Thank you for stopping by.
With much love and blessings,
Viki Markham

My life has been a personal search for ways to lessen my own and others' emotional suffering out of my own need to get relief from what I experienced. It began in Africa, watching two sides of a conflict - colonial rule and the fight for independence. My family was in the middle, being liberal whites, and I had to deal with the dichotomy of being part of a privileged white minority while living in the African bush with my black friends. Then I came to the US to go to college and dealt with the culture shock of entering the counterculture of the Vietnam era. I almost didn’t make it through that.

I ended up looking for answers in religion and psychology. At first, the religions I encountered didn’t seem to be alive to me, both Western Christianity and Eastern Buddhism. It looked to me like they hoped that God was really there, but didn’t really know it. Or they hoped that they would get enlightened someday, but really didn’t think it could happen in this lifetime. So I chose to focus on psychology, on healing dysfunctional habits of mind and emotion.

After 20 years of continuing to learn each new psychological method that came along, I realized something was missing because I wasn’t seeing enough change in myself or others. So I went back again to look at spirituality. I was personally drawn more to Eastern spirituality, but I do not believe that any one spiritual path is better than another as long as one is open. I wanted to see if I could find a teacher who felt alive to me. It took me awhile, but I did find a few people who felt like they had fresh eyes and a personal experience to relate to me. I took it very deeply to heart and gave everything I had to it, meditating, and studying. It was the missing piece for me, but it didn’t replace psychology, I found that it added to it.

I found in the end, that psychology uncovers the unconscious emotional patterns of projecting onto the present, our old habits from childhood. We react from our memories, rather than from the information we are receiving in the present. It is like being in a trance from the past, an instant replay superimposed over the now. Psychology acknowledges this, and has developed methods to bring this into consciousness.

Whereas, some meditation, or what I like to call experiential spirituality, teaches us to be able to sit with the strong emotions that come up, and not do anything, at least temporarily. To allow whatever emotion is there, to just be present, to accept it, to not have to act impulsively in the old habitual ways. We learn how to let the strong feelings or thoughts just be there, without chasing them, analyzing them, obsessing over them, or having to fix them.

It is this which allows healing to happen, as the emotions will move naturally toward a healthier stance. It is as if they need our attention before they can resolve. And it is usually the case that we did not get that attention from the adults in our lives when we were children. It is possible to get this attention from another human being now, but ultimately we have to learn the skill ourselves. I believe it takes another human modeling this behavior of being able to be calm in the face of stress that allows us to learn how to do this ourselves. A meditation teacher or a therapist can do this modeling for us, depending on their own level of skill.

There is also a deeper side to what meditation can bring. It teaches us to not take these feelings personally, we see that we are Not our feelings or thoughts. We are something else, that which observes them, something which cannot be defined. Eventually this experience of being the unknown observer, gives us the personal seeing, the actual experience that we are not separate isolated beings, we are connected to all life. There is an awareness that there is something at work here besides what the eye can see, there is something behind life, some purpose, some benevolence that cannot be defined. This intuitive sense that “all is well” becomes a steadfast, calm foundation on which to stand.
It is experienced, it does not come from reading a book or from a belief.

While there is a deep peace that comes with the “experiential spirituality” of meditation, it does not address the hidden unconscious, that which we do not want to see. I have seen very well respected meditation teachers with blind spots to their own unconscious issues. We are unconsciously defended against giving up our Story, that which helped us make sense out of the world when we were small. The unconscious attachment to this story has to be acknowledged. Psychology has developed ways to invite this unconscious into the conscious.

I came to the conclusion that both spiritual and psychological methods were needed to address human suffering. Without the ability to sit with a strong emotion, which one learns from meditation practice, it is difficult to heal pain or fear. Without the skill of awareness of the unconscious from psychology, we never get to these feelings. And without the experiential sense that “ all is well” which one gets from any spiritual contemplative practice, one has less of a foundation in the world to relax into.

It is not just our own suffering I am talking about, but when we project onto others from our unconscious memories, that which they do not deserve, we perpetuate the hurt which causes the projections in the first place. We carry on the hurt of centuries, which has been passed down from parents to children for eons. It causes unnecessary separation and pain between people, and ultimately causes fear, greed, and war.

This is why I became a therapist, this is why I learned to meditate, and I cannot separate the two. These two practices have brought me a long way in alleviating my own stress in life, and being able to help others with theirs. I am grateful for the journey that has brought me here. I hope that it has made me a wiser, more compassionate human being.

Much love and peace,
Viki Markham

How do we cope with the kind of stressful anxiety brought up by these difficult economic times? One of the most useful tools to learn is to not be attached to the outcome of any situation. You might think that would require not caring about the outcome, or adopting an attitude of resignation, but neither has to be true. It is possible to prefer a certain outcome, while not getting upset if that outcome does not happen.

We all know the feeling we get when we desire something. Try this experiment: Follow this feeling in your body, where do you experience it? Notice the sensations it brings up: butterflies in your stomach, heart speeded up, breathing faster, whatever is there for you. Stay with these feelings in your body; don’t go into the story about it in your head. Notice that the feelings change as you pay attention to them, let them move and evolve as you simply watch. Notice how they change, what is different in the end?

Here is another experiment: ask yourself what could be the “worst case” scenario of possible outcomes in this situation, and how would I react? If you absolutely had to deal with the worst situation, what would you do? Go over your plan to deal with it. Then ask yourself how bad would this be, really, could you handle it if you had to? What might change for you? What would not change for you? Would it be the end of the world?

The next experiment is to imagine that you don’t get to have what you were hoping for. Let yourself feel the disappointment strongly, and follow the feelings again in your body. Where are the sensations physically located? What sensations do you feel, hot, cold, quick energy, slow, dark, light, colors, movement, stagnation? Stay with the feeling in your body without going into the story in your head about not having what you want. Let the feelings move, change, and evolve, while you just watch and experience it. Again, notice how they change and what is different in the end?

These three exercises will help you to accept whatever outcome happens, and to let go of any feelings of disappointment. The last piece in learning acceptance is to realize that we cannot know the full, overall, bigger picture in any situation. There is a point where we come to trust in a larger intelligence in the world, that in the larger view of things, this maybe the right outcome. There is surrender to the wisdom of the world, even if it rains on our picnic that day. There is no point in getting angry at the rain, we know it is there for a reason. Hopefully, we can see other disappointments in our lives as we do the rain, holding the possibility that they are there for a reason.

First, commit to some quiet time for yourself daily even though your anxiety makes you feel like you have to DO something immediately to fix things, or, you would rather just avoid feeling anything. You will do a much better job of fixing things if you make sure you have the right attitude and perspective first. And you will actually be able to get past those difficult feelings, if you take some time to connect with yourself and to remind yourself of what is important to you.

Start by emptying your thoughts and feelings out about the day, the week, your worries, your concerns, things that upset you, things that touched you, your happy moments. (This can be done by writing in a journal or talking into a recorder, whatever works for you.) Do this until there is nothing left that has an emotional charge on it. This stops these things from going round in your head. They are now recorded and you can go back to them later if you want to. If there is anything negative, see if you can see it from a different angle, see if you can reframe it in a more positive light. Write down an argument against it, as if you were talking your best friend out of a negative perspective.

Next, remind yourself of what you believe in. Whatever your spiritual belief or philosophy of life is, remind yourself of this foundation in your life, because this is what you can stand on. “What do we believe in?” It is important that we each answer this question for ourselves because we need to make sense out of what is happening in the world around us. So whatever that is for you, get clear on where you stand, and remind yourself of this regularly.

Now write down what you know to be your positive qualities and strengths, and remind yourself of these periodically. Remind yourself of who you are and what abilities you know you do have. This is hard for many of us to do because we have been taught to criticize ourselves. Imagine a scale with two sides balancing each other. For most of us, the negative side is weighed down by tons of criticism, and the positive side is way too light. We need to fill up the positive side with positive thoughts about us from good people in our lives, and from ourselves. Give yourself some encouragement and love for who you are and the effort you put into your life.

Give yourself ten minutes of this attention each day and you will begin to feel the positive effects of your own support in your life.

Many Blessings,

Viki Markham

Rhodesia was an apartheid country. I had to get special permission, since I was white, to go to the local black African high school where my parents taught. While I would be integrating a school, it was also a difficult decision because I would be taking the place of a black African student’s education. As a privileged white child, I could get education anywhere. Whereas black Africans were tested every two years, and half their number would be cut from the next level. By the time they got to high school, they were the best of the best, and a high school education was highly valued. I was given permission to go to the school, and I spent the next four years there before coming to the US for college.

I tell you this story to share with you the deep and abiding gratitude that this experience gave me for many things that we take for granted in this country. Education is one of them, but there are many more.

Simply walking into a regular supermarket here is still mind boggling to me even after all these years. The abundance and variety of food we have here is astounding, especially since we don’t have to grow it ourselves. Simply having clean running water in our homes is a miracle by African standards, since most have to walk their water home from wells or rivers. We also have electricity in our homes, light to read by, and books to read. The fact that we can drive almost anywhere we want instead of walking to our destination is amazing. Our houses that shelter us are enormous by African standards. We have central heating and air conditioning. We are entertained by televisions, computers, and i phones.

I remember well the experience of going through several droughts in Africa. People were starving all around us. As a child, I couldn’t understand why we had plenty but others did not. Yet that was the privilege of growing up a white American child in Africa.

I don’t tell you this for you to feel guilty, but rather to underline the depth of gratitude that we can feel for our lives here. I would love for us to not take this abundance for granted. Appreciation is a gift in life, it can carry us through difficult times. At a time when many of us are worried about our economy and what it may mean for us, appreciation for what we do have can give our lives joy and a simple peace.

Much Love and Blessings,
Viki Markham

It inspired me to ask myself what “dance” I would do on that stage in front of that crowd if I had the stage available to me? What would be my passion? I know that whatever it would be for me (inspirational words or African dance, or something entirely new), as long as it came from that deep source, the true heart, from action that comes from a knowing within myself, from spontaneity, genuineness, and an expression that wells up from my own passion, it would be appreciated.

We recognize that source when it bubbles up in anyone; we admire it, and are drawn to it. And we need to let it out in ourselves. We need to not be afraid of expressing it in the world. It comes from the true Self, without thought getting in the way. It is us at our most creative, whatever we do. And when we stifle it, we are stifling the higher Self, the Source. It is not just the arts that come from this Source. It is where Einstein’s equations came from, and where the inspiration for my writing this comes from. It is fundamentally who we are, when we get out of the way.

I am not suggesting that we completely let all our inhibitions go, such as anger and resentment, which come from the Adapted child in us that alters our behavior to please others. Rather I am suggesting we let the unbridled Natural child in us play, which it would do freely if we let it. It is the part of us that is passionate, that can sing, dance, play, express words, write, swim, run, paint, garden, or solve math problems with gusto.

I think this is why we all appreciate nature and animals so much. Nature has no pretense, and animals are completely themselves. They make us smile and laugh because they are transparent, and it delights us. Let us delight each other in the same way.

When Spring begins each year, I try to get outside every day for a walk. I love doing this, especially at the end of my work day. As I walked past my neighbor’s house this spring, I would see their dog looking longingly out the window at me, sending me vibes to take him with me. Finally, one day I saw his owner out in the yard and I offered to take him along. As the mother of four boys, she was happy to have someone besides her take the task on. But for me, it quickly became not a task, but a joy.

This dog, Jack, personifies the simple Joy of appreciating Life. He has taught me to embrace the moment in a way that that no meditation class has done before. He responds to my arrival each day with a joyful, but quiet, howl. Then he grabs the leash and brings it to me. I put it on him, and we take off with him holding the leash in his mouth to pull me along more quickly. He cannot wait to get out into the forest.

Once out there, I take him off the leash, and he bursts off in a run down the trail to rival any 100-yard dash. He disappears around the bend and I keep walking. Soon, I can hear him roaring down the trail back to me to make sure I am still there. As I round the bend I see him bearing down on me going as fast as he can run with the happiest look on his face, a smile from ear to ear. He roars past me in the other direction, makes a u turn that looks like it belongs in a cartoon, and comes to walk beside me looking up at me with a satisfied expression.

We have a route we take which brings us eventually to a creek. He runs on ahead of me and gets to the creek first. He comes tearing back to me dripping wet, as if to say, “Hurry up!”. We spend the next hour wading in the creek, throwing and fetching sticks, and sitting in the sun. It is the most peaceful time of my day.

Jack usually runs up and down the creek canyon, exploring every nook and cranny, or running straight down the creek bed with glee, water splashing in all directions. But when I sit down on a log to soak up the sun, he comes over to put his head in my lap, and we sit in silence, listening to the bird song, or watching the butterflies go by. The stillness of the forest takes over and I can’t help but live in the moment.

I tell you my story of my daily walk with Jack in the hopes that it will convey the joy that I have had the privilege to experience this summer. My boyfriend jokes that “he has been replaced by a dog”, but the truth is I am so drawn to be out in the woods with Jack because of the immediacy of the moment out there. I realize that I don’t pay enough attention to that immediacy in my everyday life. Jack has reminded me that joy is in the simple daily things that we do, in appreciating what we have. It is in the shared moments with another. It is in nature, in a small wildflower along the path. It is in stopping to notice what is there, in listening to the sounds of the birds, or feeling the cool mountain creek on my dusty feet.

May you find your own experience of the joy of summer this year in discovering the immediacy of your moment, in small daily things, and in noticing what is there.

Much love and peace,
Viki Markham