FINDING PEACE
WITHIN MOVEMENT – DAY 5

Humans have this really unfortunate hard-wired bias to pay attention to threat or danger – the scary bits of life (in the outer world, or the ones our minds tell us are going to happen). Simultaneously our minds are screening out the lovely or neutral aspects (the non-threatening plain white walls of your kitchen go unnoticed).

Here’s the thing. Mindfulness is about paying attention to what’s here, and difficulty tends to take centre stage. But we do have the choice to focus on something that is either lovely or just OK. (More needs to be said about denial, and the value of caring for and investigating the difficult, but that’s for another time).

To live with more joy, we have to do some spade work. We need to intentionally turn towards what is joyful, or just un-triggering and neutral.

If the movements shared in this course have been fun, calming and non-threatening, ‘installing’ the experience into your data banks will bring even more benefits. The attention and effort we put into installing a moment of fun (or peace, kindness, love or compassion) helps your neuronal circuits get the hang of noticing and enjoying these experiences more often.

The process of installing (with thanks to Rick Hanson, author of Buddha’s Brain) has 3 steps:
1. Have a positive, neutral or fun experience (actually embody it, not just think it). In this course we have been creating them with some movement.
2. Savour the experience as it is happening, noticing the feelings of enjoyment or lightness.
3. Use your imagination to extend the time you spend in this joyful place (imagine joy, like sunlight, soaking into the marrow of your bones, or breathe it in like golden light into your lungs. Sunlight makes vitamin D in your skin. Joy makes neurons in your brain.

I invite you to revisit the movements in Days 1 to 4 of this course, and discover what it is like to deliberately engage in them for a moment of light-hearted noticing of the pleasant or neutral. Then install the experience.