Finding Serenity in Seasons of Stress

by Candy Paull

  Authentic control comes from ease and allowing. When we pay attention to how we move or stand, we see how our tensions are counterproductive to our innate ease and grace. Resistance creates pain. Our bodies—and our lives—are more easily moved and guided into grace when we become aware of our own tendency to react to situations rigidly. Many of our problems with age are because we move incorrectly and the body compensates with aches, pains, and physical problems. Listening to our bodies, relaxing our resistance, being open to a new way of understanding how body, mind, and spirit interrelate can help us become more flexible and alive. Simply by learning to observe and honor the body and our own experience, something within guides us to the wisdom we need, and connects us to the resources and people who will help us become more conscious of what we are choosing. The mind cannot figure out the “how,” but the body leads us surely to the desired goal. The body connects us to the stream of life if we are willing to be present to our own human nature speaking in and through our bodies. Connecting to body time connects us to the eternal now—high season, perfect timing, Divine right action.

  Emerson said it like this: “There is a soul at the centre of nature, and over the will of every man, so that none of us can wrong the universe. It has so infused its strong enchantment into nature, that we prosper when we accept its advice, and when we struggle to wound its creatures, our hands are glued to our sides, or they beat our own breasts. The whole course of things goes to teach us faith. We need only obey. There is guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening we shall hear the right word.”

  I connect to body time in many ways: dancing, drumming, belly dancing, practicing yoga, using aromatherapy, walking in the woods and by the lake, planting herbs, creating art, cooking, listening to music, meditating, making collages, taking photos of flowers, and spending time just being as a I watch a sunset. I unconsciously and naturally slow down and savor my food, as I have done since childhood. A friend once told me, “I love the way you eat soup. I have never seen anyone enjoy their food as much as you do.”

  A personal tea ceremony with time to savor a cup of fine jasmine tea is an enchanting way to be still and know, savoring the moment. The British have their teatime, and even that intrepid superspy James Bond preferred a cup of the finest Yin Hao jasmine tea. On Star Trek: The Next Generation, Captain Picard tells the food replicator to produce “Earl Grey tea, hot.”

  Connecting with Ceremonies

  Ceremony is another important way to enter body time. I have attended women’s circles for years, where we drum and sing and pass the talking stick around the fire circle. We have held sweat lodges under a full moon and enjoyed weekend retreats that took us out of our daily lives and into another world of spiritual encounter.

  In a time-out on the trail, I found an owl feather that reminded me of wisdom, a wing-shaped shell that spoke of transformation, and a red rock that told me how hard my anger felt in my belly. I lit a candle as I journaled, a symbol of the steady flame of joy that burns brightly.

  My dear friend Sarah, whom we all know as Butterfly, offers a Medicine Wheel four times a year at each solstice and equinox. Her Medicine Wheel is based on Native American ceremonies but has its own idiosyncratic way of proceeding. Butterfly is part Cherokee, and her home is on the Trail of Tears. She offers a ceremony that welcomes all people. She is also a part of a women’s group that holds similar gatherings, adapting the ceremonial forms of ancient peoples for modern women. I have found spiritual nourishment and sacred friendship in these circles. We call in the directions, offer prayers, sing songs, tell our stories, and celebrate the changing seasons of our lives. I carry those ceremonies with me, always reminded that Spirit is faithful through all the changing seasons of my life. It is powerful medicine to enter into body time.

  Savoring Every Breath

  In order to connect to the body’s wisdom, you must observe the way you are breathing. When experiencing stress, the rhythm of the breath stops in gasps, and shallow breathing occurs as the anxiety of the mind increases. The body automatically picks up the rushing, running fight-or-flight of our anxious thoughts, creating a feedback loop that makes the mind run even faster. It winds the body into a tight, tense coiled spring of tension and resistance. Notice your tendency to feel overwhelmed and overloaded. You begin to “globalize” and “eternalize” everything. You think life is completely out of control (globalizing the problem) and that it will always be that way (eternalizing the situation). In reality, you are moving out of the moment and into the past, and the future, coloring it with fear, worry, and negativity. Short, shallow breathing mirrors these thoughts. Conversely, the breath can be consciously slowed and deepened, lengthening and stretching and relaxing into a calmer, more deliberate rhythm.

  Are you plagued by worried thoughts about having enough money or time or energy? Observe your breathing and see if you are cutting off the supply of air with contracted breathing habits. Take deep expansive breaths to bring more air into your lungs. Let your body soothe your anxiety and remind you that unlimited supply is available for you with every breath. A deep inhalation is a powerful reminder that supply is everywhere and always available. Anxious, clutching, quick breaths tell you that fear has crept in and tightened its grip.

  Soak in the Tub

  When your nerves are frazzled and you’re tired from a hectic day, a soothing soak in the tub can give you a mini spa vacation. A hot bath with essential oils or Epsom salts can ease sore muscles. Take a long, hot soak and let your mind wander. A warm bath with soft scents can help you get to sleep more easily. Breathe in the steam and scent. Whether you enjoy a sudsy bubble bath or an invigorating herbal soak, let taking a bath be a time of release and renewal.

  When this occurs, stretch, open your arms, and inhale an expansive breath of life. The body will respond with relief. Breathing in, I know I am breathing in. Breathing out, I know I am breathing out. As the mind enters more fully into the now that the body always inhabits, it discovers rest and relief. False urgencies are transmuted into clarity and peace.

  When anxiety arises, breathe deeply and consciously. Bring your attention back to the now. Recognize your feelings and release them. Move out of your head and down into your heart and lungs. Ground yourself by sensing the life energy in your arms and legs. Trust the process and observe your energy lighten up as you move from tightness to an easier, more relaxed state.

  Activity: Trust Your Instincts

  Follow your natural instincts and let them lead you into the wild places of freedom and fresh perspective. Take a walk in nature, but instead of planning an itinerary, follow in the footsteps of Henry David Thoreau, who let his instinct decide what direction to take. Let your body lead you to where it wants to go. Just wander and ramble, letting your fancy take you where it will. Leave your watch and maps at home. Let your inner nature be your guide. Now take the lessons you learned on this walk back home with you and apply them to your everyday life. When you are stuck and can’t think of a way to solve a problem, stop thinking and listen to your body. Be still and know the wisdom of the body, relax into not knowing. Ground and center yourself. Then see what arises. Scientists talk about the three Bs: bed, bath, and bus. When they are wrestling with a seemingly unsolvable problem, they often find that the solution or the next step in the process reveals itself spontaneously when they stop trying so hard, take a break, and move back into the body. Experiment and see what happens when you let your body be your teacher.

  Three Affirmations

  I am filled with vitality, health, and energy.

  I listen to the wisdom of my body and my intuition.

  I live, move, and have my being in love.

  Read not the Times, read the Eternities.

  —Henry David Thoreau

  Learn to fall in love with the moment, and you will love life in a deeper way. Falling in love is an intense “now” experience. We long for the rush and inspiration and discovery represented by a new adventure in life—whether it is the sens
ory overload of traveling to exotic places or the romance that offers the breathless wonder of exploring a person who takes you to new levels of exhilaration and intimacy. What if this expansive awareness, this tingling aliveness, is not reserved exclusively for the highs of romance, travel, or any other high that we latch onto to feel more alive? These experiences make us aware that there is more to life than the mundaneness of our daily routines. But it doesn’t take a rush of adrenaline or the excitement of a new experience to sense the bliss of being alive. It is available in all moments, all seasons, including the commonplace moments we take for granted.

  Practicing Mindfulness

  Becoming mindful, keeping your consciousness alive to the present reality—here and now—offers another way to fall in love, to sense the hidden dimensions and aliveness of the present moment. Thich Nhat Hanh says that mindfulness is “the miracle which can call back in a flash our dispersed mind and restore it to wholeness so that we can live each minute of life.” Mindfulness is a practice that helps you keep your attention focused. Being mindful is having a calm heart, being alert and able to handle each situation as it comes. Cultivating mindful awareness teaches you that every moment is worthwhile, no matter what your experience is. It grounds you during the high times, helping you appreciate the good more fully. It sustains you in difficult times, when depression or disappointment or difficulties weigh you down and make life feel more like a burden than a blessing. It is a practice that will teach you to sense the love that underlies all of life, in all seasons and weather.

  Practice Mindfulness

  Practicing mindfulness is a simple way to bring your attention back to the moment and to reconnect to body time. For example, when you wash dishes, concentrate your attention on the act of washing dishes. Feel the silkiness of the warm water. Take pleasure in the clean dishes. As you focus on this single activity, be fully present, open, and aware. Set aside worries, plans, regrets—and pay attention to what you are doing right now.

  Loving what is means being aware of the particular, how it manifests here and now. When you are rushing through life, you see in generalities, not particulars. You mistake the map for the territory. Interact with a human being and as you get to know the particularities of that person, you move from an abstract definition and category—male, good looking, single, available—to the concrete particulars that do not define but open you to the uniqueness of this individual—David, fortyish, musician, likes golden retrievers, fixes houses, has a ten-year-old son, an ex-wife who lives in Alabama, likes strong coffee and dark beer, working on his first CD, moved to town fifteen years ago, is sensitive but not ticklish, and wants to find a relationship but is still a bit gun-shy from the last go-round.

  Or here’s another instance of the abstract versus the particular: Remember the companies that wanted to cut old-growth forests, and headlines of tree huggers camping up in the branches of the most ancient trees so that the loggers couldn’t cut them down? The loggers knew the forest in one way (and loggers do love the forest and the logging life), with much of their attention on board feet (the measurement of saleable wood), profit, and loss. The tree sitters might have come in with their own abstract theories about the forest, but they came to know the one individual tree in a more intimate way after living up in that tree for weeks on end. And the spotted owl, whose presence became the legal loophole to save the forest, would know those ancient trees in a more wild and mysterious way than any human could comprehend.

  Time for Mindfulness

  When we rush through life, time becomes abstract and mechanical, ruled by the clock as diagram and system of coordinates. It’s shorthand for plotting our lives on a productivity chart.

  The English language has only one word for time, but the ancient Greeks had two. Chronos can be plotted on a mental map, measured and defined. “Time is money” we say, and we cut time off from the totality of reality into separate compartments of an hour, a day, a week, a month. But there is another word for time in the Greek: Kairos—which refers to season, opportunity, high time. It cannot be trapped within the coordinates of a clock. Chronos conveys time literally: It’s the fifteenth day in September. Kairos interprets a sensation: It’s a day that the summer heat has finally been broken, and the blessed northern breeze is blowing across the lake. Chronos is three o’clock in the afternoon. Kairos is the moment I take a walk on a sunny afternoon after the first autumn cool front has moved through, reveling in the freedom from heat, humidity, and the cave-like existence of air conditioning. Chronos asks, “What time is it?” Kairos asks, “What is time for?” Through meditation, mindfulness, and prayer you move out of the abstract into the real. You move from Chronos into Kairos. You move from measurement into meaning.

  Light a Candle

  It’s a simple little ritual, but it can be incredibly meaningful. Light a special candle and let its glow comfort you. Lighting a candle can help you set aside sacred time in your day. The candle is a reminder that this time is different from the rest of your day. It is a time set apart for you to meditate, pray, or just be present in the moment. As long as the candle burns, you are in a sacred space and a sacred time.

  You attune yourself to eternal harmonies and play the music instead of looking at black and white notes on a page. Like a violinist in an orchestra who tunes her instrument to A to play in the same key as all the other instruments, you prepare to play along with life instead of struggling against it, trying to control it, or measuring and comparing some abstract sense of accomplishment to it. Instead of chaos, dissonance, and cacophony, you come in tune with the key of life. You use your whole body to join in with the orchestra, to play in tempo and in harmony and create beautiful music effortlessly. You don’t play the symphony to get to the final crescendo; you play to enjoy the entire musical piece, to be in the moment, to share that moment of music with the other members of the orchestra and with an audience. You create music that is in perfect time, and allegro is not better than andante, but both have their place in each movement of the symphonic composition.

  So it is in life. You no longer feel you have to struggle against what is, demanding that the world conform to your ideas of what it should be. Instead you learn to flow with what is right now and what could be tomorrow. From this point of departure, your current circumstance can become the turning point between the past and the future, the turning point that comes in subtle and unexpected ways.

  The present is the only point of time that allows you to choose between Chronos and Kairos. Enter into Kairos and you are in high time, perfect time. Stay stuck in Chronos and you miss the possibilities, because you are limited to time measured by restricted thinking; you are too focused on what has been to create what could be—on measuring what cannot be measured. If you live by abstract concepts and definitions, you’ll miss the life that is in front of you. Without the fresh reality that breaks into your limited ideas, you will make the same old choices over and over.

  This moment, the eternal here and forever now, is the vortex of self-organizing power, amplifying positive and negative experiences into different possibilities. Becoming aware of your limiting definitions helps you release old habits of thoughts, opinions, and experiences—the negative-feedback loops that confine you and keep you in old patterns. Your habits of mind produce distortions and deceptions about reality. These habits of mind obscure the underlying mystery of other dimensions of reality, the truth that is larger than your experience and opinions would normally allow.

  Stress comes from resistance; serenity is being in the natural flow of life. Struggling against this current moment is struggling against the entire universe. Fighting the way things are, and confining the reality of the moment to an abstract definition, creates resistance and rigidity. Such fighting is futile, because you are fighting to defend your ego instead of surrendering to the harmonious unfolding of life itself. Accepting situations, people, circumstances, events as they occur releases resistance. Allowing and accepting free you from unnecessar
y pain. You have the freedom to choose, but only in this moment.

  Practicing meditation and mindfulness regularly helps you become more aware of Kairos, the eternal moments and the underlying realities, because you are relaxing your resistance, becoming open to less limiting definitions, more expansive experiences. As you release an abstract view of the universe, such as your definition of outer conditions, you can begin to experience the truth of what lies beneath shallow perceptions of reality, beyond your mental concepts and expectations. You begin to sense the potential hidden in the moment.

  For example, you can look at a tree and just think in generalities about that tree, seeing it as if it is a child’s drawing of brown trunk, green leaves—just a generic tree, the “tree” you see only as an abstract idea. Or you can move beyond the representation of an abstraction into a new understanding by seeing this tree in front of you in this moment, dissolving what you “know” about trees to see the unique beauty of this particular one—its leaves in the sunlight, the knots on its trunk, the way the branches turn and reach for the sky, the sense of roots going deep into the dark earth beneath your feet. You discover that the tree becomes a focus of contemplation, a living entity that is absolutely fresh in this moment. The more you contemplate that freshness, that “treeness” of the tree, the more you will realize that something in you responds—a part of you that partakes of the eternities. Something comes alive in you that connects you to the tree and the tree to you. You are in a relationship with the tree, aware of its existence and your existence on a deeper level than the mere abstract idea you took for granted. You are sensing another dimension of life.

  The Taoist sage Lao Tzu said, “Existence is beyond the power of words to define: terms may be used but none of them is absolute.” When you allow your conception to die, when you stop resisting reality because you are defending your definition of reality, something new is born in that moment. The hard, bright shell of the seed opens to let real life—life that has always been in the kernel of the seed—emerge.