Fully Present

Many of my past blogs have been focused on finding our breath, staying in the present moment, uni rather than multi-tasking and slowing down.  This was my teaching theme for this past week, reminding ourselves to be fully present and completely in the moment.  Then the ironic thing happened. At the end of one of my workdays during this week of practicing being fully present I was getting out of the car  and dropped an empty glass tea container which smashed upon landing on the cement floor, spreading small pieces of glass under the car landing like a a halo from the crash site.  So, following a long work day, I had to sweep up the glass before heading inside to finally relax.

Then the same thing happened the very next morning.  I had a few extra minutes in my usual morning routine and thought I could squeeze in a few extra tasks.  This inevitably put me behind schedule so when I went to put my glass container back into the fridge...yup, I dropped it, smashing glass all over the place as I stood there in my pajamas and bare feet.  Thankfully my husband Ed was around to help me clean up the shards that had once again created a halo around my feet.  He said, "what happened?"  to which I replied, "I just need to slow down".  Oh.  That.

Here I am all week long, working and teaching the idea of being fully within the moment, completely behind  what we are doing whether it be a yoga pose or repeating a statement of loving-kindness.  And it becomes obvious that, once again, I am teaching what I need to be practicing.  The Universe gave me my first sign to slow down and do less with the first glass breaking to which I was obviously oblivious. The second sign, not so subtle, broken glass, small trickle of blood on my foot and now I'm truly running behind schedule.  "Okay" I said to the Universe, "I hear you...I will take a deep breath and try to slow down."

How many cues do we miss on a daily basis?  It's incredibly easy to understand why these fore-warnings seem almost invisible as we are distracted by our own daily grind.  It's an energy that we create and continue to manifest, so how do we listen to the cues and actually take action?  Well, I'm obviously no expert given the above story, but what I do know is that I heard it loud and clear on the second warning.  I do know that to become more mindful, to immerse in the present moment fully and completely, we need to be aware and to practice being here and nowhere else.

We know we're not fully present when we find ourselves reflecting on the past, going over what happened, how we felt, what he/she said or when we are contemplating what is yet to happen.  We can be lying on our yoga mat wondering what to cook for dinner, how busy the traffic might be on the way home or wondering what to wear to that wedding in December.  We miss the moment of being right where we are and silence and stillness are tricky like that. When things slow down we can perceive them as uneventful, even boring. We are so habituated to sound, action, movement and distraction that we no longer even know how to be comfortable with just being. And that's why we practice.

We practice sitting still and focusing on just one thing, like our breath to remember what it's like to not have a constant tornado sounding off in our heads.  We practice to recognize all the sensations that arise in our body both in motion and when lying still.  We practice because we want to not be just "human doings" all of the time, but to be present in the multitude of moments that exist now...each second of every single day.

The cool thing is, that when you actually begin to remember silence, stillness and practice doing less, you begin to crave it.  You begin to recognize how much noise and chaos is inherent in daily life and remember that we have opportunities to not just be on one frantic wavelength.  We have times when we absolutely need to be moving quickly. The truth is, we can only do one thing at a time, perhaps in quick succession, but only a single thing whether it be breathing, talking, making dinner or working on our devices.  We can be completely mindful of doing whatever we are doing and perhaps realize that not all can be completed at once, that we can find joy in being fully present to the moment we are experiencing.

I promise to slow down and to hopefully not receive anymore Universal love taps of breaking glass.