Discovering the Restorative Power of Stillness
Without further ado, angels, I invite you to stillness. I invite you to hurt, but I invite you to heal. I invite you to moments of silence where you will have the courage to identify and acknowledge the feelings and experiences that hinder you moving forward, living bigger & loving better. I invite you to experience the restorative power of stillness.
Today, I would adore to tell you something that has come to my life as quite a gift recently!! Especially as a London inhabitant… I believe I am beginning to discover the restorative power of being still. I want to be the best me that I can be, as I’m certain all of you angels want to be!! It’s a life long process. And it takes a lot of commitment to better yourself. I’m good enough as I am. But I can be better, I want to be better. And I truly believe that being still is a key in this process of betterment. When we get stillness in, we can get to sorting those bits and pieces of our minds and bodies out that need a little extra love…
S T I L L
S is for Silence. For me this is massively challenging, when I’m in the house by myself I have Netflix on, or a podcast playing, or Spotify streaming ( FYI, new gospel music playlist is off the hook, you’re welcome). I hate the sound of silence. My mind races when it’s quiet, I hear my thoughts and frankly sometimes I’d prefer not to!! Sometimes I’m reminded of things I’m worried or anxious about. Or feelings of inadequacy or simply just things I have to do. So I take easy option A) which is instead of processing or actively doing something to resolve my thoughts & feelings, I make my life noisy so I don’t get to hear my thoughts. I attempt to crowd them out. But, to save you the trouble, that doesn’t dissolve them, solve them or change them. It just makes them future Holly’s problem. And not present me’s issues.
Some of my worst and most challenging thoughts air themselves in the silence. But so do some of my most interesting ideas, and my most inspiring God dreams. As I’m sure yours do!!
We need to be brave enough to enter silence. To master that territory & maximise it for our furtherance. We need to become comfortable with the noise of life & confident in the silence.
Something I try to do is to build it up. Little by little, day by day. The other day I did 6 minutes of silence. Listening to myself, talking to God. I set an alarm, found a quiet space and mindfully tried to remove the distracting, swirling thoughts from my mind. In many ways this could be considered as meditation or mindfulness. Call it what you want. The sentiment is much the same. And although 6 minutes of pure silence isn’t much, I promise you it’s beyond refreshing. And I am now building it into part of my daily routine. To set aside moments and minutes without noise or conversation to hear myself and for me personally, to hear God.
Embrace silence in your routine, it will allow you to clarify your thoughts. Pick apart some feelings perhaps. And dream those big dreams that are just dying to be dreamt. Moments of silence allow your mind some stillness. For me, silence seems to still my anxious mind and helps me to be present in the moment and prepare my mind for the future / the rest of the day.
T = Take a breath. Life can be gloriously full. Full of stuff we love to do & also full of responsibilities and commitments that require our attention. We have the control to punctuate the busyness with a moment of calm. A comma in our sentence, if you like.
Inhale, Exhale. (for any Jane the Virgin fans, think Rogelio’s ‘inhala, exhala. For any not Jane the Virgin Fans… sort your life out).
When we inhale, oxygen flows in and nourishes each cell, tissue & organ of our bodies and allows us to carry on living beautifully. The only problem is the majority of us have a tendency of breathing from the wrong place, especially when we’re feeling stressed or anxious! We breathe from the thoracic (the chest) and take short crummy breaths, we don’t get the full benefit of the oxygen we inhale and we knock off our own carbon dioxide levels as we’re not shifting enough of that either! Thats why conscious diaphragmatic breathing ( lets just call it belly breathing) is imperative. As babies this is how we breathe, and apparently babies know best here.
So, here’s another tip to help you be still…This one you can do at any time, and it’s a super fast way to invite stillness into your day. There are heaps of simple and effective breathing exercises to be found online. But I just go pretty simple. Inhale deeply. Air into the lower lungs, air into the upper lungs, hold it for three seconds, and slooowwwwly exhale. And repeat till you’re ready to roll again. Ridiculously practical and simple. But I promise you, it will foster a moment of still amidst a busy day.
I is for Intention (although now I consider it, it totally should have been for Inhale. shhhh, but it’s not, so focus…) Be intentional with your time. We each get 24 hours in a day. We’re advised to sleep for 8 of them. So let’s call it 16 hours of awake time (many of you angels function on about 3-4 hours sleep, me included sometimes, let’s lecture ourselves another day) You have 16 hours to fill as you or I please. For as many years as you or I get. So we better make good on them. I don’t wanna fill my life with junk and wonder how it got there. I don’t wanna be too busy to attend to the people, activities, places that I truly value and care about. I don’t wanna just be busy for busy sake. I want there to be a purpose behind what i’m doing and why i’m doing so much or little of it!! (RANT OVER) I want to be intentional with my time. I wanna keep busy where busy belongs and make space for still so I can become the best me that I can be.
Yet again, another highly practical tip that has helped me make space for still in my life. And I apologise in advance for any offence this may cause, cause it’s a tad mean… But it’s been a necessary step i’ve taken to get still in! I applied a new filter to my ‘busyness / full life’ and this is it. It’s harsh, but I think it eliminates the unnecessary and keeps that in my life which I truly care about it.
‘ If I chose it, if I put it there and I committed to it, then I don’t complain about it.
If I don’t care about it, and all I do is complain about it, then I QUIT IT’
No rash decisions please friends. What this isn’t, is an excuse to quit doing hard things. Nu-uh. It’’s the opposite, it’s making room for them. This isn’t an arsy response to the stuff you CBA to do. It is however a way to make your life lean and get intentional with your time.
Here’s two examples from my life:
Friendships… London is a big city and it’s tricky to get out and see your buddies because they live far and you’re tired from work and blah blah blah (complaining)
BUT, I committed to my friends, and they committed to me when they chose to be mates with me. I commit to friendship. So i’m not going to complain when the practicalities involve an increased travel time on good old London Transport. I chose friendship. I put their friendship in my life. So now I commit to it and quit complaining.
Running in London. I hate it because I live in a concrete utopia (Canary Wharf). I used to LOVE running, but honestly, concrete on my knees, being hollered at by weirdos, running past grotty fish markets & dumpsters. I QUIT IT. I’m not doing myself or anyone else any favours by perpetually whinging about it. So right now, it’s out!! So until my feet run again in a forest / park / anywhere without fish stench, I’m not gonna add another life filling activity that I don’t enjoy and I whine about all the time. There are 1001 other ways for me to do my cardio. So I QUIT. I just quitted something and it felt good.
Friends, it's quit or commit. No time for the junk in between.
Obviously I’m human and I whinge even about things I love & will never quit. But please, please catch the heart of this filter. It’s to get rid of the stuff that just wastes time and precious life, and to place further value on the things that you’re committed to, devoted to, you care about and you placed in your life for good reasons. I’m devoted to adding still. To adding silence, to making room to rest, to working my feelings & experiences out so that I can love better & live bigger.
L = Let yourself rest. This one is a quickie friends. We can’t reserve rest for when we’re tired.
I’m guilty of allowing myself to become exhausted before I rest. And then I have to resume the usual rhythm of life and I tire so quickly. I’m a nurse, so I am perpetually lacking sleep... So I need to learn to rest, guilt free. So that I can be tip-top for myself & for my precious patients.
For instance, they always say that if you wait to feel thirsty before you drink water, you’re actually already dehydrated! Same with rest. Don’t wait till you pass out with exhaustion. Make rest part of your routine. A protected time.Rest can look like physically not doing much… Sleeping. Netflix…
And for some of you angels, yes that is absolutely rest, but for others, that is NOT rest! Because rest is vital for your health both physical & psychological, as vital as the oxygen we talked about in ’T’. I invite you to consider rest as your oxygen, just for a moment. The fuel for your activities and for your work. The thing that you do which nourishes the whole of you and that rids the waste products! So, we need to know how as an individual we find rest, so that we can do it properly! What’s your rest / oxygen?
My oxygen:
Right now for me, it’s yoga and pilates, I find it so restful! I do it, and it nourishes me, physically yes. But mentally, the breathing does wonders for me & leaves me super calm and limber!
Speaking with my sweet family. I adore them. Their words nourish my heart and they help me with all the gnarly bits of life (the waste products) same with my gorgeous friends and time spent with them!
And the list goes on.
Find your oxygen. Your ways to rest, so that you can begin to revitalise your mind & body like sweet oxygen does to us. Schedule and protect your rest. Then you have a rest that you can live from, even when your life is full of busy.
Last but not least, L is for let me share with you. My personal experience of stillness has come as a challenge and a gift. But i’m determined to to add still to my life so that I can delve into the areas which require a bit of extra attention and time. Recently I had gotten to the point that I was orchestrating my life to be noisy. To cover the messiness of the areas which most required attention. If I was perpetually busy (pretending to be busy) / doing something, going somewhere, seeing someone so that I could avoid some of the realist & rawest feelings I didn’t have the emotional skill set to process. I figured if I was always busy then I didn't have time to sort my stuff out, right? We’ve all done it. So no white lies angels. You’ve got a deadline... An exam or essay perhaps. Or a big deal project at work. And all of a sudden everything because a million times more important than doing what you need to do. Instantly you remember that hoovering was all you’ve ever needed to do; and you couldn’t possibly type another letter until your house is beyond spotless. Or that the evil drawer / cupboard full of crap, well, now it’s imperative that before you sit your butt down and write, that you have to devise a system for this drawer, implement the system & solve world poverty. Sometimes it feels impossible to have the determination or focus to do the things that honestly we don’t really want to do. So, instead we crown ourselves Kings & Queens of Procrastination 👑 Sound familiar?!
Sometimes we make ourselves busy so we don't get down to the things that truly matter, because the nitty gritty, is sometimes as gross as it sounds. However, here is were STILL comes into it's own. When we allow ourselves to be silent, or to rest, or to be intentional with our time, we make room to attend to the important areas of life. I've made goals for my stillness. So in the moments of silence, I identify my negative feelings or hurt and then I can begin to process them and sort them out with those that I love. And in my rest, I renew my strength & energy for a new day, month & year full of life! And intention makes my life leaner and full of the good things I desire it to be filled with.
Still can hurt, but it also heals. Stillness is helping me me love better, live bigger & dream wilder. And I pray it will for you too XX