Self Centering

The New Canaan Academy is not exactly the best known educational institution around Hanover. Most people, in fact, have never heard of it. And yet four times a week the NCA sponsors campus meditation classes for students and community members, which include both the familiar sitting variety and the more exotic Tai Chi Chuan. Unfortunately, the Zen basketball games are not so convenient - they're held down in the Academy's main building in Canaan, New Hampshire.

The man in charge of this "School for Meditative Arts," as he calls it, is Deneal Amos, a 51-year-old transplanted San Franciscan. Some 25 years ago, Amos began to develop his own brand of home- grown mysticism, borrowing terms and practices from Eastern religions and martial arts, but applying them in a Western manner. For example, he recommends meditation to assist in learning mathematics, reading, and writing. And some of his concentration techniques - such as assuming a rigid body position - come from no less a stalwart Western institution than the U.S. Army. Today, Amos and the dozen or so other members of the Academy live at the Canaan headquarters, and offer courses there and at Dartmouth.

Since Amos calculates that a mastery of the art requires about 30 years of practice, he urges prospective pupils to begin classes right away in any one of three forms: meditation while stationary (sitting), while moving (Tai Chi Chuan), and while really moving (Zen basketball). All three hold "centering" as the prime objective, a concept Amos describes as "finding your own middle," or "discovering true self, knowledge," or "exploring the phenomenal monad." Which is, of course, not as easy as it sounds.