Mindfulbalance

When you encounter difficulties, the feelings and stories that arise in reaction are just that, feelings and stories. They are whirlwinds of confusion, based not in what is happening now but in deeply held beliefs about you and your relationship to the world.

Let them swirl – leaves in the wind.

Sometimes you fall back into them and lose touch with the present, but a moment of recognition always comes. Right then, come back to your body, come back to your breath, and rest.

The confusion, the stories and the feelings are still there. They continue to swirl, but you are not lost in them

Ken McLeod, Reflections on Silver River,

The tree is made strong and resilient by its grounded root system. These roots take nourishment from the ground and grow strong. Grounding also allows the tree to be resilient so that it can yield to the winds of change and not be uprooted. Springiness is the facility to ground and ‘unground’ in a rhythmical way. This buoyancy is a dynamic form of grounding.

Peter Levine, Walking the Tiger

All things, including grass and trees, are soft and pliable in life;
dry and brittle in death.

Stiffness is thus a companion of death,
flexibility a companion of life

Lao Tzu, Tao te Ching 76

When we release that striving

for somewhere else and something else,

we come home.

Karen Maezen Miller