Moving Into Stillness
A raging mind. A restless body. A constant mode of doing. An obsessive need to not ‘waste a second’. Do nothing? Never!
These are really the perfect conditions to practice sitting meditation. However, these are also the perfect reasons to resist it. I was in the state of resistance for many years. Longing for spiritual growth, but no willingness for stillness. Until I stumbled upon yoga.
I was striving to lose weight when I attended my first yoga class. I would turn up for class 3 times a week or more. Possibly a year into the practice, I noticed a silence in my mind. It was so new to me, that I opened my eyes in awe in the middle of that particular savasana. Everything on the outside is the same, but something has shifted within. A new possibility has emerged.
Eventually, it wasn’t my weight that was dropping, instead some old beliefs and habits were slowly dislodging. I was also gaining. Gaining a new form of intimacy and respect for this physical body. The beauty of a movement-based practice is that in the midst of ‘doing’, we unwittingly turn inwards by starting to pay attention to our body. We learn to come home to this physical existence, then slowly but surely, also to the mental or experiential existence.
