Sunday Snapshot: Stillness
Living in the world in the aftermath of a major catastrophe is a reminder that our time on this planet is precious and fleeting. Times like these are like the pauses after a deep exhale before the breath comes back in.
Paying attention to the breath puts us in immediate connection with our body. Similarly, an exhale from the Earth—in the form of a natural disaster—puts us in immediate connection with the world we live in. Whether we marvel at its power or get angry at what’s been lost, or feel it’s just the way things are, we are awakened to our powerlessness. To the fact that each of us does indeed have a limited number of inhalations and exhalations.
I’m a person who struggles with meditation. My life moves as fast as the next person’s, and I rarely prioritize something I know I want: the cultivation of stillness. Instead I take for granted those infinitesimally small pauses that happen before I inhale again. But from time to time I get my fix, reminding me again how grounding pausing can be. This week I happened to stay in savasana at the end yoga rather than rush out of the room like I often do. I happened to have been left on the table by my acupuncturist longer than I would have wanted, ultimately allowing me to surrender myself to my to-do list. I happened to have particularly paid attention to the physical sensation of my body collapsing into bed after a couple of particularly grueling days.
I’m envious of people who are naturally inclined toward stillness. Those who take time to notice the inhales and the exhales, the natural rhythms of life. I mostly strive to creates those moments when I remember, or occasionally, in weeks like these, I remember that this stillness is always there, always accessible in the chaos of the everyday.
This week I’ve felt the stillness in the snow-draped trees of South Lake Tahoe that seemed as if they should break under such weight; in the pure joy that graced the face of my good friend’s one-and-a-half-year-old when she met my eyes right before darting at break-neck speed out of the room, shrieking in delight; in the silent bliss of morning, ten minutes before the alarm clock forces me out of bed, listening to my lover’s even breathing; in the awesome pause that follows a torrential burst of rain whose power is both thrilling and threatening.
What is your relationship with stillness?
Where do you find it or create it?
How does it show up for you?
Nice job on your blogs!! REally nice!
love ya,
Mama-san
Always good to have support from Mom. Thank you!!
Thanks for some quality points there. I am kind of new to the internet , so I printed this off to put in my file, any better way to go about keeping track of it then printing?
Hi there, I think printing out the posts you like is a great idea, but the good news about the archive is that you’ll always have access to what’s here when you log on, and if you go to BLOG you can actually search all of our posts by our names, by hitting the link on the blog author themselves. Thanks so much for writing and reading!
Thanks for an idea, you sparked at thought from a concept I hadn’t thought of before . Now lets see if I can do something with it.