In love with no-thing
Sound of water trickling from different places. Down the small yellow pipe that connects the middle-paved steps to the stone area in our back yard. Can we hear it falling from branches to leaves, to the ground, as well? Rain tapping the roof, falling into the sump drain from the waterlogged grass. It’s not just sound. It’s also slowing down and listening. Choosing our focus.
We are sitting in our new spa. It’s been three months since we bought it, and the novelty hasn’t worn. Water gathering on a leaf. Southerly winds above, a different direction than half an hour ago.
Birds now: Tūī. Kereru. Little green things, smaller than a sparrow – we keep meaning to look it up in a bird book. Frolic. Eat. Scratch. Rush. Fight. Swooooosh.
In the ocean this morning I said I’d like to know more about the seagulls and other birds that were circulating above us. What would you like to know, my friend asks? I’d like to know why they are circulating above us, so close to the water when there are three humans here – no fish. She asks, are you trying to ask what does it mean? Yes, that’s the question but I don’t really need to know why. I look up at the birds circulating, feeling the ocean.
Here now, listening to water falling and birds birding, Letting the search for meaning dissolve. It’s a tender space. It’s an empty space that is easily filled with worry if I let it. I fill it with gratitude and appreciation for being able to be still and listen. For having the time and not needing to rush off to an insane job.
Sound is just one sensation. I can feel the water of the spa over my skin. I can smell chlorine. I see two small black birds land on the gutter above us, making their nest in the ceiling space. I wonder if that’s good for them though. More sheltered to nurture their babies sure. But do the babies learn to be resilient and sway with the strong winds and drench in the harsh rain? Thinking. Worry.
Taste too. Salt water from the swim this morning. Toothpaste. Metal something, maybe from my tongue.
Thoughts bombard and I don’t them take hold because they are trying to dictate how I am going to be in the world. They are based on fear and mistrust in my ability to be me and connect with the world in a calmer, wider way. I treat them just like one more sensation. Listening, smelling, seeing, feeling. Thinking. Dear thoughts – thank you for keeping me safe but I give you no more power than sound. I don’t prefer you over experiencing birds growing babies, water falling from the sky, trees growing green leaves, rocks breaking down. This I love today. Right now, I feel love for the way water sounds.
Yoga Nidra teacher Kamini Desai talks about an aspect of self and love as unconditional receptivity. We are like the wide blue sky which, by its nature, simply receives whatever is in it. The sky has no conditions. I sit here in the nature of my backyard, and I have no preference for what I am experiencing. The ‘I am’ of what I experience (and have thoughts about) doesn’t exist. I’m wider and more open than myself.
We often sit in the spa at unlikely times. On Saturday night there was a 130-kilometer storm. We sat in the spa with lightening flashing around us and thunder booming through the streets of Titahi Bay. Sunny or thunder. Sunrise or sunset. Anxious or calm.
So, love as unconditional receiving, no matter where we are. I can simply be like the sky – like nature – and receive whatever is present without fear or judgement, or division. Spa pool, driving to work, waiting in a queue, dropping a messy spoon on the floor, anger, seeing a sunrise. If we don’t prefer one over the other, we can accept everything. If we accept everything, we won’t be disappointed in ourselves or others so much. We won’t create patterns of retreating or attacking because we aren’t the thing in front of us.
In meditation we have the ability to rest in the unconditional receiving of love. We deeply rest in peaks of silence and stillness because we get to experience not being affected by anything. We rest back as the sky and watch the contents come and go. Thoughts come up but we treat them the same as sensations in our feet, or the feel of our breath. Or nothing. And gradually, thoughts give up screaming for attention and they too dissolve. For me, it took years to feel this. Some people merge straight into it. I have glimpses only and I need consistently practice.
These restful glimpses of no-thing imprint on me like the ocean covers the sea floor.
Slowly my background is changing from anxiety to calm.
Silence is only silence because there is no sound. Would we notice the silence if we didn’t first notice the sounds? Silence happens and then sounds come in. If we feel the silence more than we feel the irritation of what someone says, then we don’t create a series of ugly or painful actions. And imagine being in love with nothing! Imagine love as accepting everything because we are more than what’s in front of us, including our thoughts.
“Even in deepest despair, isolation, and most profound loneliness - it’s all happening in the backdrop of love. The backdrop of silence and stillness is not easy to notice. We take it for granted and our tendency is to notice the contents only. The truth is, you are the abiding space that sadness moves through. You are the limitless self. We need to notice we are the backdrop, the container, this eternal presence that sadness is moving through. It only appears that we are the sadness. This is the cause of suffering. We have forgotten our true limitless nature. We have come to identify with whatever happens to be in the container or passing through the sky. Yoga Nidra allows us to rest as the container.” Kamini Desai. Yoga Nidra Teacher Training notes August 2024, inspired from her book Yoga Nidra: The Art of Transformational Sleep.
Give your mind a break with active relaxation
At some point in a yoga posture there’s an opportunity to let go. Find deep relaxation with yoga and mindfulness in restorative yoga and yoga nidra in Porirua or online.
We have so many layers to us. Yet we focus usually just on shaping our lives with our mind. And we have a limited view of mind: we see mind as this overall word for everything that happens to us. But our mind is based on our past, and isn’t always right!
Our layers of bodies and experiences get kindly uncovered when you engage in any kind of yoga, meditation, or mindfulness practice. Some of the things you’ve told yourself, felt, or wanted are revealed to you. It sounds challenging, and it is hard at times. But it’s also gloriously easy because there’s a relief you feel when you realise that you don’t need to cover up anymore—that you don’t need to wait another decade to feel more content in life. You’re already the real you; you’ve just gotten a bit cluttered along the way.
At some point in any yoga pose, there’s a moment when you realise you’re thinking. It’s like you get the opportunity to peek at the ‘why.’ This awareness allows you to let go of everything. You stop searching for control, and you can breathe deeper and sink further into the pose. Your breath can guide this process too—relax the body to relax the mind. You start using your intelligence instead of just your intellect. It’s like going on holiday and spending a day preparing, a day travelling, and then you arrive at the edge of the lake and you make a massive sigh out. You’ve arrived in the moment.
In a yoga pose, you may realise you’ve been brooding over something that happened during the day that hurt, or something that suddenly appears extremely urgent on your unchecked to-do list. Perhaps images of past relationships will show up. It’s all good. Your clever mind is trying to support you; it’s just a bit of an overachiever!
It’s like your mind is going through a deep-soak cycle instead of a rinse cycle.
Alternating between feeling sensations in the body, anxious thoughts, inspiring ideas, or sounds and smells is very normal. In fact, if you can relax with that and let those things just pass by, rather than telling yourself you shouldn’t be feeling or thinking that, then you move to another state.
Your intellect’s (mind) sole job is to keep you safe. Through your limbic system, it looks for signals to determine if all is well. If it perceives a threat, it will act accordingly. It will scream for your attention. But there is so much more going on than this all-compassing view of mind. Yoga gives you change to focus on your other lowers: how breath affects your energy; giving space for wisdom and intuition to emerge; your ability to connect with nature and therefore outside yourself; and resting back into silence and stillness. This deep resting can be hard at first because we usually don’t have experience of doing no-thing. We often take pride in how busy we are because we feel value that way. We have to trust that this is the space of silence and stillness that will create our next moment. The present carries the future.
You may have heard yoga being called a practice. It’s called that for a reason: it takes time and evolves. Years ago, a meditation teacher told me that the most painful thing is to NOT be on your path. The only way to stay on your path is to keep walking on it.
The pathway to calm is to let your thoughts just hang out where they are.
By doing this, you will allow space to drop into your body and just rest. Of course, if you experience pain, you need to adjust. Stop striving. If you’re familiar with this pain or tension comes from, you can breathe into it and let it be there until it changes or adjust with kindness. A sweet stretch in the body is good; pain is not.
If you experience PTSD or past trauma, then you may need different kinds of support around you. Yoga is excellent to support the healing in these conditions, but you need to feel safe enough to let go. I can work alongside other health practitioners who support you and bring a yoga perspective and practice to your healing. Please reach out.
Back to that moment in a pose where you realise you’re still totally in your head: You can use the in-breath to gather this tension (physical and mental) and then use the out-breath to release whatever you observe or are holding on to. Feel tension and distraction leave through your nostrils with your breath. Eventually, you’ll learn to instantly soften and the shape you’re in starts to feel a bit like falling in love. Effortless. Gentle. .
If not, you can fake it: make your out-breath longer than your in-breath. Visualise muscles and thoughts softening or disappearing. You’ll have your unique way of doing this. Trust.
Send signals to your body and mind that it is okay to let go.
I do hatha or vinyasa flow yoga with my lovely partner most mornings. I can feel when he lets his mind and body go in a pose—it’s about halfway through. Up until then, there’s a bit of huffing and puffing, agitation, striving and commentary. And I know he sneaks in some tummy crunches at the end when we are meant to be totally letting go! Even though I’ve been doing yoga and meditation on and off for three decades, I still find myself going back to the beginning sometimes. Letting go in the moment is the hardest thing to do but it is the single most beneficial thing we can do for our physical and mental health. The changes are slow, but there’s no going back once you’ve made a shift.
Try a class with me or find a yoga class in your neighbourhood. Starting with restorative yoga or yoga nidra is a gentle way to begin. Forget the word “yoga” if it you think you can’t do yoga. Yoga just means means union of mind and body - being in another state. Just think about active relaxation, bringing ease. We are all messy and challenged and have to start somewhere. We are all also filled with beautiful layers just waiting to catch a breath and deeply rest.
Yoga Nidra: The In-between
This Yoga Nidra classes’ theme of The In-Between. The pause between the outbreath and the inbreath. BeCalmed Studio’s Yoga Nidra classes use mindfulness, breath work and the ancient, beautiful practice of Hatha Yoga Nidra.
Last night our Deep Relaxation: Yoga Nidra class focused on The In-Between. The space between the outbreath and the inbreath; the state between; the present moment.
We are practiced at rushing from A to B. If we were more practiced in its opposite, or rest, we could feel differently in this life.
What is an alternative between A and B? How does it feel?
You could stop reading right now for a minute, to explore. Relax your body. Take a deep breath in. Slowly let breathe out, fully. And rest in the beautiful pause.
What was that like? What’s your own version of In-between? A word. Image. Quality. Go there often.
Over time, this in-between space can be deliciously spacious. Gentle. An absence of tension.
Between loss and hope.
We can choose what we find in this space. Let the in-between resonate into your next inbreath, outbreath. Life.
Deep Relaxation: Yoga Nidra. Every Tuesday 6.30pm-7.15pm. Forest-studio Titahi Bay or online via Zoom.
More about BeCalmed Studio’s Yoga Nidra here.