Calm is here? Are you?
My senses are at the end of their tether. They are deprived of anything beyond the most uneventful sound of my dog yawning at bedtime or the dawning of the bloody cuckoo bird at 4:50am on a Tuesday morning.
All this quietness and solitude is making them (senses) question their purpose. They are screaming to run/sprint/scramble/ out the front gate and go jump into a loud dance hall/cinema/rag week/barn dance/pub with dim lighting and loud talking (and BEER)/heavy metal concert (and Beer!) or maybe Genesis for me 😅.
I consider this lock in to be a global uninvited lesson in sensory reduction. Pratyahara, aka., the withdrawal of our senses, is the first and essential practice of both meditation and relaxation.
Not to seem delighted for the lock in and the hardships is has created for others, I cannot even imagine. But I am grateful for the few restorative benefits that have been foisted upon me, while I, like anyone else self employed in the service industry wonder what lay ahead for a job I love.
Paradoxically, I am feeling little strung out from the lack of all the going and doing, rushing and racing. Are you too?
Most of our lives have been immersed in sensory overload. All the while constantly being reminded that we should Keep calm and carry on,or as it is now Keep calm and wash your hands.💁♀️ Now that our senses are less entertained we can explore where this eternal source of calm is to come from. As highly promoted as it is and from my own personal experience, it is well worth more than a coursery glance.
‘Keep calm’ is a technique at the start. Breathe in, count up to two, breathe out and let go of any built up tension. Two more times, and just let the body breathe out. And then stay still. Like a statue, yet still breathing. Notice the smallest moment of silence somewhere in your body, and then again breathe in, and breathe out again. Consistent, regular practice is helpful to learn a new patter than can remain while other habits may fall away.
Life gets busy, and there is no need to rush to slow down. You have all the time you need for calmness to arrive. Calm is always available. Consider a small luminous glow that radiates warm in the middle of mind. See it, just as it is, a simple orb of gentle light, soft, soothing and calming.
Now imagine a fog coming forward and beginning to hide and dim this light from your viewpoint. The moment this fog appears you begin to sense stress and tension arriving to cloud your connection to calmness. As the fog increases the light dims, but never is it completely gone. It remains present and waiting, until you find the tools to move the fog out of the way. As you reduce stress, or work with how you relate and react to stress, calmness will become a close ally and friend for you and all you do. The illumination of calmness can be encouraged to expand into all of your body, your mind, your heart. It only takes a minute or two to allow what is always here to arrive.
No amount of coercion will help the gentleness of calm arrive, nor will demanding it appear. You could even try to swim through the fog of the mind to come back to calm again, but that will only create more frustration and disappointment.
Stopping, pausing and waiting is the fastest route to calm and the sense of calmness within.
Calm is accessible to you right now. A fact that can throw people because calmness seems to be a type of person. The reality is that calm is a state of mind which a person chooses to live with and feed what it needs every day.
Calm people are less distracted because the fog has lifted in their mind allowing the path ahead to be clear. Even when things do not go as planned! 💁♀️ They nourish what helps the calm remain dominant and this reduces what disrupts the gentle balance. It is a process of separating the wheat from the chaff.
Calm is here, and it is a choice. Every moment it is waiting for you remember it. Calm has no agenda, only to allow you time to recover from the stresses of this moment. Breathe.
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May we all find calm in every moment we pause, remembering we are all in this life together.
Go gently,
Kelly Marie Mills ©
May 24, 2020
