Stillness Grotto

Stillness Grotto

Stop for a bit. Let your jaw relax. Now your shoulders. And belly. Breathe all the way down to the bottom of your lungs, slowly. Breathe out all the way, slowly.

Let yourself become aware of stillness. Perhaps it is outside of you. Perhaps you can find it within. Let your awareness focus on the point of stillness you’ve found. Soften your breath. Soften your thoughts. Let them flow past your awareness, like a little brook. Let stillness fill your awareness. Mark the spot so you can come back to it.

Cultivating stillness is such a nice occupation. Sort of like growing lovely, fragrant flowers in your garden. With a bubbling fountain and chirping birds, a hammock, refreshing beverage, and no cares. Mmmm.

The best part is that now I have my internal GPS set to go there any ol’ time I want.

Agitated co-worker? I can choose to go to Yell-y Street with them, or go to Stillness Grotto. Crabby kids? Snarky neighbors? Boorish clerks? Not one of them can make me go to that place, only me. I prefer peace.

Sure didn’t used to be like that. Used to be I was a drama machine! Agony! Strife! Hell on Earth! Despair! and By Cracky, I was going to take you there with me!

How sad for me. All the nice I missed because I was so invested in misery. And the few moments of peace I had were scary, like I was dead or something.

Most of us can’t play Bach Inventions on the piano until we learn how. That takes learning to play the piano. And that takes regular practice. This is a place where the old saw, “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten,” pays off. If I practice going to my Stillness Grotto every day, I will carve a path through the forest of synapses in my brain, and can get there easily when I need to. Easy.

Frequenting that pathway has other benefits. Going to stillness and deep relaxation everyday, by whatever means you like best, is like hitting a reset button.

A physical therapist told me in the Before Years that if I went to bed tense, I would wake up tenser, and if I went to bed relaxed, I would wake up relaxeder. It has seemed to be true, at least for me. I like waking up relaxeder.

I use a body scan technique I learned back when God was a kid to soften everything before I go to sleep. I practice qigong daily to be still and centered, (and hilarified. Qigong is the wackiest movement program I’ve ever done.) I practice softening body and mind many times a day. My path to stillness is so worn, you could probably follow it!
Being still, being present, feeling in harmony, in order or balance, this skill as much as anything we can do, allows us to move past whatever might be going on in our outer lives, and nestle up with our natural life, even if just for a few moments. And that is just nice.

How have I changed from choosing frantic to stopping for a while in stillness?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 03152013


PS -- If you have any photos that help you feel still, send them on in. We'll make a Presentation out of them!