshakeable mojo our frenzied world so, so desperately needs at this time. 

In the clear light of purified positivity, there’s good news. Maybe staying home when you’re sick, washing your hands, and not touching your face isn’t nearly enough to satisfy your anxious mind. At the same time, these disordered circumstances demand that everyone of us get over ourselves and instead put into play resilient, successful responses rooted in our interconnectedness for communal safety. We’ve responded by offering a link to a free audio guided meditation in the Vipassanā tradition, a throwback from my Teacher Shinzen Young’s See/Hear/Feel technique to Body/Image/Talk, an engaging approach focusing on body sensations, the visual elements of thought on one’s mind screen, and the verbal component of self-talk, with the fourth technique powerfully combining the three previous. Vipassanā is often translated as “insight” from the Pali language, but technically Vi means “with distinction”, while Passanā means “to see”, granting one the ability to perceive in a more intuitive manner.

By just merely attempting this special seeing within, the teasing apart of your moment-by-moment experience, you’ll lessen stress and enhance your appreciation for life. Just go to The HH Facebook page, Like It, try it, and you’ll soon Love it. Until then, rather than seeing a canceled concert or suspended sports season as a huge disappointment, consider this the empowered, collaborative undertaking of our new world (dis)order. In ordinary times we suffer alone. But a disaster affects everyone, removes the commonplace and liberates us into the present. Worries about the past and future are naïve in light of the reality of this weitgo (crazy) moment. When suffering, peril and vulnerability become a public phenomenon, all of us who share in the experience are brought together in a very powerful psychological sense.

Personally, when not practicing formally, I’m enjoying the hum and warmth of my home’s wood stove, writing, organizing, planning and taking long walks in the woods. The Blue Herons’ have returned, as you can see above, soaring over the house and surrounding fields. There’s also squadrons of Sand Hill Cranes circling overhead, with their otherworldly voices like trilling trumpets, keeping their own community safe and alert. Per the usual, all is well in nature.  If there’s a soundtrack to all of this, it’s REMs It’s the End of The World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine). As to our near future plans at The Higher Haven, with group gatherings not exactly uh… trending right now, we’re still Feelin’ Pretty Psyched (sung to the tune), simply inviting students over individually or in small groups to convey other meditative techniques like Shin’s Nurture Positive. I double dare you to, at the very least, hit that link, scroll down to the video of the laughing baby and try your best not have pleasant body emotions and (#6) show it, i.e. physically smile. And I am confident that given everyone’s concerned communiqués, all prompted by the now urgent need for a new, internal skill set, that we will be running our April class and happily be back in Ceremony the first week in May. Until then Peace & Love. Toksha

Can Wellness Heal The Workplace?

The following article appeared in last week’s New York Times, with the subhead Human Resources Try On Some New Perks: Meditation, Sound Baths, Energy Consulting and Hypnotherapy. As stated below, with corporate culture taking a more holistic approach to employee well-being, practices once held as bohemian, on society’s fringes, are now going mainstream. But the success of wellness practices also rely on the willingness of employees as well as top leadership to integrate these values into their company culture.

Here at The Higher Haven, we’re organizing more and more corporate gatherings. But you won’t find these retreats open to public registration or on the monthly calendar. Consider with all the current happenings, in the face of potential global pandemics and fearful reactions worldwide, there may be no safer place on the planet then the woods of Western Michigan. And to quote Oprah’s touring meditation teacher Mr. Israel, “In these more traditional spaces where people are not in New York or Los Angeles, they’re starting to open up to this stuff.” For more information on organizing an off-site staff retreat or on-site company workshop, contact us directly. If five deep breaths pre-meeting or an hour de-stress session can help inspire a shift, imagine how more extended time in nature, in silence, and then in community could help your crew.

On a rainy Thursday afternoon, in a plush pink conference room in Manhattan, a group of colleagues formed a meditation circle. As they sat in their own silence, sirens and traffic wailed below. “Bathe in the joy of truly loving yourself,” a former Tibetan Buddhist monk advised them. Over the course of an hour, the participants — co-workers at WayUp, a company that matches employers with recent college graduates and students — were guided through deep breaths, spoke to each other about “flow” and “powerful creative states,” and completed a self-hypnosis exercise. They bonded over their challenges with sleep and overworking. At the end of the session, one employee mentioned his chest feeling less tight; another described a pinch in her back dissipating. “That was awesome,” said Brandon Santulli, the office manager at WayUp. It was his first time meditating. “I feel very energized now,” he said, “and that’s not usually how I feel until I get another cup of cold brew.”

As companies have stressed the importance of work-life balance and mental health, and a younger, more open-minded work force has joined their ranks, wellness initiatives have ramped up in workplaces across the country. These optional activities, often scheduled during company hours, include basic meditation and yoga, as well as vision-boarding (creating a collage essentially), energy consulting, sound baths and hypnotherapy. They are meant to be restorative and instructive, without veering too didactic. And they’re not peculiar to millennial-led start-ups: Multinational corporations, restaurant owners and federal government agencies are among the employers calling for more wellness in the workplace. “No one wants to sit down for an hour and be lectured about stress management,” said Cassandra Bianco, the founder of Wellbeings, a network of corporate wellness consultants who, in addition to leading the meditation workshop at WayUp, have performed cacao ceremonies for Spotify and hosted an intuitive eating course at the Wing. “They want to sit for an hour and feel de-stressed.” The ultimate purpose is to encourage a corporate culture that takes a more holistic approach to employee well-being and embraces imperfection in the daily grind. “I’ve seen firsthand what five deep belly breaths before a meeting can do,” Ms. Bianco said.

Sometimes wellness experts are called upon in moments of crisis. Last fall, Jesse Israel, a meditation teacher who is currently on tour with Oprah and whose clients include Coca-Cola and Ford, was brought in by a “big retailer that recently went bankrupt,” he said, to lead a session during an annual companywide meeting. “The employees were really freaked out about their future, there was a really heavy energy in the room and the company was really going through it,” Mr. Israel said. “I did a keynote talk about toxic stress and stress culture, and I led a meditation.” During the session, he recalled, the owner of the company “got so deep in the meditation that the C.E.O. had to go over to him and shake him when the time was done because his body was so exhausted by what he was going through.” Exhaustion, Mr. Israel said, is a common affliction among employees. “What I see more than anything is the pathway to burnout,” he said. “People know that they’re stressed and they don’t do anything about it.”

‘A Band-Aid Over a Gaping Wound’

A common criticism of workplace wellness programs is that they offer a superficial solution to more deeply rooted institutional problems, including a 24/7 work culture, unmanageable workloads and unpredictable schedules. Most wellness programs have “limited if any effectiveness,” Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor of organizational behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, wrote in an email. In virtually every aspect of life, including employee health and medical interventions, “prevention is almost always much more effective, and cost effective, than treatment,” he said. On the other hand, wellness practices in a workplace setting may also be the only place where employees have access to them, said Monica Worline, a research scientist at the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford. Dr. Worline, who is also the chief executive of EnlivenWork, a company aimed at improving workplaces through research-based tools developed by academics, said there is mixed evidence on the efficacy of workplace wellness programs. More recent research, according to her, tends to deal with “the teaching of mindfulness, meditation and other techniques that help people in work settings to calm down their minds and refocus their attention.”

Another trap many organizations fall into is believing that the introduction of a mindfulness program can make up for significant underinvestment or inattention to employees’ actual working conditions, Dr. Worline said. She recalled visiting a “major hospital system” to help with a unit of doctors who were dealing with an increasing error rate in their work. After she ran a session for the team focused on compassion and “restoring meaning to medicine,” she discovered that the unit was short seven staffers and many employees were working double shifts. “They very rightly said to me, ‘You could sit here and talk to us about compassion all day long, it’s not going to make a difference in our stress levels,’” Dr. Worline said. “No wellness management is going to work until you fix the working conditions for people there. In that case, wellness programs were a Band-Aid over a gaping wound.”

Still, Mr. Israel, the meditation expert, is confident that as stress levels in the workplace increase, so will the demand for this kind of programming. Last year, at a hospitality design conference in Hollywood, Fla., he presented in front of hundreds of people from the industry. “Ninety-five percent of the people in the room had never meditated or done any of this before, and it was risky for the organizer to book me, but people loved it,” he said. “In these more traditional spaces where people are not in New York or Los Angeles, they’re starting to open up to this stuff.” And through these sessions, some of them are finding practices they can replicate on a more regular basis. Mr. Santulli, the office manager at WayUp, said he would look into hosting a weekly mindfulness session for the whole staff. “Stress and anxiety has been a big part of our life, and everything gets overwhelming sometimes,” he said. “This was the first time in a long time that I let go of this list of things I have to do, even for a moment.”

On Forest Therapy and The Return of the Great Blue Herons Weekend

Our Connection to Nature includes a rare, near-by Great Blue Heron Rookery that comes to life wildly each Spring.

We’re back, weathering what’s proven to be a fairly mild Midwest Winter, now with late April warmth showing up weeks ahead of a typical Michigan Spring. The 14th warmest winter in recorded history FYI. We’ll take the smoother seasonal segue, especially considering last year this very week we were often subzero, with bare hours above freezing all week. That said, like you, we’re enjoying overall milder Pacific air, with a south westerly jet stream flow slated to promote a more robust surge of spring-like weather across most of the continental U.S. 

All this talk of Spring has us looking forward to getting Outside and the upcoming retreat season; once the frogs begin their evening chorus, the Great Blue Herons aren’t far behind. The annual reappearance of the large, wading bird community that springs up in our nearby wetland’s Blue Heron Rookery is quite the natural wonder. And this year we’re celebrating their return by welcoming all birds and other beings for a late March Nature Immersive Weekend, offering another authentic Forest Therapy Experience. Lead by ANFT trained Wild Heart Guide John Scott Campbell, here’s Scott direct on the healing experience: 

Forest Therapy is a research-based framework for easing the harshness of our modern culture’s effects on health and well-being. You will be offered possibilities to interact with the natural world in a way that can lead to increases in both mental and physical health.  A non-rigorous experience, participation by almost anyone is possible. Walk into the forest.  Sit among the trees.  Feel the breeze.  Watch the ripples on the water.  Find the magic that silently waits for you to become present.  Step into the healing that has always been available to you from the Earth.  Invite the relationship to all living Beings to come alive.

John Muir said, “The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.” 

The Universe is calling you home. 

There is a path I can show you.  

Let me open the door.

 For more on Scott’s open invitation to join the Universe, see him at the door at www.wildheartguide.com. And register to reserve your spot for the Blue Heron Weekend here. More shortly on our Saturday monthly meditation class, late Spring comprehensive retreats with John Ashbrook, Fall yoga offerings and more.