We know that modern humans lived as nomadic hunter-gatherers in small communities from around 60 thousand years ago, followed by about 10 thousand years of scraping a living as farmers. The fossil-fuelled industrial era began less than 300 years ago and evolved into the digital age of the last 50 years up to the present. The interesting thing is that our bodies remain very similar to those of our early Homo sapiens ancestors. If we were able to compare the body of both a hunter-gatherer ancestor with a modern human, assuming that they have a healthy, balanced diet and are physically fit, a doctor would have difficulty identifying much difference. Although we have made amazing discoveries about nature and the universe and developed some fantastic technologies, our brains have not evolved to really understand or collectively respond to complexity or exponential growth.
The information-intensive world we live in today is a blur of messages, updates, videos, and voice calls. The human brain has never been busier, with masses of content to process. And it’s not just the information. There are tasks, deadlines, and a lot of unfinished business driving the momentum and complexity in both our work and personal lives. Combined with the broader geopolitical, economic, and environmental uncertainty, it’s no wonder we sometimes feel anxious and stressed. A lot of the anxiety and stress we experience comes from being overloaded, with too much to do and not enough time and space to think clearly and get things done, like trying to hold an important conversation with three radios tuned to different stations playing loudly in the same room. If only we could turn everything off and start again from a quiet and restful place.
Is life just full of noise, content, and activity or is there something else? Is there a place where we can find refuge, a calm within the storm, somewhere peaceful and quiet, where we can reflect, gain insight, think clearly, and respond rather than react? The good news is that underneath all the movement there’s stillness. When you look closely, everything arises out of stillness and returns to it. A bell rings, sounds for a while, and dissolves back into silence. An email is created, sent, responded to, and eventually deleted. A task is planned, carried out, and completed and you move on. All have a lifecycle, like a wave; activity arises, peaks, and returns to where it came from.
Without awareness, we can easily find ourselves in a fragmented state, bouncing from one thought, emotion, and activity to the next. Never coming to a stop, no matter how briefly, when our feet touch the ground to contact a point of stability and balance. One challenge is that we often bring all our thoughts and emotions with us into the next activity, which then builds up over the day. Each new activity inherits the hangover from the recent past, limiting our internal resources. So, our attention becomes scattered, and we end up reacting rather than responding, like a smartphone that needs a reset.
The human version of a reset is to bring ourselves to a point of stillness at the end of each task and before beginning a new task. Simply taking three aware breaths in the gap between tasks allows all the internal noise and activity to settle and release. We can then move into the next activity with open awareness and kindness. Finding stillness, we’ve also opened the space to work with greater ease and respond more skilfully with what’s needed.
It’s not that we have to create the space for stillness – it’s already there, patiently waiting in the background. Stillness lies underneath all thoughts, emotions, physical sensations, and activities. It’s the stable and familiar bedrock of being that we can all naturally access.
Anthropologists who have studied our hunter-gatherer ancestors say that they worked for about five hours each week to satisfy their essential needs. They spent the rest of the time relaxing, socialising, and being spiritual and creative. Being less busy and closer to nature, it would have been much easier to find peace and stillness. In the modern world, we have to work harder to find the same level of calm and stillness. By finding stillness in our busy worlds, we can reduce anxiety and stress and improve our well-being and performance.
Suggested weekly practice
- Noticing and appreciating the stillness behind things – how things come from stillness and return to stillness – a parked car, the switched-off computer, a tree in the park.
- Practising becoming still when you meditate – physically still in your body, settled in your mind, calm in your emotions.
- Exploring the natural transition points between activities, by coming to a point of stillness at the end of one activity, before starting the next one, and see what difference that makes.
Guided practice
There are two guided practices for this session. You can close your eyes, or lower your gaze while the meditations play.
- Play the settling practice, then read through the session content.
- Then play the second practice to explore inner stillness.
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