Mind & Body
The funniest thing once happened to me after a really good yoga class. The part of my brain that does the math turned off. I first noticed this one day when I trotted down the stairs from my lofted yoga studio, floating on my happy post-yoga cloud, and emerged onto the bright sunny street. I ducked straight into the Italian pastry shop at street level to pick up some cannoli. Yoga = good. Yoga + cannoli = better!!!
The woman ducked out back to fill my cannoli with ricotta cream, then brought my open box back to the gleaming chrome and glass counter to rain down a flurry of powdered sugar. She deftly pulled fine red and white twine, swirled like a candy-cane, from the brass canister hanging above the counter and tied the box with string. My senses were so alive from yoga that the pastry prep unfolded like vivid ballet. When she rang me up, I reached into my wallet, and pulled the bills from inside — three $20 bills. I looked at them, confused for a moment, unsure if I had enough to add a couple of calzones to my order. Of course I did. A few simple pastry and small spinach-pies run much less than $60, but in that moment, my brain just could not figure it out what to do with the numbers, so I handed her the entire wad of cash. She looked at me like I was pazza, handed back 2 of the bills, then got me the calzones and change from the $20.
If I hadn’t been so blissed out on yoga, I’d have been mortified. “At least she doesn’t know I’m a math teacher.”
This is all to say that there IS such thing as too-chill-for-math. In order to preform number work, I have to be engaged in my cognitive abilities. I have to be up in my thinking. I can’t just be blissed out in the beauty of this incredible moment, right here, right now.
And yet, a great many of my friends and my students get SO caught up in the brain that they trip themselves up in the other direction. “Here is a math problem. It looks like a challenge.” snowballs into “OMG, I’m going to fail! What will I tell my parents? What will my teacher think of me! I’ll never get into college. I’ll be the laughing stock of my whole school. All of my dreams are ruined and everyone will know I’m a failure!” and on and on and on. If the brain overworks on the big picture, the adrenaline starts to rush and math skills are pulled out from under us by the endocrine system, kicking into gear for a fight-or-flight race to survival. This is also no good for computational power, and it’s not nearly as much fun as flubbing my pastry purchase.
To find the play and flow in math, we must strike a happy medium. Learning how to anchor in the physical body can help. First, it teaches us about our own patterns of panic. Then, it can open up space for learning new skills.
Every Friday, I used to lead my math classes in meditation. One of the simplest and best is the body-scan, a foundational meditation in the secular Mindfulness-Based-Stress-Reduction (MBSR). Why bring mindfulness to math class? A million great reasons! Because the data supports it. Because it especially helps kids who CHOKE on tests. Because it teaches kids about themselves, including their learning patterns, opening up more possibilities. Because it regulates students when they’re too jazzed up for the weekend to sit down and learn. Because I teach the whole student, not just math.
This week, I made you a 15 minute body scan meditation without music. Feel free to layer it with music if you like. This meditation does not say anything about math. It simply invites you to tune into your body. Beyond this recording, make a tiny habit of tuning into your body in the spaces between: brushing your teeth, standing 6’ apart in line, sitting at a red-light, walking down the sidewalk, singing in the shower. Feel for sensations in your body. At first, it’s difficult. Attention is difficult. Finding physical sensation is difficult. It’s ok that it’s hard. There’s only one rule: meet your experience with EQUINIMITY. That means, allow whatever happens and favor curiosity over judgment.
With practice, you can build a habit out of coming home to your body. As long as you live, you will have the home that is this body, so if you’re ever in duress (for instance, you sit down to your final exam in math and your mind goes blank from the stress of it), you can come home to the pressure of the chair beneath your bottom, the air on your skin, the rise and fall of your breath in your chest. Stay with the physical sensations until the body is ready to get back to thinking work. Make your body your touchstone in all things, especially math.
And if you go a little too far and forget how to use money? It’s ok! Like all feelings, bliss is temporary. Enjoy it until it dissipates and your number skills return. I’ve never met anyone who failed a math test on account of bliss. Though I’d love to hear the story if you have!
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Dedicating this post to three of the yoga teachers who helped embarrass me at the pastry shop in the best possible way and informed my mindfulness work with teen math scholars.
Emily Reid, whose incredible Borealis Community Yoga studio succumbed to the economic disaster of pandemic. Her new project is Seasonal Intentions
Veronica Wolff Casey, who is full of Ayurveydic knowledge (basically magic!) over at at Be Well In Love
Josh Schmidt, who is especially skilled at helping people make sense of that equanimity piece and overcome frustration with meditation