When You Don't Scratch That Itch

A Mindfulness in Daily Life Story

You can learn a lot about yourself when you get an itch. Will you scratch it or won’t you? We know what happens when we scratch it. We experience the pleasure of instant relief as the itch dissolves amid the sensations of fingernails scraping skin. But we can really learn about ourselves when we choose not to scratch that itch. Let me explain….

I recently found myself unexpectedly in the company of someone that I don’t particularly like or trust. A difficult person you could say. We were in close quarters, in an elevator, and we stood in that awkward period of silence waiting for the inscrutable machinery to click into place and send us upward. In the few moments that we were together, though, I was surprised when we both exchanged greetings and indulged in some pleasant small talk.

Later I thought about this interaction. Here was someone I didn’t like. Yet if that was so, how come we had had a positive interaction? After reflecting for a moment I recognized that I was feeling more relaxed and undefended that day. Why? Because for the first time in a couple of weeks I had had a longer, deeper meditation. My recent sits had been of shorter duration due to the disruption of the holidays and my practice lately had been a bit dull. Because I had sat for a longer period of time on this particular day my nervous system reset itself and I became unplugged from the rush and reactivity common to the season. As a result, I was simply less prone to embody my bad tendencies and was able to experience this person’s presence on its own terms – as another human being in the world who was in need of kindness, respect, and meaning.

It was really quite striking to me how the simple fact of meditating for a longer period that day had deactivated the power of my habitual negativity. I am also reminded that there can be a fine line between the kind, caring and resilient version of myself that I like to think I am and the schmuck I can be when my meditation practice hasn’t been strong.

But I’d actually like to dig a bit deeper into what it was about my meditation that day that allowed my heart to remain open during a potentially difficult social encounter in an elevator.

I am a non-monastic meditator who sits once per day. Like other “householders” I find that it can be a complicated matter to set aside 15, 30 or 45 minutes in a 16-hour day and devote it to cultivating mindful presence. There are many things competing for our time, after all, and many of them are things we need to do, like making breakfast, commuting, working, driving the kids to school, cooking, cleaning, socializing, etc. Which means that when we sit down for our daily session of meditation, all of these needs are impacting our minds and bodies, roiling our nervous systems with the energy of schedules, plans, and obligations. (This is why it can be so helpful and important to go on a residential meditation retreat for a number of days or weeks – you get to leave your daily routine behind and devote every moment of every day to practice. I highly recommend it).

So when we householders first sit down to practice there’s often a lot of mental and physical noise going on. As a result, restlessness and anxiety is a very common experience. Sometimes or even often a session of practice can consist almost entirely of fidgeting in one’s chosen posture, constantly getting distracted by runaway thoughts, and finding large gaps in one’s attention.

Take the simple and universal experience of having an itch. Will you scratch that itch or not?

I have pretty bad allergies. They seem to be especially active as I am waking up and starting my day – in other words, right about the time I want to meditate. Sometimes it can take almost the entire session just to stabilize my runny nose and start feeling settled. People often think that meditation is supposed to be fun and enjoyable. What they don’t understand is that meditation is merely a reflection of the current conditions of your life – there are pleasant moments and unpleasant moments and neutral moments. Being present for all those moments is enormously beneficial, even if it doesn’t happen to feel especially good while you are doing it.

So, getting back to that itch….

On this particular morning, as I sat down to practice and closed my eyes, I noticed right away that my allergies were a problem. My nose was running, I sneezed a few times, and the sneezing triggered itching all over my face. I had to come back to my breath over and over again. Fifteen minutes went by and I still wasn’t getting any traction. My attention remained scattered, I was itching everywhere and I had to keep tending to my runny nose. If I had to analyze my meditation at that moment, I’d surely conclude that it sucked.

About 30 minutes in I noticed that the runny nose had finally stopped. It was just the itching I had to deal with now. Within a few minutes I found that I was able to pay more attention to my breath than to my itching. This was a positive development and it had taken me 30 minutes to get there. When an itch was especially acute, I would scratch it. As the minutes passed, though, my attention began to steady more on the breath. The steadiness of attention opened up for me the innate stillness inside the mind. That stillness was a pleasure and I followed it as my mind was naturally drawn to it.

A moment later a shift occurred when a bad itch came and my hand started to rise to scratch it, but rather than interrupt the pleasure of my building concentration, my hand stopped in mid air and gently descended back to my lap. This happened over and over. I would get an itch, my impulse would be to get rid of it by scratching, but because my awareness now included the breath, and the pleasure I felt because of the concentration and steadiness of mind, I found the mental space to resist. Calm and focus gathered steadily and the pressures of life and the world began to fall away from me. Itches came and went but I just let them do their thing. The stillness deepened, and I was completely immobile for a few minutes, until, finally, my meditation timer went off.

It was the first time in weeks that I had gotten to that still place inside my mind and body. And I felt the difference right away. I was more grounded than I had been in awhile, my chest was open and relaxed, and during the day I felt a greater patience with myself and others. While interacting with people is always a two-way street, I have no doubt that those few minutes of concentrated attention that morning conditioned my positive elevator interaction later that day. Which is why it is also so important to understand that even a few minutes of stillness and focus can change the trajectory of your day. By not scratching that itch for just a few minutes, I was training my mind and heart to be patient and less judgmental.

I sat for 45 minutes that day and most of it was miserable, but those 7 or 8 minutes of stillness were pure gold and a great reminder to me of why we practice.