Our culture is one of busy-ness, productivity and being on the go. It can be an act of resistance to slow down. An act of self-care. A form of activism. What keeps us all moving so fast? What are we afraid would happen if we paused? How do we come back into balance and cultivate habits of pausing, slowing down and being present?
One of my recent practices has been to pause in between things. Rather than go right from one activity to the next, I stop and pause. I notice the pull to be full speed ahead and I notice what it feels like to simply be and breathe for a few moments. Sometimes it only takes a few breaths for me to begin to slow down.
This is week I have been wanting to pause time. I kept finding myself racing ahead to the next thing and the next. My mind was consumed by thoughts of the future and my whole body felt tense and on edge.
I wanted to slow down. I wanted my body to relax. I wanted to feel and believe that, somehow, everything would be okay and my world would not come crashing down if I put down my to-do list. I wanted time to be doing absolutely nothing and to not feel guilty about it.
Pausing Time
How do we pause time? One simple way is to breathe, or as I have heard it said in yoga class, let you body be breathed. You can try it right now. Let the air come into your lungs. Feel the air going out. Witness your body breathing. You do not have to do anything, it happens on its own. Your body knows how to breathe.
Even as I type, I feel more relaxed and less rushed. I am coming into the present moment. There is nothing more to do here than to breathe for this one moment. We can rest in our breathing for one breath, two, maybe three or four. That is enough to slow ourselves down.
Perhaps you are like me and you notice your mind jumping ahead to the next moment. Not a problem. That is what our minds do. They are busy and incredibly active. That is their job. We can thank our minds for doing what they know how to do and we can return to our breath for another moment. In this way, we cultivate slowing down. It is a slowing down that happens on a body level. We are inviting our body into another way of being.
Real Life
Okay, so that was nice, you may be thinking, but now I have to go...make dinner, get the kids, go back to work or fill in the blank. I understand the reality of our daily lives is that we have a lot going on. We are busy people. What if we can take the feeling of slowing down right into the middle of our full days? Even as we are doing whatever task is at hand, we can remember that we are also breathing. We can invite a sense of slowing down and pausing in the midst of our daily comings and goings.
We can also find time in between things. I suspect there are plenty of moments each day when you have pause points. The next time you are waiting in line or stuck in traffic, feel your breath in your body and notice if anything shifts.
Taking a Break
It can be challenging to simply pause. Admittedly, this week I had a hard time doing that. I was restless. I kept internally badgering myself. That happens sometimes.
What did I do? I got outside. I gave myself permission to take a break from all the things on my mind. I carved out time in my days so I could walk in the park. That is where I found my stillness. I sat on the trunk of a tree that had recently fallen. I lay on the grass under one of my favorite oaks. I let the earth hold me. There I felt my body and mind slow down. That is what sustained me through the week.
It some paradoxical way, when we slow down and take breaks, we have more time. That has been my experience. Everything that needs to happen still gets done. Somehow when we have more space for us, there is more space for everything.
I invite you to try it today. Pause to feel your breath. Take a break and get outside. I trust there is enough time in each day for us to slow down.
Do you ever have a grumpy day? A day when you feel bleh and you don't want to do anything? Maybe you got some bad news or woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Maybe it's one of those days when nothing seems to go right and the whole world looks grey.
What do you do on a day like that? Do you stay in bed and pull the covers over your head? Do you push through, waiting for the day to end, hoping for something better tomorrow?
Though it may not feel like it, we have options when we are having a hard time. There are things we can do to care for ourselves and treat ourselves with kindness. As Stuart Alpert, Co-Founder of the Hartford Family Institute's Center for Psychotherapy and Healing Arts says, in any given moment, we are either supporting our experience or not supporting it. There is no neutral.
Supporting our experience is something we can practice. If you want, try it right now. Pause and take a breath. Notice what you are feeling. How connected or disconnected do you feel? What do you notice in your body, in your thoughts and feelings? Are you distracted, agitated, calm, judging, open or something else? Take another breath and see if you can let whatever you are experiencing be here without trying to change it. Can you imagine greeting whatever is present for you with compassion, as if your experience is an old friend coming to see you? For example, you might say inwardly, "Hello, Grumpy. Thank you for coming today. I trust you are here for a good reason. I am here."
If you tried this experiment, what did you notice? Perhaps there was a softening or an opening as you sat with what was present. Perhaps your feelings intensified or felt uncomfortable. Perhaps you did not try this experiment because it seemed silly or you did not want to. Whatever you did or did not do, whatever your experience was, what would it be like to not give yourself a hard time about it? This is how we cultivate self-compassion and acceptance.
The above is an example of one option we have when we are having a hard time, simply greeting our experience with kindness. As I wrote, I could feel something shift in me and now my heart feels softer. What was your experience?
Sometimes kindness may not feel accessible to us. We may feel stuck. We may need help. When we are in the midst of some inner turmoil, it may not occur to us that we could pause and be with our experience. Being with our experience may be the last thing we want to do.
I was having a day like that on Friday. I was all worked up and not sure what to do. I called a friend, which helped me know I was not alone and get some clarity, at least for a little while. I went about my day as best I could, but my thoughts were still going around and around in my head, chasing each other, trying to find a way out of the "badness" I was feeling.
Later, I went for a walk in the woods. The movement and the fresh air helped, but I still had an underlying feeling of agitation. If I am honest, all I really wanted to do was to get rid of the agitation. I was not meeting the agitation like an old friend. In those moments, I was treating my agitation as an enemy, something to fix, and something I did not want.
Naming my experience helps me bring more kindness to myself. I can appreciate how much I did not want to feel what I was feeling. This brings me to another option we can try. Journaling or drawing about our experience. When we put our feelings down on paper, we can see them more clearly and, at the same time, get some space from them. They are one part of our experience and not the whole of who we are.
The last thing I did on my grumpy day was to get out of my experience for a while so I could feel something different. One of my favorite local artists, Canyon, was playing at a nearby church. I went. I brought my grumpy self and sat down in the back and let the music pour over me. With little to no effort on my part, my spirits were lifted. The lyrics and the melodies moved me. When I left at the end of the night, I was struck by how different I felt. I savored those moments of feeling joy, feeling touched and alive.
There is no one magic thing that will make us feel better when we are having a bad day. We all want to feel good and we all want to avoid discomfort. We are all doing our best at living our lives the way we know how. What I notice is the more I practice being with the nuances of my experience when I am feeling okay, the easier it is for me to be with my experience when it is intense, distressful or "icky" in some way. It is also important to me to know I have options. I can call a friend, go for a walk, journal, dance or listen to music. I can curl up in a blanket and treat myself with kindness. How do you take care of yourself when you are in a hard place? Can you imagine taking in a drop of love to the center of your experience?
