Create a Clearing
The poem I am reading in class this week and posted below, speaks to the fundamental reason why we practice: to STOP and listen.
In our modern world, we can get so swept away by the routine and pace of our life, that we fail to take the time to stop. Even if our actions are wholesome and aligned with our deepest intentions, sometimes the mind can get a little clouded or "mucky". It is sort of like driving down a gravel road- dust gets churned up. Meditation and Yoga are like stopping on the dirt road and letting all the dust settle so you can see clearly. Then you have time to look around, re-route, re-evaluate, and perhaps re-direct.
Clearing
by Martha Postlewaite
Do not try to save
the whole world
or do anything grandiose.
Instead, create
a clearing
in the dense forest
of your life
and wait there
patiently,
until the song
that is your life
falls into your own cupped hands
and you recognize and greet it.
Only then will you know
how to give yourself
to this world
so worth of rescue.
How to create a clearing:
1: Take 5
Stop whatever you are doing. Get up from the computer, turn off your device. Light a candle. Lay on your bed or take a walk outside.
2: Come into your body
In Chinese energetic medicine, intelligence does not come from the brain, rather, from our body, through the energy and spirit of our organs. Because Chi (energy) follows attention, if we drop our attention into our body, our Chi flows there, and we have access to their wisdom. After a yoga session, students often come up to me and say that they have found a solution to their problem, or have a new great idea for a project. Meditation teacher and Psychotherapist also speaks beautifully to this concept of body intelligence:
"The more we come home to our bodies, the more access we have to our creativity & intelligence- we stay up in our minds because we actually think it's going to take us to better places. But if we can stay at home in our body our thoughts actually spring forth in a more rich and fresh way- thoughts become more creative and useful."
Excercise, Yoga, meditation, can be an excellent way to come from the head and into the body. Feeling the hands, face, feet and inside the mouth, in particular, helps drop the mind into the body, as these areas have the most neural tissue.
3: The Sacred "No"
The sacred "no" is about taking a break from the endless internal dialogue that creates so much noise in our mind. Thinking is not bad, but it takes energy. To create a clearing, we want to take a break from discursive thinking. In Tibet, there is a saying that "meditation is a holiday for the heart". Saying no to thinking does not mean thoughts won't come to the mind. It just means we are not feeding the storyline with our energy.
xo Stephanie
