Power of the Pause

  I hope you all had a great weekend. If you have been receiving my newsletters for a while you have definitely gotten a birds eye view into some of the last two and a half years of my life. There have been relocations and transitions, over 60 visitors and 17 trips and 4 retreats as well. All of this has been wonderful, yet intense and exhausting and I have been very much waiting and looking ahead to the time when things are calmer.  I am currently in that moment; an opportunity to pause and ground and not plan a trip or hop on a plane for almost two months.

However, as humans, we get used to the pace we live at and with the conscious slowing down comes a bit of noticing my discomfort around this choice to slow down. What this time is teaching me is how to further develop my own practice of being with discomfort. As humans we have several strategies to avoid discomfort and I am noticing mine. I am seeing the feelings of “I should be doing something” instead of “wow, this is nice to relax.” I am noticing the attempts to sabotage this time by adding chaos (in the form of  fostering 3 puppies for 3 weeks) in order to “avoid” the discomfort of having a free afternoon to go to the beach. It’s quite powerful, once we notice, to pause and feel the discomfort move through to the other side. 

Thankfully the pause allowed me to make a mindful choice to hold off on the fostering for now because I made a commitment to myself to take this time to recharge. We cannot run on a low battery indefinitely. I also made the mindful decision to hold off a few months before planning my next retreat in an attempt to be more present for my son. Yet that too has been harder than I expected. I have to consciously notice and pause to avoid falling into the urgency of planning my next retreat.

This time has been a powerful reminder for me of this superpower we have; mindfulness. When we can notice and pause, sit with the discomfort and look beneath the surface, it more often than not softens and on the other side, we find the clarity of what we need in this moment; and for me it is to be right where I am. 

The power of the pause is what I shared with students this week on the mat. When we find ourselves in a moment of discomfort, can we pause and go deeper to determine what that is?   What is the feeling below the discomfort? With the body, being able to pause and breathe offers the opportunity to soften into the resistance and often then the resistance softens back. It’s the same off the mat; when we meet discomfort with a pause, the power of the pause helps us to sit in discomfort so we can move through mindfully. 

Part of what helps me soften into my discomfort and see what is underneath is by sharing it with all of you through these words. Thank you for reading them. I am truly grateful.