Silence

During the last few years, I've gradually been more drawn to silence and recently spent five days attending a silent retreat. Silence can be such a gift. And sometimes silence can be challenging for different reasons. What we've kept suppressed by our business and distractions may arise to finally be acknowledged and dealt with. In this way, silence can start a necessary healing process.

A Daily Dose of Silence
As we approach the holidays, I encourage you to take some time out of your schedule to simply sit in silence...even if it's just for 5-10 minutes.

In order to quiet your busy mind gently bring your attention to your breathing, noticing your in-breath followed by your out-breath. Let thoughts or worries coming to your mind be like passing clouds in the sky. There's no need to judge them. Instead of resisting them or getting caught up in them, gently bring your attention back to the steady rhythm of your breathing.

Another way of observing silence, perhaps after a few minutes of placing your attention on your breathing, is choosing a word like "relax", or "peace", or "stillness", or a mantra or sound and keep returning your attention to that. Eventually, you may let go of any "technique" and become aware of your awareness; you become aware of a sense of presence beyond any thought, sensation, or emotion. Allow yourself to rest in awareness.

Silence facilitates meta-awareness.
Meta-awareness has to do with becoming a witness to our own thoughts, feelings, sensations, and emotions. And it can include insight into our survival strategies and habitual ways of perceiving ourselves and others. When we can observe our stressful thoughts rather than being totally identified with them, a sense of choice and more spaciousness can arise.

Receiving a BodyTalk Session often brings more awareness to underlying issues contributing to dis-ease and can facilitate more "meta-awareness." 

When you become aware of silence, immediately there is that state of inner still alertness. You are present. You have stepped out of thousands of years of collective human conditioning.
~ From Stillness Speaks by Eckhart Tolle~

May you take time to rest in silence now and and then, 
Tone-Lise