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It's a marriage of seeming opposites like one of those appliance
ads where "Science Meets Art." But, for psychologist Edward Ryan,
Ph.D., and his wife, poet Sylvia Forges Ryan, teaming up to write
a book was a natural extension of both their relationship and of
their individual paths.
The book, "A Deep Breath: The Haiku Way to Inner Peace," features
a collection of 44 of Sylvia's haiku poems, three-line verses that
in Japanese tradition present the reader with an observation of
what appears to be contrasting images. Along with each poem, Edward,
a long-time practitioner of meditation, offers a brief "response"
to the images and thoughts conveyed in the lines.
Ryan, who recently retired as the associate chief of VA Connecticut
Healthcare, is on the faculty in the Yale psychiatry department
and runs a private practice in New Haven. He spoke with Massachusetts
Psychologist's Catherine Robertson Souter about the book and
what he brought to the exercise from his experience as a psychologist.
Q: How did you two decide to bring your somewhat disparate fields
together?
A: Well, my wife, Sylvia Forges Ryan, is a well-known poet and one
of the things that she's been interested in for several years has
been haiku poetry. She was the editor of the journal of The Haiku
Society of America for a few years and she's won all the major awards
for haiku both here and in Japan.
I've been a psychologist for the past 30 years and in the last
15 or 20 years, I've gotten interested also in meditation. I had
been pursuing [ways to] involve it in my work.
I had been encouraging her to put together a book of poetry. One
day we were chatting and we realized that each of us has lived somewhat
meditative lives, you might say. She, of course, is a writer and
a poet and psychotherapy is a kind of meditative experience in the
sense that you are focused, quiet, looking inward. And, of course,
there is my meditation itself.
Q: Did working together go smoothly? What was the process you
used?
A: Well, she selected about 44 poems and gave them to me. Then
I thought of a way of arranging them, according to the seasons,
which is a traditional way of organizing haiku poems. Then after
we had talked about them, I took them by myself and meditated on
them one at a time, focused on them, kept them with me during the
day. I thought about each one and would write down notes as I went
and finally put together a response to each poem.
Q: This seems to be a different type of book than what we've
seen out there. Did you have any trouble getting it published?
A: We were lucky - we didn't have much trouble. There was one
particular publishing house, Kodansha, that we were interested in
and we thought they would be interested. We sent it to them and
the editorial director emailed us that they would like to publish
it.
Q: The responses are more of an extension, rather than an explication,
of the poems, spurring the reader on to deeper reflection. What
kind of feedback have you received from your audience?
A: We've been very touched. We got a letter from one woman talking
about how she had some difficulties in her life and how the book
was very comforting to her. A number of people, when we've gone
to book signings, have talked to us about how they keep it by their
bedside, how it means a lot to them.
For many people, haiku is a new thing. It's not on everybody's
map. Some people maybe learned a little bit in school about haiku
being a short poem. So one of the things that people get from the
book is just the experience of reading these very fine haiku. And
then the framework that we put in place, with the meditation and
the responses, sort of stimulated a lot of people.
It's not by accident that people are having this response. We really
did try to write a book that would offer a little sanctuary away
from all the stress and provide a way to relax and drop into all
these poems and in a way to drop into their own inner selves. In
fact, the book begins with a simple introduction to just relaxing
and paying attention [with breathing exercises].
Q: How has the book sold?
A: It's doing okay. For the kind of book it is it's doing better
than they expected. It's kind of an interesting experience. We've
been to bookstores and libraries, and we are giving a daylong workshop
on Haiku and meditation in New York at the Insight Society and in
Barre, Mass. We've never done this but it's kind of fun to go around
and meet people, especially people who have read the book already
or people who haven't ever even heard of haiku or thought of meditation
and who really got into it.
Q: Who is the audience?
A: I think just about anybody. Of course, all the people who
are involved in the world of haiku, which is primarily Sylvia's
world, and people in the meditation world are interested. But along
with those two groups I think just people who are interested in
inner peace, relaxing and dropping into the poems. With all the
pressure that people are living under, it gives them a chance to
slow down and relax and focus on the present moment.
Then of course, a lot of my psychological colleagues have been
very interested in it because, I think, it sort of extends our normal
Western psychology a little bit by including meditation.
Q: How do you compare the two - your so-called Western training
and what you have discovered through your exploration of meditation?
A: I've been a psychologist for more than 30 years and I have
studied all the major Western psychologies - psychoanalysis, learning
theory, behavior therapy and client centered therapy and cognitive
behavioral therapy and all the different schools. What I discovered
in my exploration [of meditation and spirituality] was that through
prayer and meditation there is a powerful way of understanding the
mind that is different from our typical Western way. The Western
way is primarily focused on the contents of the mind and how they
are related to each other and to memory and experiences from the
past. The spiritual way is more interested in looking at the big
picture, not just what is going on in our individual minds and how
they are related to our individual paths and our relationships with
our families and the environment which we grew up in, but also in
who we are in relation to the whole big picture.
I found that to be an important step in my own growth and as a
psychologist and I wanted to see if there was something in it that
I could offer to people, primarily in therapy and also in my teaching.
I think the book really does contain a lot of that. It's really
focused on seeing the big picture.
"Deep Breath: The Haiku Way to Inner Peace," published by Kodansha
International, is available in major bookstores and online at Amazon.com.
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