John’s Sunday Blog

Dropping the Reigns

The human body does not care about culture, science, religion, philosophies, ect. It cares about balancing your inter-related systems no matter what you are doing or what you know throughout your life. If we become imbalanced due to repetitive motion, or lack of motion, and have repetitive thoughts that cycle and cause unease, what may be helpful in calming the system down?

THE SYSTEM ITSELF!

It has a language; it’s a language of sensation, not words. And it speaks in different dialects, yet mixes these to give you that overall “body feel”. Let’s keep it simple and look at the aspects:

1). Spaciousness- an openness one can sense if turning attention into the body. Easily felt in the head (not thoughts), chest (actual open space) and belly (a deep dark cavern). As evidenced in science, matter is 99.9% empty space, and yes, your body “feels” that.

2). Fluidity- we are 70% water. We wave our arms in dance and at each other. Those arms filled with millions of river bends and branches are flowing. Your breath rising and falling. Float in water, and feel that gentle familiar embrace as when in utero.

3). Groundedness- that downward pull, that weight on the surface you sit upon. This can be felt in the entire body. We are so used to it, never noticing that it can guide our posture and balance.

4). Centeredness- that point in the center of the body two inches below the navel in the center of the pelvic bowl. A place of safety and alarm, your emotions enter the body here from nerves traveling through the holes in your sacrum into this sacred place of belonging.

5). Present- look at the objects around you, the way the light shines on them. Notice the air on your skin, it’s warmth or coolness, the sounds…smells. Does the sharpness and clarity of now compare to any memory or future hopes? Compare and see…

Using these aspects of the body one can begin to stabilize their nervous system. Do without trying to fix or analyze. Begin to pause, and lovingly, gently, look at how each of these aspects feel each day in the am, midday, and pm. You’ll calm down enough and begin to teach yourself what calm feels like. You will learn, from your body, before you do, what it needs; more food, less food, less entertainment, more rest.

An exploration of this kind can be quite fruitful, for one finds that through these aspects, one can feel the support of how life works. The heat in the body comes from the food which comes from the sun and soil and air and water all of which flow through you. Each exchange, like the breath - a miraculous cycle of the lungs needing the oxygen from the green growing plants.

You don’t need to learn and perform long meditation. At short intervals take the hands off the wheel, drop the reigns. The easiest part of it is you can let go when you check in. Yep, it’s not a project. Think of it as a return home. The hardest thing you have to do is just notice, drop all control, and rest in…

Spaciousness

Fluidity

Groundedness

Centeredness

Present

Sit comfortably

Eyes open or closed

Pause and arrive here

Relax your shoulders

Let your jaw soften

Nothing to fix or change

Inhale, exhale

Fell the cool of the inhale

then the warm exhale

Feel your feet and the seat beneath

Just linger at the sensation of pressure

Now feel the warmth within your belly

And the gentle rhythm of your chest

Expanding on inhale

Contracting on exhale

Return to the belly

And rest.