FINDING YOUR FEET – DAY 2

For me, stopping has been one of the biggest challenges on my journey to wellbeing. It can be so hard to stop and take the few moments needed to reset the compass of the mind in the direction of peace.

Will you allow yourself to stop? Can you stop? And feel your feet on the floor?

See what it’s like to drop your attention right down to the soles of your feet, where they touch the floor. Is your spin-cycle mind or anxiety-filled body already tugging at you to get back upward? Maybe the spin-cycle couldn’t even let you stop to try it? (See Day 1 of this course on the ‘spin-cycle’). Sometimes mine doesn’t.

So, today the invitation is to notice the pull upward into the body or head and the dropping downward into the feet. Maybe visualise this as a little ball which bounces downwards, but also bounces back up again.

When we get comfortable with the fact that the ‘ball’ of our attention really does bounce and there’s not very much we can do about it, this acceptance can make stopping easier. Instead of hoping/thinking/believing that the feet will keep us away from all the difficulty, we accept that we can visit the feet and depart again.

Today’s invitation is noticing how often the attention moves away from the feet, then bounces back down to the feet again. Drop in on the sensations as a moment of peace. And when you realise your attention has bounced back up, count that as a ‘win’ – because now you know you’re ‘up’ you can bounce the ball back down into your feet!

Stop. Just for a moment, let everything wait. Everything that is pressing and needs to be done right now, can it wait a moment? If the phone beeped, would you stop to check who the message is from? Maybe imagining the feet are sending a text saying,”Hey, you need a break! You need a moment of peace”.

Feeling your feet on the floor now. Just for a few moments. Bounce down there. Can you feel the contact of the floor? The pressure of floor against foot? Foot against floor? Is the foot pressing down or is the floor pressing up? Pushing down a little and releasing, experimenting. Being interested in the contact. As you drop down into the feet, let the tummy, ribs, breath, shoulders, jaw, eyebrows all drop too. Have fun bouncing.