#40daysofstillness

[melindahunt]

This morning, I woke before dawn for asana and stillness practice in order to feel very spacious and not rushed in getting to a morning meeting - where my dear friend and business partner read this from Thoreau’s journals in our meeting-opening-stillness:

“The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure. There will be a wide margin for relaxation to his day. He is only earnest to secure the kernels of time, and does not exaggerate the value of the husk. Why should the hen set all day? She can lay but one egg, and besides she will not have picked up materials for a new one. Those who work much do not work hard.”

This is my work for the near future - to be more like the hen, and nourish myself well for short bouts of focused effort. 💛✨45/#40daysofstillness

[melindahunt]

39/#40daysofstillness Between sessions. Letting my weight drop into the back of my body, into the table, and counting breaths, slow and steady. Being in the sensations of expansion and release. Bodywork is a two-way thing. We don’t talk about this alot, but it’s real. The client's body receives information from my hands, and responds to that information. My hands receive information from the client's body, and respond. This happens on a more subtle level also, but this basic example would be enough all on its own. 'Touch is a reciprocal sense; we cannot touch, without being touched.' (These are not my words; I'm unsure of the original source. I do know it to be true.) Experiencing this with my clients always leaves me in awe. And it makes it incredibly important for me to take a few minutes between clients to be in my own skin, to regulate my nervous system, to check in with physical sensation, and to clear, so that I am as fresh for every client as I am for the first. 💛

[melindahunt]

38/#40daysofstillness It’s notable how much of this stillness has been in bed this year. This annual practice is about rest as much as it is about stillness (perhaps next year I'll shift the hashtag.) and some things are becoming clear as I approach day 40. However much I think I am done, want to be done with the more difficult aspects of last year, they are not yet done with me - or more clearly, my body is not done processing and integrating. I can push ahead, I have felt that inclination in moments, and then the tired feeling surfaces and I know, if I push, I will end up right here all over again. The good news is, I've reached the part of the cycle where I can start to enjoy it, can begin to laugh at myself, can see the tender new growth stretching to establish itself, can feel how far I've come. The impact of lots of ambient light and city noise on my sleep for theses past years is becoming apparent. We still have traffic noise, but it is so much darker and quieter here. I am sleeping more deeply than I have in ages, and I still feel like my body is coming down from the stimulus. So here I am in bed again. Soaking it up. As much as I need. As much as it takes.

[melindahunt]

37/#40daysofstillness My lungs were craving some space and ribs longing to expand and shoulders wanting to remember there’s another way to be than curled in. And, on this dark morning, I wanted some sweetness, some joy. I went for it, this bodily strategy, knowing my general tolerances and mobility and what my structure sometimes likes (see second photo.) and it was too. much. My heart rate started kicking up, and I stayed with it. Am I ok? Yes. Is everybody* safe? Literally, yes. There is no danger here. And I waited. To see if calm would come. It didn't. My brain moved with my heart, picture memories today, one after another, a surprise to my mostly verbal imagination. And after just a few minutes, it was clear. Thank you body, for feeling it out, and no, we don't have to stay here. Yes, we can keep learning about what's too much and what's too little, and how to move into an intention without pushing. I got up and carefully repositioned the blanket under my ribs, smoothing and folding for a softer opening. Gentle, gentle. This. Yes. Every part of me sank, my heart cradled in its contractions rather than jumping about, my breath easier, my shoulders and neck and low back able to widen. An easy contentment rose up with my easier heart. My original intent, to make my own sunshine on this cloudy, balmy day, fulfilled. *I talk to my body like a community; joints and tissues as people. They talk back too, just not always in words. 😉

[melindahunt]

35/#40daysofstillness My morning dose went undocumented. This was one of those days that felt like a week, not because it was a slog, but because so much happened. This morning was so long ago, and I was so fidgety. I landed in one position and stayed for maybe a minute, and rolled to another - and felt the urge to move again a few breaths later. There wasn’t any edge to it, no frustration, my body just wasn’t done moving quite yet. That seems to have been addressed by the movement of the day and now I don’t want to move at all. Feeling my breathing, the weight of the covers, the comfort of my pillow against my cheek, feeling the sense of not-moving, until sleep comes. 😴

[melindahunt]

34/#40daysofstillness I'm starting to feel the pull to write about movement practice again. I think this is a direct result of getting more rest, and my body drinking it in. This sweet post-movement flop brought me deeply in touch with my abdominal pulse, with length and space in my lumbar spine - and with an awareness of how much my body is still in process of assimilation, where I thought perhaps I had passed already to Integration. So much more to chew on, to process. Our bodies transmute: Food. Oxygen. Experiences. Given time and space, these become cells, skills, wisdom. Don’t rush the process.

[melindahunt]

31/#40daysofstillness Here's something interesting about the cycles of my energy. The moment I feel a flicker of energy returning, my mind begins to bound ahead. I slip from slow-moving contentment right to running at the football (one of my teacher's metaphors for enthusiasm - Charlie Brown always running, and Lucy always pulling the football away.) I'm not sure I know how *not* to throw my whole self into things. I'm not sure I know how to consider that I may land flat on my back yet again. My history says although I have examples of enjoying the excitement without losing myself, there are many more of skidding into the end of the cycle/season/year exhausted and a little stunned by my stubborn refusal to consider things might not go as planned, or that the effort might take more resources than are available, that it might not even work, or worse, be damaging because my passion has blinded me to some basic truth. Some of it is sheer, pure enthusiasm. And the darker side is built on and perpetuated by this very cycle. It's a lack of trust that I have the stamina to see the thing through. On an even deeper level, it's a fear of my mortality. With these bigger visions, do I have enough years left to build what I intend to leave? At least I now know there are cycles, and when I arrive in a natural need for rest or an overexerted depletion, I trust that the energy will return. But something in the early excitement fears the lull. I wonder if there's a way that myself in every part of the cycle can know and respect the self that is coming or going, in order to run more carefully and steadily, in order to feel the opportunity to pause and evaluate, to change course if necessary? I wonder if it's possible not to lose the excitement or enjoyment in the process? (I've asked myself this question before, and I've answered it positively. And my need to ask it again means I am still learning.) This is not what I was thinking about, lying in rest this morning. This musing was the result of the feeling the spark of energy returning, and watching my mind leaping to all the incredible uses for a body that's alive and ready and willing to work. #iampracticing

[melindahunt]

30/#40daysofstillness “Rest is the conversation between what we love to do, and how we love to be.” Thank you David Whyte. I’ve always resisted pairing a photo of my personal practice with someone else’s words. Even those I feel as truth, like these. I love David Whyte, but what does he or anyone else know about what’s really going on in my body and my mind at this moment, when this photo was taken? It feels disingenuous. But then, there is the pull, in this moment, of the work I love that drew me today, on what’s supposed to be a day off, when I am trying to draw good boundaries around downtime and rest. And there is the knowing opposite tug, from the part of me that knows I am at my best in this work I love, I am how and who I love to be, when I am rested. And so here I am, trying to rest, and thinking about work, noticing facial muscles attempt to make an expression that goes with a thought, other muscles too, rushing to engagement from mere words in my head. So what does David Whyte know? Probably a lot actually. Belly down is one my my most favorite ways to rest, something about it lulls my active mind into submission more quickly and reliably. Needed tonight.