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.
When my friend Home first introduced me to the idea of sitting in silence and stillness, I was skeptical and a little confused.
At the time I was a chronic doer. I found my worth and value in being “busy” all the time.
The thought of stopping even for a second didn’t make any sense to me.
Why would anyone want to do that?
What could I possibly get from closing my eyes doing nothing?
I didn’t get it.
I had been dancing with resistance for almost two days trying to come up with what I wanted to write for this blog post.
Writing my last post was such a personal and powerful experience for me and it received such a positive response, that I was trying to replicate that experience with this one which, of course, is impossible.
I was struggling is an understatement.
When I started this blog last July, I didn't really have a plan other than feeling this strong pull to write about something I'm passionate about. And the crazy thing is I’m essentially writing about doing nothing.
I knew I didn’t want to load you with more information but rather invite you to let go of all the information we’re bombarded with every day and give you an opportunity to experience what's left.
What's left is…YOU.
How often do we honour and celebrate that?
Not enough…in my opinion.
There’s an amazing gift you receive when someone has the capacity to hold space for you...but even more so is the gift when you are able to hold space for YOU.
What does this mean?
Holding space means creating room for all of you…your highs and your lows, your light and your shadow, your gifts and your flaws, your strengths and your weaknesses...and everything in between.
Allowing all this the room it needs to breathe within your awareness.
