Is stillness truly peaceful for you? (part 3 of 3)

PART 3 OF 3—

In this now moment, is sitting in stillness truly peaceful for you?

In light of all of the posts being shared on the Year of the Fire Horse, I’ve been contemplating my relationship to time, speed and stillness. After many conversations where people are feeling like they’ve been in a pressurized container to ‘shed it all’, I’ve seen people waver between what is true and peaceful stillness; and utter states of freeze.

Let’s get one thing straight: if we’ve shed it all, we’ve croaked.

We are constantly becoming, shedding, being, choosing from one moment to the next.

So I want to ask you: is the sharp counter to pressing forward for you to be in stillness? Is that is truly what is peaceful for you right now?
Or have you become so acclimatized to stillness, that to feed the polarizing opposite of swift movement forward, is beginning to feel like you’ve actually fallen into the camp of freeze, fawn, numb inaction?

There is an important distinction I want you to notice here.

As I’ve been with these sensations of: what is stillness, and what is rightful action forward, I’ve been noticing my relationships to peaceful stillness vs. peace in motion.

Perhaps some of these contemplations will serve as self-inquiry for you too. Not because I feel like the smiling happy Buddha, but because it’s up to us to take note when these sensations shift.
It’s up to us to attune to when a sit feels like a genuine exhale, or when a sit that feels forced because “it’s the thing to do to regulate your nervous system.”

You know that feeling as a kid playing hide and seek? (Talking to my millennials here). Where if you moved a bone, you’d be caught in your spot? You’d be revealed and lose the game? So you’d stay there. Barely breathing until the streetlights came on, thinking if this game didn’t end soon you’d be in trouble for getting home late.

Remember that feeling?

If that’s how stillness feels to you, it may not be your paradoxical medicine in this now moment.
Tense, contracted, barely breathing.
Barely breathing.

Yes, there is a time and place for being with the discomfort. And, there is also a place for moving the energy along. Taking rightful action.

Even micro action.

Notice when that is your medicine, and let it be so.

It can be swift. It can be fierce.
But it can also be graceful.
Like the horse.

We get to experience being peace in motion.
And it gets to be powerful and steady.
Fierce and graceful.

Take inventory of how your “sit” feels today, and act accordingly.