The Contact Exercise

Purpose: To learn to o share a space with another Being without the interference generated by social behavior or evasive actions.

Exercise: The group should divide into pairs. Two members sit facing each other with their eyes no more than three feet apart. The group leader reads this instructions:

Relax the body as in the Draining Exercise and diffuse your vision. Intentionally divide your concentrated attention and place half of your attention on your own facial mask.

Keep you vision diffused, with your attention split between your facial mask and your partner’s facial mask. Help each other by making your best efforts to release all tensions of the facial mask.

Continue with the same relaxed facial mask as in the previous exercise. Many types of phenomena may appear over the facial masks, but continue until you can easily be with one another without having to dramatize social expressions and personality.

If contacts is disrupted, then interrupt the exercise to collect your attention and ask "Break. What happened?" Accept whatever explanation is offered (it should be brief). After acknowledging by saying "Thank you," begin again.

Don’t hesitate to interrupt if there has been a break in the contact. The attitude to maintain is that each tension response and reaction that occurs on the face of one partner make an effort to keep a relaxed facial mask.

You are trying to develop the ability to just "be" with someone without the machine manifestation and reactions. Keeping this is mind will help to correct the technique quickly. (Some people may find that they are able to achieve contact relatively quickly. But very often it will require between 5 and 20 hours to get beyond all the automatic reactions of the body and mind so you can be in a good clean contact with each other. In some cases it may take even longer than that.)

If you don’t have a partner…

You may find yourself in a situation that doesn’t afford you the opportunity of doing the contact exercise with another, i.e. you are alone (for the moment anyway). No need to despair, there are a number of possibilities open to practicing the contact exercise solo. In this section some options will be presented. Try some or try them all.

Sit in front of the mirror and use your reflection as the other. This exercise can be quite potent.
During a Zen Basics session run the contact exercise. In this case use only one of the three rocks.
Use a photograph of another.
Use a work of art as another. Gaze at the work of art as if you were looking at the facial mask of another.
Use a mask (Halloween, African, papier mache, etc.). Hang the mask at the appropriate height to simulate a person sitting across from you. Sit approximately 3 feet from the mask. Do the contact exercise.
Use a life mask taken from your own face.
Use the face of the clock as the face of another.
Use a candle flame as the facial mask of another.
Etc.

This exercise typically takes a cumulative time of 5 to 20 hours to get beyond all the automatic reactions of the body and mind. Once this is accomplished you can be in simple contact with another without the need for primate reactions. This exercise, when used in conjunction with Zen Basics, is a powerful tool for the development of being attention.