A Practice in Stillness: Stillness Practice

Stillness.  I love practicing it. It’s helped me have a better life, and I’m especially grateful for the ease, calm and balance it’s given me throughout tough times. I first encountered it as a formal practice in Quaker meeting for worship where it is a central part of the service. If you’ve never been in a Quaker Meeting, worshippers sit in stillness, silence, and contemplation. For me, I loved the stillness of Meeting. It reminded me of what I’d been doing informally from an early age to get through life. Stillness was my refuge, it helped me self soothe, calm and regroup from the physical and verbal assaults I endured throughout my childhood. It enabled me to be greater than my circumstances and it still does today. 

Ok, so what’s my take on the practice of stillness. It isn’t meditation or mindfulness. In both, the mind is the tool used to filter and interpret the world it observes and understands. Important outcomes of both practices are strengthening one’s control over the mind and having equanimity. However, in the practice of stillness the body is the tool to filter and interpret the world it senses and feels. Outcomes of stillness practice include strengthening our sensory acuity and the wholeness that arises from being sensorily connected to all that’s being felt. In this practice we deliberately still the body to actively be in the body’s sensory experience. It’s a somatic practice that helps us: better attune to and inhabit our bodies; improve our interoception; and experience living from the balanced integration of the body and mind.

Let’s talk for a quick second about actively living in the flow of the body’s sensory experience. Here’s something that I’m sure we’ve all done. It’s a bright sunny perfect day, you step outside and stop, close your eyes, turn your face into the sunshine and seamlessly ease into the warmth and light of the moment. Questions. What did it feel like, how did your body respond, what sensations were part of the experience? That felt experience happened because you slowed and stopped to be in what your body was sensing and feeling. It's a somatic way of being that gets us out of perceiving primarily from the mind and into a body oriented perception based on what’s being sensed and felt. 

An exercise in stillness practice. Wherever you are and only if it’s safe, stop close your eyes and be still for 3-4 minutes (perhaps longer if you want to). In the stillness ask yourself what is it that my body is feeling? What are the sensations both from outside and inside that your body is detecting? Be as specific as you can be. If you’re lying in bed, what’s the feel of the sheets against your skin? If you’re outside how does the outdoors feel? Stay in the sensations you’re detecting. They change, they ebb and flow, and we sense the changes in what our body is feeling as we stay in the felt experience. 

Let stillness calm the body and sensorily connect you with whatever your body is feeling into.

Eric