Day at a time, Being in the flow of life, 27/04/2020

A Day at a Time – A Daily Blog of Life in Lockdown

Qi Gong practice includes flowing movements, where you move the body with the breath. Practicing this with intentionally slower movements, the breath and the body become one. It is as though the mind gives up wanting to rush onto something else and settles into just this, just this present moment. The present moment could be described as the flow of life, where everything unfolds, when we are aware of the arising and passing of all experience out of the stillness. Like noticing a sound arising out of silence. When we learn to stop leaning into the next experience, we become free to live each moment more fully.

Many people seem to have experienced this in the lockdown; describing the joy of birdsong, of witnessing the buds developing, seeing the vivid blueness of the sky and many other expressions of the richness of life. When we let go of that hurry up mind we can open to and enjoy the present moment. However, talk is beginning about the end of lockdown so are we now going to go into waiting mode? Waiting for it to end, waiting to resume our normal lives, waiting to go back to work, waiting for the kids to go back to school, waiting to get our hair cut…. If you have read Dr Seuss, you will recall the waiting place in his story Oh the Places You’ll Go. Waiting is being caught up in our heads – thinking and planning what we will do, wishing and worrying away our lives. This is the way many of us live striving, waiting for conditions to be a certain way – finding a partner, making a home, having children, children going to school – rather than living fully the life we have right now.

Having experienced being, could we give up this mind-set of waiting to live? Ok there will eventually be a returning to normal life, but we have changed, we have experienced something different. Can we let go of the tendency to lean into the next moment rather than enjoying the moment we have?

The Summer Day

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean-

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

—Mary Oliver

Hint: When possible do just one thing at a time.

Practice:

• Develop triggers to bring you back to the present moment. It could be your mobile phone beeping an incoming message, it could be walking down the stairs, it could be moving position, someone talking to you…
• When you notice your mind caught up in thinking when it doesn’t need to be, bring it back to what you are doing.
• The easiest way to return to the present moment is by coming back to your senses: listening to sounds, looking around you and even naming in your head what you see and feeling the sensations of your body standing or sitting on the ground.