stop, drop and shavasana
why you're afraid of dying
When’s the last time you stopped in the middle of a busy day, sat on the floor (or maybe fully just laid down full body to earth), took a deep breath, sighed it out, and let it all go.
The last time you actually exhaled.
Let your shoulders soften. Let your jaw unclench. Let your heart open. Let your eyes close. Let your mind stop. Let your body just… be.
Not when you’re in a yoga class because a teacher told you to and it feels allowed and accepted and like you’re supposed to (although you reap benefits there too), but at a time when you felt like you couldn’t or shouldn’t. At a time when you’ve been trained not to. At a time when you felt so overwhelmed that even the thought of stopping to take a step outside felt like too much.
How many of us have wanted to do so, craved it so deeply in fact, but we felt this overwhelming fear that if we gave in to the pull we would subsequently unravel completely, and we simply don’t have time for that.
How many of us have been trained to believe that we must earn that type of softening. We must first prove our worth, present our productivity, perform at our peak, before even thinking about sitting down on the floor unprompted.
How many of us are waiting for a permission slip, for a trophy of acknowledgment, for a check of high enough praise to prove that we have earned it before we even contemplate letting our day to day feel easeful.
In actuality, creating a life that feels more free and soft is simpler than we allow ourselves to believe.
It starts by how we are showing up for our day. Creating more empty space. And doing so within the set structure of the way our day already is. You don’t have to radically change your life, quit your job, move countries, in order to create a life that feels more freeing to you.
We only have to allow ourselves to accept more spaciousness.
How? By ritualising transitions. By not filling up the in-between.
We are taught empty space is something to avoid. Transitions are something to fear. In-betweens are meant to be ignored for final products and target goals.
We are so busy filling ourselves up with information we’re not taking the time to actually integrate the information.
Truth:
All of life is a transition. Transitions are what allow us to integrate all that we are intaking throughout the day. To process, sift through, understand it all. Only then can we take the information we are ingesting and embody it all, come up with our own ideas, grow and evolve and learn from it.
— And, only through honouring transitions, that space in-between, can we hear our intuition.
— Our intuition can only grow and evolve with us, if we allow space for all we are intaking throughout our life to absorb.
— Our intuition can only be heard above the outside noise, when we allow space for it to peep through.
Without transitions, we are constantly caught up in stimulation, pulled through life. Without transitions, we are living on autopilot, controlled by the pace and stream of life around us.
— Ritualising transitions allows us to take back control of our minds, of our beliefs, of our lives.
— Ritualising transitions allows us to move from autopilot to fully alive in our lives.
So many of us are afraid of make space for transitions because we are afraid of acknowledging the in-between.
In-betweens are connected to the unknown, uncertainty, uncontrollable.
In-betweens are connected to letting things go - beginnings, endings, moving on.
— Ritualising the in-between allows for us to have more grounding, stability and foundation on our path.
Ritualising the in-between brings more truth into our lives.
Because, the truth is, all of life is an in-between. Even when we think we’ve arrived to where we were planing on going, it is the in-between to the next place we eventually want to go.
Always a next step. Always another layer of the spiral.
We are always in transition. We are always in the in-between. (Until we meet our ultimate transition, death… at the core, so many of us fear transitions and the in-between because of it’s relationship to death.)
Honouring the transition allows for presence, equanimity, appreciation.
Honouring the transition allows for freedom, creative expression, individuality.
Ask yourself -
are you comfortable letting things go?
do you allow for transitions in your life?
do you honour in-between moments?
This is not just for big life transitions, this is for everyday seemingly mundane or easily forgotten transitions. Such as from morning to afternoon, one work meeting to the next, walking from the car to the front door…
When we recognise these as transitions and in-betweens, we can create space for them.
When we create space for them, by not trying to fill them with more doing, we come back to presence.
It is as simple as starting with more silence. Instead of filling your transitions with more noise, get quiet. (think: less podcasts, social media, conversations and stimulation and more, well, nothing.)
It is as simple as stillness. Instead of filling all of your transitions with doing, get still. (think: sitting down to breathe in the middle of your day, stepping outside for an afternoon cup of tea, stopping on your way back to your desk to observe the world around you.)
It is as simple as softness. Instead of filling your transitions with bio hacking and hustling, lean into finding more joy and ease in your day. (think: how can you make this present moment more enjoyable for you? instead of figuring out the hardest, quickest, most productive way to get things done, can you allow yourself to lean into ease and joy maybe just 5% more? what would actually make you feel grounded and supported right now?)
It is as simple as simplicity. Instead of filling your transitions with anything and everything, focus on just being. (think: stop. sit. breathe. be.)
It is as simple as that.
Start simple.
These are the rituals that honour transitions. These are the rituals that help us make peace with the in-between. These are the rituals that bring presence back into our day to day.
Last week we talked about our summertime success list, and if you’re looking for a way to embody this process into your life this summer, I recommend starting there.