BENEFITS OF STILLNESS
the odyssey chronicles
If you are reading this, you are probably a high performer. You are looking to enhance your daily activity level and get as much out of life as you can. You probably have a long list of things you are ready to dominate each and every day. Which is phenomenal!
The questions I have for high performers like yourself is this.
How much of your day is spent in silence?
This is a hard one, at least it was for me. Silence tends to be the loudest, stillness can make us feel like we are coming out of our skin. It brings up all the things that are floating around in our noggin that we want to keep hidden. Or the things we don’t know how to deal with. Sometimes, it’s stuff we don’t even know was there, or that we have not looked at in years. Stillness seems like we are wasting time and not being productive. We have things on our mind constantly, the more we have responsibility over the more we utilize our brain during the day. In order to maintain this level of excellence we have to be focused all of the time. This produces some serious strain, as well as a conflict of time when it comes to dealing with internal thoughts.
I want to make sure this is said so there is no confusion. I am NOT a wu wu guy. I don’t think planet alignment is an excuse for acting like a child. Nor do I believe yoga solves all problems. However, I do believe in energy levels and people’s ability to manipulate them. I am also a firm believer in science, i.e. facts based on research. That belief in science is what brought me to writing this article.
We only understand a fraction of what our brain is capable of. The true power of what is up in our skull is wild. We have the most powerful supercomputer in the world floating around between our shoulders and we don’t think twice about it!
Why the hell am I writing about this? Well, stillness is the best way to hear what your brain is trying to tell you, and find out where it’s misguided. Silence is the only door I have found to actually allows me to grapple through the stuff floating around in my head. Other avenues only filled my brain with more sound or thoughts. I found a path to real stillness and silence through Yin yoga as well as sound baths. This time is dedicated to either one soft voice guiding you through long pauses or Tibetan bowls playing specific wavelengths while you meditate. You are there to do nothing but exist.
Now it took me a little while to really open up to these types of meditations. I knew that spending time in silience was good for me but I was never guided through or into a meditative state. Over time I began to work through some mental blocks, the random thoughts about who else was in the room, the hippie teacher, my inflexibility, my awkwardness. Once I was comfortable with what was going on enough to let go I started to feel some intense emotions about things. Things that were from a while ago that I either forgot or just pushed way down. My regrets as a father, my poor choices in the past, those I hurt, those who hurt me, all of it seemed to slowly come to the surface. It begs the question…
why is silence so loud and stillness so painful?
Is the silence noisy or is our brain so busy processing things in order to hide the past/future pain that we can’t hear it without it? Is stillness really painful or is the act of doing nothing making you feel like you are lazy, incapable or useless?
The body is a funny thing. It is literally just a giant defense mechanism. Trying to do all it can to avoid injury and potential pain, emotionally and physically. It does this at all costs in order to protect you. Just like starting a new gym routine you need to work on building your brain’s ability to handle stress and work through issues.
Working out in the gym or through any type of resistance program is raising your body's awareness to the stress. Through consistent training, the body is told that it has to grow because the stress is not going away. We can do the same with the mind.
The only difference is that with the body we can visibly see the areas we want to work on, the mind is “hidden”. We have to access it in order to fix it. This takes time, intentional action and above all, both silence and stillness. We have to remove all stimuli that will cloud our thought processes.
There are hundreds of methods to accomplish these two goals. I will never claim to have “the way” or say someone’s way is wrong. In this journey to figure out the mind all practitioners are primarily aiming at one goal. To slow you down and force you to exist in your mind. They force you to be present with your thoughts and for an extended amount of time.
Why are we so fascinated with the mind and what is in there? I think it is because we have spent years and years not dealing with it simply because we either don’t know how to or never wondered if we should.
Yoga and sound baths aren’t going to solve all your problems. Just like lifting weights isn’t going to make you perfect. However, lifting weights will enhance your ability to function better as a human because you will have a happy healthy system. Same with working through your mind. You will start to unpack all of the garbage we carry around daily and see how it has been affecting our actions. We have learned through our life what actions were worth continuing or stopping. We learn through pain and joy. This process of refinement presents us with some items we need to work through. Which is great! We now understand the need so we can take steps towards fixing anything that needs to be.
I didn’t do this on my own, I don’t really know if you can. You need some sort of guide. Someone who has done this before and knows how to process emotion at that level. I think everyone is better off with a coach in multiple areas of their lives, therapists are just coaches with specific skills sets and are a phenomenal add on to building a well-oiled machine.
I leaned on yoga instructors, teachers, sound bath practitioners and friends. I made sure to do one thing above all, be open minded.
If you have never spent time in silence or alone for 45 minutes to an hour then I highly suggest starting. The sooner you can start working through the awkward stages the quicker you can get to where you're working on some real stuff. You can clear that mind of all the background noise.
I understand most of us, especially hard chargers, don't think this is worth the time. You have plenty to do in the 168 hours we have each week that it seems like spending an hour or two a week in pure silence is moving backwards.
I challenge you to try this for 30 days two times a week. If you give this your full attention I believe you will start to realize how much we actually have in your head and how it is influencing you without you even knowing it.
I can only speak for myself when I talk about this but since I started focusing on intentional quiet/stillness I have been able to work through far more intense situations without losing my cool. I am also far more present with my family and friends. I have more space for things because my head isn’t filled up with this internal back and forth of events or conversations.
I learned to let go, I learned to embrace the quiet, I learned to be at peace with myself and my choices.
the silence and stillness are the loudest and are also the best form of rehab.
For both the body and the soul.
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