Ground your body with gravity. Give your weight over to the earth below you and feel a release, even if it’s just a little.
In a recent blog post, I shared a little about the practice of grounding with gravity, a very simple meditation I have done for years as a foundation for my own practice. It’s the meditation I begin with when I first start working with clients.
Grounding with gravity is not just a concept.
It’s a visceral sensation of ease and safety.
Exactly 10 years ago today, my Dad passed away with our family huddled around his bedside. The space between his diagnosis and the moment he left us will forever be etched in my memory as a difficult and painful time but also a time of potent love, connection, acceptance, peace…and humour. It held space for all of it.
I wrote this blog 4 years ago and wanted to repost to remember and honour him today…
On Valentine’s Day just over 6 years ago, Dad was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. I sat with my parents when the oncologist gave us the news. My mom and I were crushed but the first thing Dad said was, "I'm just like Steve Jobs" with a grin on his face. That was Dad, always making light of the situation with his goofy sense of humour.
Nothing ever prepares you for that kind of news.
The finality of it was so surreal but by watching Dad react the way he did, I knew that together we would find a way to get through this.
So many space between moments like these happen throughout our day but we never give them much attention. We would never ever talk or post about them. Too boring, too insignificant, too mundane.
Yet if we add these transition moments up, they actually make up a significant part of our day when we've typically gone unconscious and on autopilot. We glaze over these moments in favor of the next moment and wonder where the time goes.
What if we take back these moments and include them in our awareness? How would our lives change? How would we change?
Soon after the pandemic hit, my love and I committed to bring our thoughts to paper, with a very specific intention. We journaled daily to look through a microscope at how we think unconsciously, how we reacted to life because of it, how we recovered from our reactions, and how we wanted to think differently the next day…
I was moving about in my home one afternoon. It was my day off so I was cleaning, cooking, enjoying my downtime or so it seemed.
I became aware that my body was in a state of contraction from rushing, eager to complete one task in order to get to the next thing on my list to do.
This tension was so slight, very subtle that I could barely notice it because this was my normal. It’s how I felt most of the time.
In that moment and many moments after that, I decided to try something different and challenge how I always did things.
Making a choice to pause in our day, even if only once a day, is in fact a huge accomplishment in a culture that is always moving and doing.
By pausing, we exercise our right to choose.
We allow our free will to stand up for us.
We connect to the core of who we are and live from there.
That is the muscle we develop.
Let’s face it our minds and bodies are at war with each other. They are disconnected from each other yet are lost without the other.
The mind grabs for outer knowledge in hopes to find the answer.
The body grabs for fleeting pleasure in hopes to find comfort.
But neither worldly knowledge nor outside pleasure can ever give them what they need.
