by David Kundtz
Notice that in this Stillpoint, the power was in Naomi. It can be in you, too. You can breathe in what you need and breathe it out where it is needed. The words that Naomi imagined during the second breath were “care, understanding, and love.” In the exhalation, the affect of the words were disarming and powerful. You can do this at home when you are about to explode at your child or spouse or after they have exploded at you. As this example shows, Stillpoints are not only a healthy way of taking care of yourself, but they also enable you to treat others better.
When you feel stuck
Try this the next time you are having trouble with some task. Close your eyes for a moment and imagine inhaling the energies of concentration and relaxation. Then open your eyes and, as you breathe out, direct the power of your breath into the task at hand. Repeat this process to build a cycle of moving energy.
Commuting
Often when I am speaking to a group on Stopping, a participant's first personal connection with the idea will be the time spent commuting twice a day. “I call it ‘decompression time,’” said one man as he told us what he does to make the transition from work to home. “My commute lasts anywhere from twenty to forty-five minutes, depending on traffic. As soon as I get in my car, my transforming begins. I loosen my tie, put on a relaxing tape—don't listen to the news—and do everything possible to think of my home and my family: how my wife has spent her day and what the kids might be doing. When I finally get there, I move much more easily into the very different world of home.”
There are several things you can do to enhance the power of a Stillpoint. You can add a simple, short, self-dialogue or affirmation at the beginning or end of your Stillpoint. Some examples are: “I'm okay, I can handle this,” “This will be over soon, probably in a few hours, and I can deal with anything for a few hours,” or “This evening I will take care of myself with a nice ______.”
Another good enhancement is to ask, “What would _______ (fill in the name of someone, dead or alive, personally known or not, whom you admire) do in this situation?” Then imagine that you are receiving her or his energy right now, and breathe it into you. Another tool is to visualize the difficult situation you are facing: Close your eyes and “see” it in your mind's eye. In your visualization you make everything go just as you want it to. The rehearsal will lead you in the reality. Many competitive athletes will attest to the effectiveness of this rehearsal visualization.
Please don't underestimate the power of a Stillpoint of even a few seconds. A glance heavenward takes maybe a second and a half, but for you at this time, it can be full of meaning and power because you have already determined its meaning and power. For example, you can say to yourself, “As I glance at the sky (or even at the ceiling), I remember the presence of God in my life and that God's grace is available here and now.”
A gesture that is hardly noticed by those around you can empower you in the same way. Here is one I use when I am in a stressful or uncomfortable situation: By simply bringing my thumb and index finger together to make a circle, I remind myself that “This too shall pass.” For me it brings comfort, courage, and perspective.
Bernie Siegel, author of Love, Medicine, and Miracles, tells of a seriously ill woman who was often overcome by fear. She knew she was in the hands of God, but she would sometimes forget and become fearful. That's when she would merely reach out her hand and, with that gesture, be reminded that she was in God's hands. Her fear would disappear.
The moments of Stillpoints are endless. Search your imagination for yours or for ways in which you need them. These are the times that most accurately correspond to the poet's image of the “rest between the notes.” Think of the events of your day as the notes in a song. For the music to be melodious, so that it doesn't sound like a siren, you need to put the pauses in place. During the pause of a Stillpoint, the goal is a period of quiet, of “doing nothing,” of being aware of who you are, and of what you want. Then your song “goes on, beautiful.”
Spend the afternoon.You can't take it with you.
ANNIE DILLARD
16
Stopovers: More of a Good Thing
While Stillpoints are the most common, most basic, and most obviously beneficial way of Stopping, the real challenge for most of us is the next deepest level: Stopovers. These are the longer times of doing nothing: an hour or many hours, a day, a weekend, or several days. This is the gourmet fare of the Stopping feast. Even though they are longer in duration, Stopovers are still at the speed of light because they must take place within the context of our fast and full lives.
Stopovers are based on the following principle: It is easier for most of us to take a longer time away from work less frequently than it is to take shorter times off more frequently. For most of us, it is more likely that we will take a full day off every two months or so for a Stopover than to take an hour every day for, say, meditation. Both are good. It's just a question of which you will actually do.
Think of Stopovers as those stations on a long, leisurely train journey where you get off and look around, enjoy the scenery, breathe the fresh air, and return to your journey feeling rested and as if you've experienced a change.
Stopovers are getting away for a while and they have a happy effect: feeling renewed and ready to go again. Jon Kabat-Zinn, a renowned specialist on meditation and stress management, says, “The stopping actually makes the going more vivid, richer, more textured. It helps keep all the things we worry about and feel inadequate about in perspective. It gives us guidance.”
One of the necessities of the profession of any family counselor— maybe for your work too—is to be able to maintain the balance between caring deeply about what is happening in your clients' lives without carrying their pain into your own life. An hour-long Stopover is often my way to do this. Sometimes it will happen naturally during the day or, otherwise, I will schedule an hour to be a space between the notes of my clients. I walk mostly, though sometimes I go to a cafe and, accompanied by a cup of tea, watch people.
“My work is very intense,” said a woman who supervises a large health care facility. “At work I am always ‘on’ and when I get home I need time to adjust to this totally different place of family life. So I have a very strict rule: I get to be alone for a half hour before anyone gets any of my time. I think this would be my major Stopping of the day. It's taken a lot of work to make the kids see why I need it, but gradually they have understood.”
Stopovers are important for everyone. For most of us, in order to take a significant amount of time for this purpose, our motivation and determination must be strong and clear. Remember the ultimate purpose: to wake up to what is going on in your life, to keep first things first, to remember who you are, and who you want to become, and to remember your ultimate values and meanings. Who can not afford Stopovers?
Perhaps the best way for many of us to first experience a Stopover—a longer time away doing nothing—is over a weekend. Pick out a weekend, maybe a few months from now in order to give yourself some time to get used to the idea, mark it on a calendar, and plan an overnight for yourself. Allow the doing nothing part to feel positive to you: “There is really nothing I have to do for a day and a half. No pressure and no expectations at all.”
Practically speaking, many Stopovers happen during vacation time. If you vacation with your family, perhaps you could arrange to have a day to yourself and for another member of the family to do the same. On it's own, time off from work is not necessarily Stopping. In fact, many seem to cram their vacation so full and so fast that it defeats its purpose of rest and renewal. So consider a Stopping vacation. It just might be your best vacation ever.
[Going on retreat] has something to do withan aspect within each one of us . . . unknownto science . . . that longs to be at peace.
DAVID A. COOPER
17
Stopovers on the Way
The experiences presented here are real Stopovers by real people. The stories were gathered in conve
rsations by phone, letter, e-mail, and fax. They were shared by people who had either read about my work on Stopping or had attended one of my seminars. As you can see, people have been generous in sharing their experiences:
A structured weekend retreat
“I generally don't like most organized retreats,” said Barry G. in a phone conversation, “but that was before I discovered a silent, directed retreat. I believe that is what you are calling Stopovers. I was apprehensive as I went for the weekend, all that time with nothing planned and so few people there. A friend had encouraged me to do this when I told him I was often disappointed in retreats, but I was getting cold feet as I arrived. Well, I needn't have. It was wonderful. I can't recommend it enough. I do it now every year because if I don't, I seem to mix things up and have a hard time keeping straight all the things that are going on around me, especially with my family.” (See the Kellys' book in the bibliography for information and listings on retreats.)
Your own weekend retreat
You don't have to have a retreat center. One young women, Janet, rented a small, inexpensive motel-type unit in a rural community close to some hiking trails. She spent a weekend alone, roving the hills, eating simply, and resting a lot. “As I think back on it now,” Janet said, “I see that it was what you are describing as a Stopover. Of course I didn't think of it that way then. I just did it. I do remember that I didn't tell people what I was doing. I think I would have expected them to think me odd.” (See Cooper's book in the bibliography to help you plan your own retreat.)
On a bus
A long-retired school teacher, Howard L., in his eighties, took a three-day bus trip to visit his daughter. He wrote to me: “I didn't plan for this to be a Stopover, but when I read about Stopping in your article, I realized that was exactly what I had done. It was so different. I hardly talked to anyone on the bus, but just remembered a lot of moments and made sure that the few I have left are spent in the right way.”
A nighttime reverie
Pam is a nurse. She wrote about her “life-changing Stopping” after attending one of my stress clinics. She spoke of her hospital work in these terms: “Everyone was under a lot of stress and there was a feeling of insecurity and anger. I felt the symptoms of burnout: I dreaded going to work, on my days off I would be thinking about work and not enjoying the day and, worst of all, I would snap at my husband and my one-and-a-half-year-old son. I thought to myself, ‘if I am not able to handle this, then I must be a failure.’ I was at my breaking point. So, I decided to Stop.”
One night, very late, after she returned home from the night shift, she “had had enough! After a good cry I sat at our kitchen table and asked myself ‘What is really important to me? What makes me happy?’” Thus passed the hours of Pam's long night, alone at her kitchen table with her questions, the pause between her notes, her dark interval, her Stopover.
And with the dawn? “My number one priority was to be the best mother, and number two was to be a supportive, caring, and understanding wife. Family was more important to me than work. This sounds kind of corny but, in a way, I felt that I had a kind of spiritual awakening that night.”
Her Stopover brought about practical changes, too: She put in for a transfer and took a month off to visit her mother, sister, and other family members in Japan. Finally, she added, “I hate to think of what I might be like now if I didn't stop that night.”
Just staying home
The busy, type A, executive editor of a small publishing house found that her way of doing a Stopover was to stay put. “Twice now, I have taken a week off and just stayed home—no calls, no visitors, and no going places. I slept a lot, read a little, ‘did nothing,’ and worked silently in the garden.”
A spontaneous opportunity
Soon after she had heard about Stopping, Beatrice, a woman in her forties, called me to say that her Stopover had caught her unaware. “All of a sudden,” she said, “I had an appointment canceled and a whole afternoon with absolutely nothing planned. The kids were in school, my husband was out of town, it was a beautiful day, and I had about four hours. Right to the coast I went, to my favorite isolated beach, almost without thinking about it. Like I knew I needed to do this. I was in another space for those hours, and things, at least later in retrospect, became clearer for me.”
A birthday gift to yourself
Gerald Reid told of his Stopover in the newspaper. For his birthday, Reid told his wife that he just wanted to spend the day with her and Nathan, their thirteen-year-old son. He wanted them all to do nothing. “But Dad, it's your sixtieth birthday!” his son protested. “You don't even want a present?” “No,” responded Reid. He just wanted to spend the whole day completely and exclusively with the two of them. After some resistance from his wife and son, they began to go along with it. His son got into the idea by wishing him “Happy Nothingday, Dad! What do you not want today?” They played games (a concession by his wife who doesn't like games), she cooked what he liked, and they talked to each other. He received cards from both of them with messages of love. “Are you going to do nothing next year too, Dad?” his son asked him before bed. Reid asked him why. “Oh, nothing is more fun than I thought it would be,” he answered.
A day off for rest and rejuvenation
A recent issue of Men's Health Magazine featured an article titled “I Want to Be Alone.” Executive editor Joe Kita suggested a day alone filled with healthy pleasures.
He acknowledges to his readers that “to spend a day alone, tending to nothing but yourself, probably sounds foreign and even a little shameful.” His day's retreat includes silence, hiking, simple food, a nap, exercise, a hot shower, and getting to bed early.
These stories show that Stopovers cover a wide variety of experiences from an hour to several days, from a planned event to a response to one of life's challenges, from a quiet time of insight to a life-changing decision, from a bus ride to a retreat house, and from going someplace different to staying home.
This is a good place to mention the expectations or the hoped-for results you might have of your Stopping experiences, especially of the longer Stopovers. What I want to encourage is that you leave that part open-ended. To have too-specific expectations is often to be disappointed. Part of the gift of Stopping is the discovery of what you were previously unaware of. The ideal attitude to take with you on your Stopover is: “Let's see what happens.” What all Stopovers have in common, at their conclusion, is a more awake and aware you.
Prevention is better than cure.
ERASMUS, 1509
18
This Is Your Body Talking
Of course, all of us have probably done Stopovers many times in our lives. But instead of the Stopovers being a conscious choice, they were the result of getting sick. Sickness is often the body's way of talking to us and of getting us to stop when our minds and hearts are so overwhelmed by the challenge of too much that they can no longer get the job done. Not all sickness is this sort, of course, but too much of it is. A sickness-induced Stopover is the body's way of saying, “If you're not going to stop yourself, I will have to force you to stop,” and then clobbering you over the head with a two-by-four.
Sicknesses are an ineffective and inefficient way to experience Stopovers. Because you're feeling sick, it's difficult to pay attention and appreciate anything, you're not in a receptive state of mind or expecting any kind of positive goals, and you just lie there feeling awful and waiting for it to be over so you can rise and run again.
I have a friend, Harry, who works long hours and takes little time for himself. One would call him driven. About three times a year he gets sick—the flu or a bad cold—and has to spend a week in bed, hardly capable even of talking or reading, and then he's back to overdrive. Sickness serves him as an enforced Stopover. But it is a detrimental way to do it: He misses most of the benefits and—more important—enjoys none of the pleasure. He only achieves the minimal bodily needs for survival. My hunch is that if he took the same amount
of time that he spent sick, one week twice a year, and used it for a scheduled Stop- over, he would not only get sick less often, but enjoy life more.
Our bodies speak to us in many different ways. Learning to read your body's language before you become sick is an important result of the cumulative effects of Stopping. You will notice the patterns of sicknesses and identify the various parts of your body that pain you. Stopping encourages you to ask body questions: What is this backache telling me? (Am I “carrying” something I don't want or need to carry?) Why am I always getting a sore throat and cough? (Do I want to voice something that gets stuck in my throat?) Answers to these kinds of questions— even the questions themselves—come in the silence of Stopping, which allows us to notice our current state of health and thus attend to it and prevent many ills.
