Get the Stress Outta Here - Mystery Moment

"Aw man, I tried that moments of stillness mess, it was for the birds." A comment that isn't unexpected, asking people who are doing life at a fast pace, to take a moment to not do that, doesn't really make sense. They are living life in a way that makes sense to them; they just don't realize what the consequence of that stress they are enduring, can be. In the back of their minds, they are aware of a younger person who has dropped dead, we've all heard those stories, and they know that stress was a "contributing factor," but stated in this cautious way; they choose to ignore it.

The real intent of such stories is to scare a person into action by bringing fear into the story, so that they will do what otherwise, they might not. Do you sense that such action doesn't help a person who is already stressed? It only adds to the dimension of stress that they are feeling.

What happens in still moments is very simple, almost too simple to get a person in a complex society to understand. Still moments isn't new, it isn't ground shaking, it isn't an idea of mine, it's ancient, subscribed to by many cultures, and supported by a history of results of thousands of years of practice.

"Ok fine, but if that's the case, why haven't I heard of it?"

You have, you just don't realize that you have, it hasn't been stated in these exact sort of terms, and sometimes it was known by various other names, but what you call something is only a tag, a label, a representation; stillness is an action. It is the deliberate halting of the motion of your day. It is becoming more difficult to practice, but it is necessary to plan a time for this, this works best, but in our frantic pace - people often don't want to plan "down-time." Instead, what we are angling toward is an understanding that you can walk in the knowledge of this working, and put it into effect when you see the opportunity.

"I don't believe I've heard of this, even by other names, what do you mean?"

This is a great question, the truth of still moments is that the simplicity of the idea isn't discussed as a practice, it just happens. "I was walking downtown, it was noon, well shortly after noon, and I felt this odd sensation, it was a sense of peace- I was across from the park, and instead of crossing the street, I just stood there on the corner for a second more than usual. It was weird, people were bustling bye me, but they didn't bother me, in fact, nothing bothered me, I was seeing the beauty of that park- and it was like it was the first time I'd actually noticed how green those trees were." This comment by a man in his fifties isn't rare, it is common, after reading our work on the subject, without really thinking about it, he just did it, and discovered this moment of peace.

Stillness is a practice that can happen without being deliberate, it can happen now, on the fly, as life is going on, or, one can plan it. We propose that it is better if practiced as a staged event- phone off the hook, television off, radio off, quiet. But it is also very hard to set aside a block of time to do nothing. So the challenge here is to really examine the time you have, you're going to find you have more time than you thought.

However, is stillness, as a practice, worth it- is the time worth it? The facts about stress reduction and the practice of being still, becoming contemplative, for even a brief period, are very exciting- and to not explore them wouldn't be fair to you, so in our series on this - of which there are more parts, we go into exactly that, see you in the continuing saga of - stress relief.