This Present moment

It might be that the warmth of early Autumn has lingered a little bit longer (19 degrees last weekend!) but the cycle of change is definitely moving towards winter. Perhaps it's the clocks moving back, or the incessant wind that kept me up for most of last night, but the last couple of days have definitely felt different, what some recognise as the beginning of the "dark half", the moment we dip underneath the horizon, making our way downwards towards the depths of winter.

As always, I find that nature does it best, I wonder sometimes why I look to other places to make sense of the world around me, including myself. The trees are getting prepared by releasing and letting go, by allowing their leaves to mature and fall, in order to preserve their energy and turn it inwards in order to support the beginnings of new growth. The old has to go to make way for the new. To me this speaks of the art of letting go, which is less about letting go but more about not holding on. A lot of us spend a fair amount of our time and our lives being so worried about letting go that we don't realise we become fixed in a state of holding on. Our body eventually lets us know. It starts in whispers and if we don't pay attention it starts shouting, until we do. Thankfully I see this less in myself these days, but I still see it in my students and my clients.

Despite this, I realised, not with any surprise it has to be said, that I resist the process of moving downwards (especially when I want to see it moving upwards!), of letting go. It feels less comfortable, as I suppose it feels unfamiliar, but over time, despite the felt uncomfortableness, I have learned to trust the practice and to trust the process. I have probably spoken about this before, as this is a practice I always return to: To arrive in the moment between what has been and what is about to happen by turning my attention to my felt embodied presence and the feedback it gives me in this moment. In relationship with the breath I find myself in the dance of the swelling of the inhale and the releasing of the exhale, reminding myself that in order to continue staying present, I must continue moving with the rhythms of the breath, not grasping and not restricting. It reminds me that there is a time for expanding and breathing in and there is a time for releasing and breathing out, each must happen for the other to exist. In this moving of the breath in and out and watching the leaves falling, I am reminded that it is ok not to be holding on and that, largely, any efforts to exercise control will be for the most part futile as they are an exercise of the ego.

We plan our days, our lives, very specifically and intentionally, unknowingly creating fertile ground for pain and disappointment in the process. There is a saying in Cyprus that goes something like "man makes plans and God laughs". Of course we do need to engage with some planning ahead, it's healthy and fulfilling to dream of a different, better future. But not when it comes at the cost of this present moment, because we are more focused on the outcome and concerned with what it might be like tomorrow, rather than the experience of the process in this moment. Most of us know too well the experience of waiting for the next best thing to happen, the next job, the next day, the new relationship, before we can start living. We forget that the living can only happen in this moment. Instead we invest a lot of time and energy in wishing it to be something different.

Instead can we accept it as it is? Can we step into it willingly and with the openness it asks so that it may change us, mould us into our becoming.

Someone recently described Svadhyaya, the attitude and practice of self-study and self-awareness as a "gentle listening". I like that. It makes sense that to really listen we must be completely present and in that presence we might come to know something of this moment and in consequence of ourselves, as this is the place we can really exist.

When we really come to be present and "listen" we start to align our pace and tempo with the universal sound and by following this rhythm we remain in tune, in the flow, present.

The idea of keeping control over the beat of your drum becomes nonsensical when you have tuned in to the grand orchestra of the universe. Instead you are happy to be led, to be an instrument, a part in the whole, ready to let your leaves fall, because the time calls for it.

But how do we listen? And how do we step into trusting that what we think we are listening is what is.

Yoga offers us tools to safely explore modalities of listening. It creates a space to experience ourselves as we turn up in this moment. It draws our attention and our consciousness to the body we inhabit and the way the breath accommodates, the way feelings and thoughts are generated when we move in space in a certain way and as we do so we create a threat of understanding. We start to connect to the "feeling-tone", as Erich Schiffman speak of it, of ourselves.

If you want to spend a day with a focus on the experience of your embodied presence, our "feeling-tone" come and join our Finding Wellness: Our Physical Self retreat.