Look at the Clouds
vs. Getting that F*CKN PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE email from Jodie in accounts...
Are you ready for the next blizzard? I thought we were totally done with winter (because I’m naive and forget how seasons work) but here we are! Hopefully today’s email gives you some food for thought if it’s impossible to go outside in your neighborhood.
Have a Lie Down
If you haven’t noticed, I tend to write a lot about the importance of a lie down practice. It’s not that I think that a sedentary life is superior or that exercise is bad, it’s just that when you lie down you get a chance to experience REST. And while this chance to rest is great, I want to help you maximize your chance of success.
So what can we do to help ease ourselves out of our busy lives and into a state of rest?
Look at the ceiling…
When I lie down in my teaching studio, I tend to keep my eyes open. I look out and see my terrifically awesome ceiling.
It’s the type of ceiling tile we’ve all seen. At first glance there’s absolutely nothing remarkable about it, and this leaves me with a choice. I can either let my mind wander and think about my TODO list or that sh*tty email I need to send later today OR I can look at the ceiling with interest and imagine that I’m looking at a great painting.
When the TODO list is stuck in your head or you’re having an argument with yourself, you can’t honestly say that you are purely having a rest. I would expect that your neck and head feel stiff as heck and your breathing is quite held. You’ve gone to lie down to alleviate these symptoms and yet that noggin’ is distracted and taking you away from the task at hand.
ARRRGGHHHH!
Before we get too frustrated by this, I’d like you to ask yourself if you actually can feel how your head and neck are stiff while you’re distracted and running through that TODO list. Most of us will only sense that we have this chattering going on in our minds and completely shut off how we brace during these moments. Many people will notice a stiffness in the chest (which is great to notice), but there are a few other markers that I think will really help you better know what a concentrated brace feels like.
Some of these markers are:
holding the breath
stiffness in the chest
a deadening of the muscles around the whole skull (check behind your ears)
a gripping of the jaw
pressing the head into the book/pillow
I’d like you to take a bit of time to see if you can sense these for yourself. Do not purposefully make yourself grip up in the way I have described above as that might not be your particular version of CONCENTRATION. Instead, I’d like you to imagine that you are in an annoying or stressful situation. I’d like you to imagine that damn email you got from Jodie in accounts that really gave you a dose of worry/anger.
If you can really imagine this scenario, you’ll feel yourself grip in a specific way IMMEDIATELY. When you feel those pockets of muscular tension build up, you can then simply let that specific pattern of tension thaw. Things should feel marginally better.
Look at the clouds…
As you return to looking at the ceiling, I’d like you to imagine that you are lying in a field on a warm day and looking up at the clouds.
When you look at the clouds, you want to allow your eyes and head to gently wander about. This doesn’t mean that you roll your head like a maniac on the book. It means you allow your eyes to slowly move from one place to another. Your head should always feel that it is free to follow the eyes. The head does not need to move per se, but it should not feel rooted to a spot.
If this looking game goes well, I begin to see colors get warmer and more vivid as the blood flows into the eyes differently.
It’s a terrific sensation and I hope you can find something similar for yourself during your lie downs this week.
Does This Resonate With You?
These blogs are hopefully a way of helping you better understand yourself, how you function, and why things sometimes feel off in a general way. If these posts are helpful, I encourage you to subscribe, leave a comment, ask a question, or check out the archives for my previous articles. I like hearing from everyone and I’ll do my best to respond as I can.
Get In Touch
If you’re in NYC, you may learn more about my private teaching practice at johndalto.com.
If you’d like to book any lesson time with me, you can find my booking link here.