Monthly Archives: December 2019

The big value of Stillness

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“True intelligence operates silently. Stillness is where creativity and solutions to problems are found.”

Eckhart Tolle, Stillness Speaks (2003)

Those still moments in your day are very precious. It is very important to have time in each day where you have that quiet stillness in your body and your mind.

In those moments you will think clearer and be closer to the real solution to issues and problems that you have to solve.

Rather than thinking through everything. You stop, be still, be blank, allow space and time for things to reveal themselves in a new way. It is a reset of your normal habitual pathways and programmed thinking.

By allowing stillness you affirm that there is an intelligence far greater than thinking thoughts which also exists. If you don’t believe this, you will highly likely never allow your mind to be still.

But this stillness time is vital to your health, productivity and fulfillment in life.

So, have you taken time out today to be still? If not, plan it in, make it important. You will progress much more smoother in life with such a practice.

If you are not used to it, stillness may initially look and feel like staring blankly into thin air or out of a window. If you haven’t practiced stillness much in the past you may find yourself drifting off. Your mental mind has been so over used with little pause, that it is exhausted when you stop and not think.

You haven’t used the pause button for so long that when you do, you feel the tiredness and habit of wanting to sleep or just staring blankly. That’s not quality stillness. That’s your body wanting to catch up, rest and recharge. So you may need to rest for a while before the quality returns and benefits are there. Although the resting will also be beneficial to your brain.

NEWS
For people in Melbourne, I will be appearing on a new TV show that started three weeks ago on Channel 31 titled Health, Wellbeing and Lifestyle.
It will air every Tuesday 12pm and repeat Thursdays 9am and Fridays 8.30pm.

I will appear in the following episodes (2019) and the topic:
Dec 24th Episode 5 – How we Heal
Dec 31st Episode 6 – Trauma (Biggest block to healing)
Jan 14th Episode 8 – Anxiety (Hyper Arousal)
Feb 4th Episode 11 – Depression (Hypo Arousal)
Feb 11th Episode 12 – Full Presence and Spirit

Each of my segments runs for around eight minutes. The show runs for 30 minutes. If you are not in Melbourne, the program will be streamed live and you can watch it here from Channel 31’s website.

Eventually these episodes will appear in my youtube channel.

How far ahead are you playing out your day?

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On describing why he meditates, AFL Football player Zak Jones recently replied..

“I started very slow, but then it became before every game to clear my head and try not play out the game before it began.

For me it was enjoying this for what it is. There’s going to be highs and lows and if you’re worrying about what’s going to happen you’re not enjoying it.”

This leads to a great point that meditation helps reduce worry. How far ahead are you thinking throughout the day? Your body only needs to deal with this moment right now.

Anything more than this is extra stress that is not necessary. Future worry creates stress on your body that affects the quality of your present moment action right now. It also adds extra stress on your body, (which is responding like it is real.)

So how far ahead are you playing out your day right now in your head, while doing what you need to do in this moment? Bring all your thoughts right back to just this moment right now, reading this. These words right now. Nothing more.

If you manage to bring yourself back to this moment and just reading these words right now, you will find there is more enjoyment, doing just this moment. There is also more peace and quiet in your head because you don’t need to be thinking and worrying about the future right now.

When it’s actually time to plan your day, then that’s when you deliberately do it. Any other time, is just added body stress and wasted energy.

Mindfulness meditation helps to bring your mind and body back operating more from this present moment.

Distraction is the way we avoid our inner Pain

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“As is the case with all human behaviour, distraction is just another way our brains attempt to deal with pain. If we accept this fact, it makes sense that the only way to handle distraction is by learning to handle discomfort.”

Nir Eyal, indistractable, (2019)

Stopping, closing your eyes and meditating on your inner world isn’t always comfortable if you are doing it for self healing. There will be times when uncomfortable feelings and sensations arise. And these will arise when you are disciplined enough to stay with your practice long enough, that you go deeper.

Going deeper isn’t always comfortable. When you have the first sign of an uncomfortable feeling you can tend to 1/ Distract yourself from feeling the pain. 2/ Stop sooner and open your eyes, 3/ Switch to focusing on the thoughts in your head rather than your body or 4/ Leave your body entirely and float off.

All of these are escapes from feeling what’s actually going on in the present moment in your body now. You cannot heal further if you don’t accept and allow the deeper pain to release.

Feeling the difficult feelings is the key. Making it okay to feel what is there in manageable doses. Accepting that they are normal. Staying with the body part and sensation helps to keep you out of your head. Adding a story about the painful feeling doesn’t help. Feeling it directly in your body is what helps it move and release the most.

It is okay to feel difficult and painful feelings. They are part of the human condition. Ignoring them will likely just create more problems later that you don’t need. So allowing pain, fear and anger to arise without judgment, in manageable doses, can go a long way to releasing painful feelings easily.

As you accept and release the discomfort, you will need to distract yourself less. So it becomes easier to stay on task and follow through on commitments.