Giving Yourself Time
Rushing and feeling rushed are two things I’ve struggled with for a long time. Many errors, slips and falls and misunderstandings in my life can all be traced back to…you guessed it…rushing.
“Slow living” is my optimal pace, and facing rushing and feeling rushed is inevitable in a quick-moving society that leaves little time for taking your time. So often, I’ve felt rushed and can’t even place my finger on who or what is rushing me.
Have you ever felt rushed? So acutely that you can hardly breathe, your thoughts are just pushing toward meeting the goal and nothing else, and you can feel the blood rushing through your body?
Give yourself time to sense and fully appreciate your self and the world around you.
The key, I realized, isn’t to force the world around us to slow down. It’s to take the time, inside ourselves, to choose how to be, in each moment.
If you can give yourself that time, those few seconds here, a moment there, to sense where you are and choose how to respond to your current stimulus (something to do, someone to respond to, how to sit or stand, what to say), your action will be more fluid, coherent, spacious and organized.
That not only benefits yourself, as it is a far more sustainable way to exist, but also those around you. The outcomes are generally better when your action comes from a place of release, spaciousness and coherent direction.
In one on one sessions, we’ll work together on giving yourself time. Time before you bolt out of the chair from sitting into standing, time before you allow your arm to move in space, time to sense fully before you send a message for release in your muscles.
This allows your undoing and releasing to be deeper and more fully felt, so you can keep allowing the process long after you’ve left your lesson.
It takes practice, because our society default is to rush. Not to consider, sense, be. In our sessions, you’ll hear me talk about “pausing,” “taking a moment” and “not focusing on the end result, but instead the process.”
In the meantime, if you want to start giving yourself time today, now, here’s a few ways to tap into a more spacious sense of time:
Notice the fluid nature of time. Have you ever felt a minute pass by slowly, and other times in a seeming blink of an eye? If time can be so changeable, you can choose to allow it to feel spacious, rather than another outside factor that propels you to rush.
When you feel rushed, put a small amount of your attention on your breathing. Is it stifled or shallow? Are you allowing your ribs to both expand and contract with each breath in and out? Are you giving yourself time to finish each cycling of breathing, or do you start inhaling before you’ve finished your full exhale? Putting a sliver of your attention on your breathing will most likely give you some space to not feel as rushed.
Choose an action to give yourself time with, and then play a game to see how many times you can remember it. I’m always exploring different actions, based on how I feel.
One of my personal “classics” was sitting on the subway in New York. Can I give myself a small moment in time before I go from sitting to moving out of the subway car when it’s my stop? This means rediscovering my weight releasing into the subway seat, allowing myself to fully expand, and then choosing to stand without collapsing or crunching inward.
Each time you remember to check in and give yourself time, you’ve won! Even if you don’t actually manage to give yourself the time, or you find yourself using too much muscular effort, you’ve still won by taking the time to notice your self.
Give yourself the gift of time in a longer format. Taking a few minutes (five to ten) to lie down on a yoga mat, with your back on the mat, your legs bent, your feet flat on the mat and something firm underneath your head to support it, sets the tone for the whole rest of the day or night.
It allows you to reset any unhelpful postural habits and reinvigorate your whole body-mind. It’s a time where you can allow yourself to release your weight into the mat and undo your extra effort so you can direct yourself into full expansion.
Are you ready to gift yourself some moments of slow time? Share in the comments if you’d like how you’ll do so, and a specific place in your life that you’d like to infuse with more thought and consciousness and less rushing.