There really is no such place as Nowhere. You can trust me on this; I live in one of those locales routinely termed The Middle of Nowhere. It’s a remote little corner of a vast but thinly-populated state, where the next closest town larger than my own, of a little over 3, 000 living people, is nearly an hour away.
One could think that it doesn’t get much more Nowhere than here, that city folks might yearn for such an idyllic sounding locale, complete with a historic Main Street, cows on the road, and every destination a reasonably walkable one for an able-bodied person with such an inclination.
But we find ourselves here, just as anywhere else more congested, still connected to the rest of the world by fast moving interstate highways, FedEx and UPS trucks that barrel down our boulevards, the Internet which ties us instantly to anyone, at any time, in any part of the world. Much as we might wish to, we don’t meander down to the local barbershop every day and wait for Normal Rockwell to paint our portrait. We have to get up and go to work in the morning (or overnight), and our kids have to get to soccer practice after school, just like they do in places you might call Somewhere.
Several years ago, I began searching for somewhere to suspend time and space. I found it when a friend reminded me of a Benedictine monastery near my town. Every Tuesday for six months I drove a little deeper into Nowhere, about 15 miles west where the Abbey sat nestled in the hills. The bell would clang, briefly shattering the silence behind me as I scurried inside for the noon office with a dozen or so of the brothers. For one nearly-identical hour each week, I would do the most simple and yet most difficult thing the silence asked of me: be still.
No more, no less.
In The Art of Stillness, in the chapter titled “Passage to Nowhere, ” Pico Iyer describes his first experience in a retreat house in on the California coast:
When I got out of my worn and dust-streaked Plymouth Horizon, it was to step into a thrumming, crystal silence. And when I walked into the little room where I was to spend three nights, I couldn’t begin to remember any of the arguments I’d been thrashing out in my head on the way up, the phone calls that had seemed so urgent when I left home. Instead, I was nowhere but in this room, with long windows looking out upon the sea.
A fox alighted on the splintered fence outside, and I couldn’t stop watching, transfixed. A deer began grazing just outside my window, and it felt like a small miracle stepping into my life.
* * *
It was a little like being called back to somewhere I knew, though I’d never seen the place before. As the monks would have told me—though I never asked them—finding what feels like real life, that changeless and inarguable something behind all our shifting thoughts, is less a discovery than a recollection.
Those six months I drove back and forth once a week to the Abbey turned out to be the opening for some of the most important thinking and discovery and growth I may have ever experienced. As each week wore on, I found myself looking forward to the next Tuesday, sometimes even more than I would look forward to a weekend.
It was as Pico Iyer describes after his experiences in Nowhere, “When I drove back into my day-to-day existence, I felt the liberation of not needing to take my thoughts, my ambitions—my self—so seriously.”
Book Club Discussion
We’re reading The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere together this month. Are you reading along? Perhaps you would share in the comments about your experience with (or need for) purposefully seeking out stillness, taking a trip to Nowhere, so to speak. How have you been able to do that for either short or extended times? (Perhaps you’ve even done it without leaving your house.) What have you experienced as a result?
Our Reading Schedule
Announcement Post
December 7 • Introduction to Chapter 2
December 14 • Chapters 3 & 4
December 21 • Chapters 5 & 6
Photo by 白士 李, Creative Commons license via Flickr. Post by LW Lindquist.
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Donna Falcone says
LW… my practice of morning stillness has gone kaput and I tell myself I don’t need it – there is already too much stillness in my days. That said, I’m pretty sure I am wrong.
I was (am) intrigued by your visits to the Abbey, and find it interesting (as in coincidental) that I have been consdiering findng a place around here like yours, or like Pico Iyer’s mountain… to do resume my practice, that used to be something I hungered for. Now my mind doesn’t want any part of it… but I think my heart really needs a mountain of its own.
I want to go and catch up, as I hadn’t made fully through chapter 1 yet. I’ll be back after I do that.
Will Willingham says
There are different kinds of stillness, yes? (I think Sandra gets at this in her comment below, also.) There is inactivity, or down time, or slow times, or what have you. And then there is Nowhere, that very special place we sometimes purpose to go. When we let ourselves.
But I do wonder what it is about it that we resist so much. Why we tell ourselves we don’t need it (or perhaps that we don’t deserve it or can’t afford it).
Donna Falcone says
Yes… different kinds, for sure.
Because I spend most of my time alone these days, I could have all the quiet time in the world at any point from dawn til dusk… but still… on most days… I get up earlier than my husband even though I am still so tired, make my decaf, and sit in the light of one candle. I guess that’s close to a practice of stillness, but it’s not what I’d call mediation and that is what I meant before. It doesn’t feel right if it isn’t morning darkness. Weird.
This quote blew me away: “Heaven is the place where you think of nowhere else.” p. 5
Donna Falcone says
And the thought occurs to me that the prospect of stillness is probably much more desireable to someone who is on one hamster wheel or another. Not that it can’t always be valuable, because a busy mind can torture the most inanimate of bodies…. but… I’m just saying that a busy person may run toward stillness (considering they have solved the deservedness and/or affordability factor) and a person with not much going on might be less willing to opt for one more hour of silence.
Will Willingham says
This is a really important observation. We will come to stillness differently depending on the way our lives are already structured. And in some cases, it will not have appeal because it feels like more of the same.
Of course I would still think (and I think Iyer would agree) that purposeful stillness is something other than inactivity.
In next week’s set we’re going to look a little more at why stillness might not appeal to some of us. I think it’s a good question. 🙂
Donna Falcone says
I agree, too. Purposeful stillness is very different.
So, I couldn’t sleep and decided to plug into an old audio book that I’d been actively avoiding for a long time that I used to listen to over and over again a few years back. Pema Chodron was talking compassion and the concept of Maitri, defined as unconditional friendship with oneself (and isn’t that what Cohen, and then Iyer, were showing to themselves? The journey to Nowhere is an act of self discovery and love – it’s like they were saying to themselves “you are worth getting to know, and so let’s do this.”) She was saying that compassion (for others) is really about our relationship with our own pain, first, Through sitting with our own pain we learn to see and feel the pain of others – self compassion leads to other compassion. I found a video of this segment on Maitri that I’ll leave at the end of this.
She went on to talk about HOW we can come to sit with our own struggles – what I think we would agree requires a deeper level of stillness (located in the heart of Nowhere – by that bare 70 Watt light bulb dangling from a wirewhere the main roads intersect). Not inactivity, but a purposeful stillness that is sometimes even more elusive (to me) the more inactive my life seems.
The talk turned to mindfulness meditation, which can be a tool to use to get to Nowhere. She was describing our minds as kind of like muddy, stirred up water – churning, anything but crystal clear, with thoughts about problems, worries, experiences past and future – she said nobody ever tells you that when (in stillness) the waters stop churning, you can see all of the garbage laying on the riverbed so to speak – all the tin cans and skeletons – all the emotions and truths about ourselves we’d rather not sit with… which I suppose is why we can be so good at keeping our minds busy with distractions. Liz Gilbert does a great job depicting how difficult this kind of purposeful stillness can be in Eat Pray Love.
THAT is something I have been trying to put into words since you announced this book club. That is the source of my resistence – looking at all of the accumulated garbage is what I have been resisting, because I knew that’s what stillness would ask of me. How did I know? Because I’ve done it before and it was not fun. It’s easy to see why people drift away from creating this space for introspection after a point. It is what I didn’t want to do, but what I knew was necessary – kind of like the way I feel when I know there is a medicine out there that I don’t want to take so I pretend how I’m feeling is anything but what I really know it is. Yeah. Kind of exactly like that. Stillness. There aren’t enough rounds of Words with Friends or Spider Solitaire to eradicate the garbage – they just keep the waters muddy for while, although that’s okay, even necessary (for me) sometimes. Of course, it isn’t all garbage at the bottom of the riverbed – there is a lot of what we might call treasure there, and then again the garbage is part of that treasure. That’s the point, I think – we’d rather not consider the garbage as necessary and equally important.
Iyer talks about this concept of equanimity, but he doesn’t call it that – he quotes Shakespear: There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” (p3)
Interesting sidebar: when I turned on the audible app the message popped up about the farthest reached location during the last listen and politely asked if I wanted to go there, or start at the beginning? I pondered the options for a moment, then decided that perhaps that location has just what I need, so maybe I’d better go there, and I did… and it did.
Also interestnig: The teaching? It was titled Good Medicine. Very interesting how things come to us.
(Here is a link to the video, Pema Chodron on Maitri – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7s-rRMUl04I&list=PLVXB8U_gMRXbbRQsegcOYRbUNxzAc_hBs&index=3)
Will Willingham says
Donna, how great that this is how you approached your insomnia. 🙂 I think Laura has talked before about looking into the things and way we resist, that there are likely clues for us in that. And I know in my own experience many of the best things in my life are things I first resisted. So I agree, it’s worth what you’re doing to poke into why you might want to be resisting stillness at the moment.
At the same time, I completely understand this: “a purposeful stillness that is sometimes even more elusive (to me) the more inactive my life seems.” I think that in seasons that are less active it just can seem counterintuitive. And more, it can be very difficult to parse out the difference between the ordinary and the purposeful. (Which isn’t to say the ordinary less-active is not a good thing, in the same way as our ordinary activity is not a good thing. Both are necessary. But I think you are right that the thing Iyer and Gilbert and Podron are talking about is not that.
Will Willingham says
And I meant to say yes to your comments about compassion with oneself. I think that having compassion for others is nearly impossible without it, yet we are often so reluctant to extend it to ourselves.
Donna Falcone says
I like what you said about seasons…
and resisting. Yes. Jung was right: What we resist persists.
Whenever I feel myself resisting I have to wonder what’s that all about? It’s almost never nothing. 😉
Michelle Ortega says
So happy to be reading along with you here!
In the healing work that I do (manual therapy bodywork) there is the recognition of the importance of a “still point,” where all the systems of the body (craniosacral, respiratory, circulatory, nervous) pause for a moment (the still point) to recalibrate and synchronize with each other, then begin again in harmony. When the body holds on to stress, the natural rhythm of the systems gets disrupted. The relaxation part of the nervous system takes over and we are better able to rest, and then also focus. We can perceive this stillpoint naturally, when our bodies naturally take a reset breath, or sigh, or even yawn, or daydream a bit. Sometimes under stress, our bodies need help from practitioners to achieve this balance. For the people I treat, this leads to natural healing, growth and development in the areas of communication where they need to support.
I am at a place in my life where I welcome the purposeful stillness outside of , and yes, I do experience that differently than inactivity. I don’t do it every morning, but am toying with the habit because I find I am much better throughout my day when I do (3-4 days a week right now).
But Donna, yes, to all that you shared above~I think I am the place opposite of resisting because I have, after a long time, come to a place of compassion with myself, asking, what is it that is on my heart, my needs, my concerns, my excitements, my wanderings…and it takes some time of stillness to let my head loops get out of the way.
Pg 3: Being in this remote place of stillness had nothing to do with piety or purity, he assured me; it was simply the most practical way he’d found of working through the confusion and terror that had long been his bedfellows.
This was one sentence that nodded my head! But, I have a deeper sense of spiritual connection with myself, and the people around me, as I embrace the stillness.
LW, I can relate to wanting that one hour of silence more than the weekends. Sometimes on our “free days” there is just so much to do! As I sit here now, my cat is pacing figure 8’s around my chair, wanting me to take a nap with her on the couch after disrupting her stillness this morning with the vacuum. I have often thought about attending a silence retreat for a week, but to return to a place for just one hour a week sounds more doable. Something to ruminate and maybe pursue on this end.
L.L. Barkat says
Michelle, that is so cool about your work. I think perhaps it is related to the vagus nerve? Here are some surprising ways we can be kind to it (I’m assuming that your work is approximated best by the “massage” category, though I know what you do is unique and wonderful. Okay, and maybe “kind” wouldn’t be the right word for some of these methods 😉 )
https://selfhacked.com/2015/07/30/28-ways-to-stimulate-your-vagus-nerve-and-all-you-need-to-know-about-it/
Will Willingham says
Michelle, what you say there at the end is so important, (Well, the whole comment was full of important thoughts. But this especially captures me.) It’s worthwhile thinking, I think, not of what would be ideal, but of what we can and will actually do. Can I sit and dream of a week-long (month-long?) silent retreat? Oh, yes. Will I ever get around to doing it? It is doubtful. And yet, is is doable to think that I can set aside 15 minutes a few days a week? Maybe ease that up to an hour?Maybe every day? Yes, that is doable. And so then we actually do it. (All the while, yes, still dreaming of that week of silence. 🙂
Sandra Heska King says
I remember those headspace posts. 🙂
There are so many good quotes I highlighted in these chapters.
Like this…
“More and more of feel like emergency-room physicians, permanently on call, required to heal ourselves but unable to find the prescription for all the clutter on our desk.”
and…
“… it’s only when you stop moving that you can be moved in some far deeper way.”
and…
Speaking of writers… “Our job, you could say, is to turn, through stillness, a life of movement into art. Sitting still is our workplace, sometimes our battlefield.”
and…
Well, there are too many.
Anyway, as you know, this is been a rather challenging year for us. Our family is split into three different places between 300 and 1000 miles away. My husband and I are now experiencing an empty nest for real. As hard as it was to leave the home we’ve known for so long (not as hard for him as for me, even though he had a longer history there), there’s still a sense of adventure–and even relief in the ability to create a new, and hopefully simpler start. (How often had I dared to even speak out loud that as long as nobody was hurt, to have the elements divest us of everything would in some ways be a gift?)
For the last couple of months, we’ve been Nowhere. We’ve been wanderers. Currently, we’re in this
“doll’s house” cottage and before that in a small condo. (My husband was in two other places alone prior to that.)
All our stuff–what we didn’t divest ourselves of–is in storage. I brought a box of books, bought a few more, and surprisingly have not read as much as I thought I would. I’ve been writing, but not as much as I thought I would. I haven’t even gone to the beach as much as I thought I would, even though it’s just two blocks away. My husband is gone 12-14 hours a day, so it’s just the cat and me. I’ve explored a little. But not much because this isn’t our permanent home, so what’s the point? I’ve spent most of my time just doing… what? Some days I wonder what happen to the day. I sit. I scroll. I read a little. I write a little. I nap. I memorize stuff. 😉
I’ve needed this. I wouldn’t have done it without being forced, though.
Next week we’ll move into a smaller house than we’re used to in a community with more houses and people than we’re used to. I don’t know how that will work, but I’m feeling more rested, more awake, and as anxious as I am to be “home” again… part of me doesn’t want to go.
Will Willingham says
Among the smartest 6 months of my life, I think, finding headroom that way. 🙂
So interesting the way we can have these major shifts in life that reduce what is around us, and how we can, later, see it as good when at the time we’d have held on with all our might and not even really known why.
Seems you are in the midst of not just stillness for lack of activity, but also an unsettledness. (That perhaps the beach might sooth?) I am hopeful for you to have a more settled footing from which to explore soon. 🙂
Sharon A Gibbs says
I love Advent season for my steeping in quiet morning stillness. The contemplative pause carries a clarity with it and improves the quality of my day.
It occurs to me that I have discovered this stillness before, and somehow failed to continue the practice. I have to be kinder to myself and remind myself that we go through seasons, and there are different forms of stillness, as Sandra points out. All the same, maybe this time will be different for me.
Years ago, I jogged to the point of euphoria. Then I became a workaholic. Later, I recall assuming the Quarter Lotus pose, striving for mind over matter (or escape). I think I made it more difficult than it needed to be. It all seemed difficult to attain—so New Age-y and alternative.
In reality, it is so essential and within our reach.
Slow living, in itself, is restorative. Are any of you familiar with “In Praise of Slowness” by Carl Honore? He did a TED talk about his book and newfound lifestyle.
“The Art of Stillness” comes along at a good time, as I believe it will give me a deeper insight on stillness before I head to Refine in March, a spiritual retreat in Fremont, Ohio. I am hoping that this place of rest and reflection will provide renewal.
This book is providing a renewal of my thinking. Some quotes that have settled into my heart…
“Heaven is the place where you think of nowhere else.”
“… his greatest journeys were inner ones.”
“Clouds and blue sky, of course, are how Buddhists explain the nature of our mind: there may be clouds passing across it, but that doesn’t mean a blue sky isn’t always there behind the obscurations.”
and my favorite
“But, like many a wanderer, he (Cohen) seemed always to know that it’s only when you stop moving that you can be moved into some far deeper way.”
Nowhere takes us somewhere—to a place of silence so we can listen, acknowledge, center, examine, imagine, and practice a better life.
I sit with LW’s words, “But I do wonder what it is about it that we resist so much.”
I agree with Donna when she writes “… the journey to Nowhere is an act of self-discovery and love.”
Do we resist because we lack compassion for our very selves, our past and pains, our mistakes and aches? Unconditional friendship with oneself: what a thought. Thank you for the link, Donna,
This is my rumination for the day.
Will Willingham says
Sharon, so happy to see you here. 🙂
I loved that quote about “only when you stop moving that you can be moved into some far deeper way” as well. We can be so fearful of stopping, as though we are worried we won’t ever start again. I think of this when I think about his story he told of Gandhi saying he would need to meditate for two hours, twice the usual time, because it was going to be such a busy day. I think we often look at stillness as a reward for our accomplishment, rather than a thing that could underpin it.
“I think I made it more difficult than it needed to be.” I think you are right about this. We often attach all kinds of things to this simple (still, not easy) practice instead of just allowing ourselves the space to do it, and in a way that aligns with our selves.
Donna says
Sharon, you’re welcome for the link. ;). I always learn from Pema.
That quote about heaven really hit me- probably because I’ve recently moved and I am not really feeling ‘here’ yet.
You are so right to remind- stillness is simple, isn’t it? I make it harder than it should be.
Sharon A Gibbs says
Donna, Sorry you are going through this during the holiday season. Establishing roots takes time and can be challenging, but there is such promise. A new season. What a perfect opportunity for self-discovery, stillness, and being intentional. Creating new.
Are you a writer? I am sure there is much to discovery and write about. I look forward to “hearing” more about your journey.
Michelle Ortega says
“But, like many a wanderer, he (Cohen) seemed always to know that it’s only when you stop moving that you can be moved into some far deeper way.”
Love this one, too. I had picked up another book for Advent and tossed it in favor of this one. Sometimes I think we do make it too complicated. “Be still, and know.” Simple prescription, right Sharon? 😉
L.L. Barkat says
The comments here are a treasure trove, on top of an already thoughtful post. Too many to quote.
But I’ll go to this one:
“I think we often look at stillness as a reward for our accomplishment, rather than a thing that could underpin it.”
And I’ll say, yes, this is my experience (and it’s why when I am fretting about needing to accomplish something very difficult I compel myself to take even *more* space and stillness).
Also, we forget to look at stillness as its own reward or its own destination that is a kind of work. The year I sat outside every day for 15 minutes to an hour of stillness, well, seven years later my girl had grown up and she told me, “I didn’t understand it then. I was just a kid. And I don’t understand it now in terms of what actually happened. But I knew even as a kid that you figured something out that year.”
I like the space of stillness, the possibility. Maybe nothing happens. Oh, but more often, like you at the Abbey, it does. And really it’s about life, in the end. It is so hard to grow inside a rock. Splitting that open with a little air and space and light, that’s when life can unfurl.
Will Willingham says
It is so counterintuitive to us to think of that stillness as fortifying, of foundational, rather than a slackness, or worse. And to work such a thing into a daily rhythm, allowing our bodies and minds to reset, as it were, on a regular basis.
You do this well, in both short intervals and longer stretches.
Bethany says
Hello Bookclub,
I love your post and comments. I just finished reading Chapter One, and this lit me up: “It was a little like being called back to somewhere I knew, though I’d never seen the place before […] less a discovery than a recollection.”
Last year, inspired by L.L. Barkat’s suggestion, I sat outdoors (in my microyard) for at least 15 minutes a day, for 30 days.
Delighting in how quickly the blue hues shifted at sunset, the purity of a smooth stone, or how funny the waving hand of a single maple leaf was, highlighted how much bigger the sky was than me. Refreshing. I was seeing how I fit in underneath the stars.
One thought that kept coming to me was, “This was here all along.” I knew, but I didn’t know.
Michelle Ortega says
“…how I fit in underneath the stars.”
“I knew, but I didn’t know.”
As though your world went from 2 to three dimensions. I can feel it there, with you. 🙂
Will Willingham says
Hello Bethany 🙂
A couple of years ago I sat out on my deck nearly every morning for the summer months, when the weather allowed it. Usually it was just those few minutes while the tea was brewing. Same spot. Same wooden slats. Same couple of trees. Same neighbor’s house across the street. And in that time I watched the flowering tree in the front yard blossom, then produce the little red berries, then watched the birds eat them until they were drunk and crashed into my living room window (true story), then watched the leaves fall again. Every morning, the same place, and yet completely different.
And I wrote some decent poems from sitting that space, several about the flowering-whatever tree, one about a rabbit, one about a spider. I saw my life in that tree, from that space on the deck.
“This was here all along.” We just have to sit long enough to see it, yes?
Laura Brown says
What a rich discussion. I’ll start where you ended the post: “Perhaps you would share in the comments about your experience with (or need for) purposefully seeking out stillness, taking a trip to Nowhere, so to speak. How have you been able to do that for either short or extended times? (Perhaps you’ve even done it without leaving your house.) What have you experienced as a result?”
Stillness places in or near Little Rock:
• The Big Dam Bridge. It was moving stillness, because I was mostly walking, sometimes biking, and there were usually other people all around, and the river was moving. But there were pools of birds sitting on the calmer water above the dam, and the volcanic-looking Pinnacle Mountain was a still presence in the distance. I went there often to think, to work something out, to let go of something.
• MacArthur Park (though I never saw it melting in the dark), especially the pond, around which are many places to sit. I often saw people fishing there, seldom saw anyone catch anything. There was a freeway nearby, with all the vehicle sounds, and still, it was a still place. Migratory birds came there, too.
• The Arkansas Arts Center, which borders the park.
• Trails in Allsopp Park, an urban park.
• The sanctuary of the church across the street from the newspaper where I worked. One of their big red doors would often be open in warmer weather when I left work, and I’d go in for a while and look at the stained-glass reflections on the floor where the afternoon light came through the windows, or lie on my back on a padded pew and look at the upside-down boat-shape of the ceiling.
• On water, in my kayak.
• My balcony, for the six years I had one.
• My tiny library/sitting room in the studio I lived in for one year. I loved the cozy enclosedness of that space after working all day in a spacious high-ceilinged newsroom.
I’m not sure all these count as seeking stillness, especially since I was in motion in some of them. But there was a stillness of place that I liked being in, and that stilled something restless in me. I sought because of the restlessness. I returned to some of those places because of what was consistent regardless of time of day or time of year. Sometimes — and this was hard for me — I’d go without anything to write with, without my cell phone, with nothing but an ID and a few bucks in my back pocket.
In walks (and this happens in walks here too) at some point I’d experience greater awareness through my senses: birdsong, water sounds, plant smells, my own aches, the loosening of my joints, even — and I mean this — the pleasure of working up a sweat.
I haven’t yet found my go-to places in Pittsburgh, except maybe for the Carnegie complex — Museum of Art, Museum of Natural History, Main Library — and nearby Phipps Conservatory, across the Panther Hollow bridge. It’s notable that these are places I visited long ago, too; I was taken to the museum since childhood.
Much more to say. This is my start in a great ongoing conversation.
Will Willingham says
But what I want to know is did someone leave a cake out in the rain?
And did you think that you could take it?
That feeling of not having anything to write with or a phone (presumably to type in or take a picture with). I’ll do this sometimes, and it takes a while to get past the discomfort with that feeling. And then I just notice my observation opens up more. And I am free to experience not for what I will remember or be able to turn into something later (this is hard for a writer, yes?) but for that moment.
Which, when I step away, I know will ultimately turn into something later because filling ourselves up with the stillness (and the sights and sounds) always will, in some way, turn into something else later. Just maybe not what we expected.
I went to the monastery for one thing. I got it, but it didn’t have the effect I expected. It turned into something else, much later.
Michelle Ortega says
Laura, that’s a great link~the vagus nerve does wander all over our bodies and can cause it’s own kind of commotion that would love to be undone. The craniosacral system is much deeper in the nervous system and acts globally across the whole system, while the vagus nerve is a cranial nerve that activates specific areas. Both important to regulation! 🙂
I was recently working with a 12 year old boy for the first time~he struggles with speech, focus and activity level for sitting. He is also a serious gymnast, and mom has taken him for massage before to help with other issues (that I connected to his focus problems). He was so relaxed after his session, his mom was curious and said,”Is it like when you get a massage?” He replied, from his slumped position in the waiting room chair,”Massage is on the outside of my body, and this is, is like, way deep inside.” Such a great description! So, it’ s more like physical therapy than massage, but *thank you* for the unique and wonderful. 🙂
Will Willingham says
Such amazing work. 🙂 I am happy for this young man and that he and his mother found you. 🙂
michelle ortega says
🙂
Donna Falcone says
Wow… a massage on the inside. You are amazing. xo I agree with LW too…. they are blessed!
SimplyDarlene says
Hey folks – I’m sneaking in here after the main discussion and comments. I don’t (yet) have the book, but I do have a yearning for stillness. I can sit and be physically still, but my mind doesn’t like to come round and synchronize with my body.
I’m at a spot in my life (home educating, house-training a puppy, dealing with a myriad of health issues – one chronic, one acute, emotional distress due to a failed family relationship, etc) where emotional/mental stillness seems unattainable – until bedtime. But by then I’m so exhausted that I fall asleep quicklike and wake up in the same position – covers not wrinkled, fisted hands beneath my pillow, large muscle groups tight, jaw clenched – sure signs of self-protection, self-preservation. A forced stillness due to nightfall?
A choice of stillness. I hope to taste a bit of that here as I read LW’s posts and everyone’s comments — even if it takes me half a month of Sundays to get through one reading. My hope of choosing stillness – ironic isn’t it, that it’ll take effort upon effort to achieve? Even so, I’ve missed you all, I’ve missed this place.
I’m eager to learn. And to come undone a little bit.
Donna Falcone says
Oh, I just want to put my arms around you! I know this kind of incessant mind activity is exhauting and frustrating! I’m so glad you’re here. 🙂
A new installment of the book club is up today (link above)… I have yet to pop in, but I will. I feel certain you will really like the book and the discussions are great even before you GET the book! So come on over!
Also, I wanted to share something that helps me, because my mind is like a dust storm sometimes (most times). Maybe it can help you too. Guided imagery can really help me get to a point of calm – here is a link that has a nice guided imagery in it, with my favorite purveyor of imagery, Bellaruth Naparstek. She talks a bit in the beginning because it’s a clip from a workshop, but then she goes into a beautiful imagery. Try not to watch… just get comfy, close your eyes, and give a listen. NEVER listen to GI while driving – it can put you to sleep or relax you so much that you can get into real trouble. 😉 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyyd4MOI_R8 If you like it and want to order some you can find them at healthjourneys.com
Glad you stopped by Darlene! See you over on the next installment!
Donna Falcone says
LOL … nope… link BELOW, but you didn’t need me to tell you that. 😉
Will Willingham says
Darlene, it’s so good to see you. 🙂 And I am glad you are finding a moment to even slip in here for a few minutes in the quiet with us. I know that feeling, of waking up in the exact tense position you went to sleep in. Hard on the body and the soul.
But you are right, sometime it does take work, scrapping and wrestling free to get those moments, however you get them, that the body and soul desperately need. I wish them for you, my friend.