Becoming Still and Quiet

People receive information in different ways. Some are able to be in the midst of chaos and the light bulb will go off, while others demand a perfectly quiet and still environment. I require the latter. At some point during my journey, I had to ask myself, what needs to happen in order to gain an understanding of what is happening to my body, because even when we choose to ignore the signs or symptoms of illness, we can't do it for long. I believe most of us feel if we ignore them, they'll just go away.....and sometimes that works for a while, but invariably they will show themselves again at some point and time.

When we're young, it's easy to think that we'll stay young and healthy forever, believing that young people who are atheletic don't ever get sick. Always pushing the envelope with our bodies, sometimes putting an enormous amount of stress on our bones and muscles, and if you have a disease thats lerking in your body, it becomes dangerous....meaning somethings got to give. For me, I continued to ignore the symptoms, even though I did seek medical care a couple of times and was told there was nothing wrong with me. The favorite phrase for a doctor to speak to a female patient........"its all in your head" and of course completely trusting the medical profession, I went along with that conclusion.

But of course none of this is about bashing the medical profession, but more about how to be your own advocate and a part of being your own advocate is watching and paying attention to signs and symptoms of disease and illness. Hence my focus of becoming still and quiet to hear what your body is telling you.

Why is it so hard to do? How difficult could it be to stop and listen to the one thing that we are all intimately connected with....our own bodies. Most probably fear....after all....disease and illness are sort of nasty words that we would rather just have roll off our tongues. If we are to be sick, then surely it will come later in the game of life, not something that would pin us down in the prime of our lives. But when the body starts screaming out to you, "somthing is wrong here"......then we need to pay attention.

Unfortunately, getting still and quiet is a choice, not something that is innately ingrained in us from birth. If anything our bodies seem to shout the opposite. Go....go just as fast as you can...in as many directions as you can....experiencing all there is to experience in this life. Work, family, fun, travel, money....etc. Always in excess never taking a moment to realize that there might be consequences to how we live our lives....especially if there's disease lurking in the background. So if getting still and quiet is a choice, what makes us decide to incorporate that into our daily lives? Who is most likely to get quiet and still......type A or type B personalities?

First of all you don't have to be a guru to practice being still and quiet. It's more about calming down your mind, and then your body follows. I used to require seperateness in order to be quiet or pay attention to my body. Now it seems the other way around. I pay attention to my body to realize I need to be still and quiet. In other words, in the beginning I made sure that my surroundings were controlled because the world seemed so overwhelming, but now, even though the world is even more overwhelming, I can be in constant contact with my body, always asking it what it needs. At that point I decide whether I need to step away, or just pay attention and make adjustments.

I suppose there are two ways of thinking about being still and quiet....in your mind and in your body. But which comes first....the chicken or the egg? The mind or the body? For me I have to quiet down the mind, and then the body follows because as my mind is spinning and trying to keep up, pushing my body to unsafe limits, once I talk myself down, then the body follows. To empty the mind so the body follows can be a huge understaking for alot of people because it actually seems as if you are letting go of any control you have over your own life. Letting go is also one of those phrases that is bitter to the taste, though for some it's the sweetest most enjoyable sensation on earth. We all think we have this enormous amount of control over our lives, but at some point you'll find that it's just an illusion.....unfortunately.

So if we want to get still and quiet, how do we quiet down the mind when the mind is filled with what was, what is and what will be?

You wonder, is this what living in the moment is all about?