Sitting on the solution?

So much time in our heads.

So much time sitting down.

If only we noticed, we could find ourselves more grounded, more resourceful.

Mediation teacher and author, Tara Brach encourages us to access ways to anchor ourselves when we find that we are too much in our heads. Those times when we are over-thinking with stress, worry, judgements, evaluations, criticisms, doubts and fears.  When we are in trapped in a cycle of reactivity.  

And one of those anchors? Well you are probably sitting on it.    

Feel right now.  Scan through your body and sense yourself sitting on your chair.  Feel the weight of your body on the seat. Feel the contact of your feet with the ground. You are feeling gravity. You are feeling yourself sit on the earth.  Bring your attention to the sensations in your body. Bring awareness to the fact that you are breathing.

In doing this, we leave the world of mental abstraction, of time.  We gain a little more space. A little more silence.  A little more balance.  We reconnect with a bigger picture, and see ourselves as part of something as opposed to being in isolation.  

It does not mean that we deny or avoid that there are complex situations in our work but it shows us how our mental abstractions can themselves make those situations into problems.   It reminds us that often we are identified with our minds through being trapped in time – either compulsively living through memory or in anticipation.

As Eckhart Tolle challenges us, “focus your attention on the Now and tell me what problem you have at this moment”.

We can always cope with the present moment.

Coming back to our bodies, out of our heads, brings us to this moment.  

Notes:

·          Tara Brach (2015) http://www.tarabrach.com/audioarchives2015.html   Audio Talks – Beyond the Fear Body (Parts 1 and 2 on 3^rd and 10^th of June  2015 respectively)

·          Tolle, E (2005), The Power of Now, Hodder and Stoughton Ltd, London, p. 53.

·          Image from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com