Stillness

I realise that this one word, as all words, is probably landing pre-loaded and thereby I am risking being misunderstood or understood differently from the meaning I want to communicate.

Stillness for me translates as a space of calm, of no demands and no expectations, as well as a place from which I feel grounded, settled and content. What does ‘Stillness’ means to you? What images, what feelings conjure up, and are they wanted or unwanted?

I’ve been fortunate to have found my way to yoga at the very beginning of my adulthood, and through it I have found, and cultivated, moments of, what I understand as Stillness.

The definition of yoga itself speaks to the experience of ‘nirodha’, the suspension of the thinking mind, the practice of yoga being the cultivation of directing and focusing the mind.  Yoga offers us a space to attend to our ourselves in our entirety, starting with fully inhabiting and embodying our physical bodies. It draws our attention to the physical sensations, the feedback when our bones make contact with the ground, when our skin stretches across limbs and joints. And in this process of becoming inhabited within a posture, consciously and with careful attention, we become embodied.

In these moments we may find ourselves arriving fully present in the moment, and in stillness. And this is only the beginning, because as we arrive more fully, we start to tune into the pace of our breath and the natural rhythms of our existence, as a unique experience but also as part of the whole. Yoga afterall, also denotes union. We are consciously present with the feelings, the emotions and the thoughts that are arising.

I continue to practice yoga, mainly for the same reasons I started practicing in the first place- to settle my mind and maintain a sense of sanity. I practice, to consciously meet myself and check in where I have been, where I am, where I want to go. I practice, to experiment with ways of being – physically, energetically, mentally, emotionally – and understand myself through different lenses, in a space that feels safe and private. Safe and with all permissions granted, to arrive to those initial understandings of myself, for the first time. To experience the moments of stability and stillness that are filled with contentment and ease.

It is a constantly moving world that we live in and the key is to find the contentment, the ease and that sense of stillness and anchoring within us, whilst fully participating in the moving, always changing world that we are a part of. We practice first on the mat, so that we can move with those understandings off the mat, in the “real” world, where we are faced with the complications, the intensity and the intricacies of relationships and responsibilities. We practice first on the mat, so that we can practice more successfully off the mat, and come to a happy union, first with all parts of ourselves and then with all the other parts that surround us.

If you feel drawn to experiment in this sense of arriving and to find your own points of stillness, come and join me on a “Journey to Stillness” November 30^th.