Let the water settle; you will see the moon and stars mirrored in your being. Rumi Well 2016 has definitely been a turbulent year. I am sitting contemplating how so few words can have so much energy behind them! This global uncertainty is affecting us in many ways; every single client I have seen this past week has held shock in their bodies and have taken more time to settle into stillness.
Yes, there is a storm raging out there. Yes, it more than likely will get worse. No, we do not have to always be at the effect of it. We have a choice as to how we react to things. The question is what informs this choice? Primarily, it is our upbringing and the stories we hear and become attached to. What we often forget is that the filters we view the world through are not necessarily real and that it is very possible to change how we perceive, and thus react to, something. Making space between an event and our reaction gives us time to really be with our authentic response, not our automatic response. This is where breathe comes in. This is where presence comes in. This is what stillness offers us. It resonates with the deepest parts of us. It allows us to see the bigger picture, to feel the connectedness of all things and to pause and reflect. Most of us feel we don't have the luxury of time to access stillness. There's a huge list of jobs to do and we rush from one thing to the next. The only stillness we generally know is the unconscious type (generally called sleep!). Most of us do not realise the importance of stillness. When we come back from holiday, we usually feel revitalised and think it's purely because we haven't had to work. But the primary reason is that we've experienced stillness and been with the elements of nature - the ocean, the mountains, the forests- which nourish us at a core level. What I know now and wish I knew when I was rushing around in the corporate world in my 20s and 30s is that time is not the enemy. Just 10 minutes of stillness and presence a day frees up more time than it takes! Ironic, really. But knowing stillness does not seem to come naturally anymore to us as a race; it is like we have become so disassociated from our bodies we've forgotten some fundamentals. So what can you do if you are feeling called to stillness but cannot access it? Mindfulness training is becoming trendy, which is great, so you could join a class. You could also try a craniosacral therapy session as stillness is at the heart of that. Or you could simply sit in a quiet place and simply be with your breath, noticing how your body expands with each in breath and how it changes with each exhalation. Keeping your awareness within your body and noticing how different parts of you feel is key to accessing stillness. I urge you to give it a go and notice what changes happen - both emotionally and physiologically. |
May you walk in Beauty
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Copyright of Ri Ferrier 2024
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