Читать книгу On the Verge - Cara Bradley - Страница 13
ОглавлениеOver the years, I’ve moved thousands of people through a mix of trendy workouts and ancient practices — and each of them arrived with expectations of getting fit, losing weight, building six-pack abs, and finding peace. I’ve always sensed, however, that there’s a deeper reason for all the striving and searching than just having a great body and a stress-free life. I’ve sensed that at the root of the search is our innate desire to feel fully alive.
We go to great lengths and great expense to feel fully alive. We’ll jump from fad to fad searching for the next best way to feel more empowered or energized. We open our hearts and wallets to what the hippest experts recommend and what the hottest celebrities are doing — all to feel fully alive. I know this because I’ve been on the same path, searching for ways to feel better, look better, and be better, when underneath all the forcing and fixing I’ve really just longed to feel more alive.
After a few decades with no earth-shattering results, I called off the search. I let go of needing to feel any different or look any better and gave myself permission to live my life, raise my daughters, teach yoga, and enjoy my husband and friends. It was an incredible relief. My shift in perspective — from seeking to allowing, from doing to being — enabled me to experience space in my life beyond busyness and drama, a space where I experienced an incredible sense of freedom. It felt like falling back on my bed and resting my head on my pillow after a long, busy day.
I began to pay attention to my direct experiences, and more and more I began to glimpse a more natural and authentic way of living. Shifting my perspective from searching to simply living allowed me to get crystal clear about what was necessary to fully participate in my life — and not to waste one more second doing anything less. The trees looked greener, food tasted better, I felt happier. In this space, beyond the search outside myself, I unleashed a new sense of joy that touched every area of my life. Letting go of the need to figure out my life liberated me not only to show up and experience my life, but to feel fully alive. Beyond the search, I became familiar with how to live my life in high definition and with high-voltage energy.
Seeing Your World in High Definition
Right here, in this moment, you have the opportunity to fully engage in what’s happening, to participate in reading these words, to feel the couch beneath you or the sun on your face. Show up right now beyond busyness and actively pay attention, and you directly experience more of, well, everything. You feel awake to what’s happening around you and alive to what’s happening inside you. Beyond your busy mind you experience life in high definition.
High-definition living is a way to engage in the world with all your senses.
High-definition living is a way to engage in the world with all your senses. It feels crisp and clear. It’s like seeing life as if you were a child again, when you stared at clouds in the sky and devoured books and movies (along with cookies and candy) with gusto. Directly experience life in high definition, and you recognize the smallest details of life — the touch of wind tickling your neck and the smell of wood burning from the fireplace next door.
Now, decades after my final college race, I still vividly remember the details. I clearly remember calmly standing on the starting line waiting for the gun to go off, the smell of spring in the air, and how my spikes felt on the track. I remember everything about that moment — the high-definition experience that redirected my life.
You have your own high-definition moments. Can you think of a few? Perhaps it was the intense emotional high when you got married or the profound disappointment when you didn’t get the job. Sometimes these moments are easy to identify, and sometimes they’re not as clearly defined. Strengthen your ability to recognize direct experience in the ordinary moments of daily life, and they all go into high definition. The practices you’re learning will help you do so — to refine and expand your ability to recognize such high-definition, high-voltage experiences all of the time.
Trying to explain what it means to directly experience life in high definition is like trying to explain how it feels to swim in a cold lake or sing in front of a crowd. It goes beyond words and explanations. As you become more aware of these experiences, you’ll ultimately recognize high-definition moments from more of a visceral place, in your body and beyond words.
This is important. Remember, your body always experiences the moment directly. Your body senses life firsthand beyond your beliefs, judgments, and conditioning. Your body reveals what’s real and true. This is why direct experiences feel precise and complete, and why they often emerge with a resounding “aha.”
Snapshots
Because descriptions, even extended ones, cannot capture your whole experience, I’ll offer Snapshots, groups of individual words that can serve as instantaneous reminders of the direct experiences in your life. Not every word is going to work for you. My aim is that at least one or two will connect with you. Read these words slowly. Find the ones that resonate. Let them sink in. Draw from these Snapshots in your daily life. They provide you with words to help you recognize your direct experiences.
SNAPSHOT: A HIGH-DEFINITION EXPERIENCE
| Clear | Brilliant | Alive |
| Bright | Sharp | Ready |
| Awake | Open | Aware |
| Alert | Light | Vibrant |
Experiencing Life with High-Voltage Energy
There’s a powerful energy running through you right now. You can sense it when you’re resting or when you’re moving. Sometimes you may not feel it at all. When you’re engaged in what you’re doing, you experience it. When you’re hiking, painting, reading, or writing, you feel it. It feels like having the wind at your back and a little extra spring in your step. This high-voltage energy is your aliveness.
High-voltage energy guides you to move and speak. It directs you to slow down and pay attention or encourages you to lean into your boundaries and seek new horizons. Either way, this energy pushes you gently, and sometimes not so gently, to wake up, show up, and participate in life right here and right now.
You’ve had moments of high-voltage energy; you may simply not have recognized them at the time. Here are a few examples of what high-voltage energy feels like for me:
Seeing the brilliance of the sun as it hits the top of the trees in the late afternoon
Hearing the giggles of my neighbor’s kids in the backyard
Tasting the crispness of a green apple
Listening deeply to my friend recount a recent crisis
Belting out a song during my commute home
Flying down the hill on my bike
Here’s a Snapshot offering you a variety of ways that you may experience high-voltage energy.
SNAPSHOT: HIGH-VOLTAGE ENERGY
| Excited | Powerful | Charged |
| Determined | Available | Enthusiastic |
| Strong | Connected | Fearless |
| Confident | Curious |
Brand-new students walk through the doors of Verge Yoga every day, often with a hint of apprehension as they step onto a yoga mat for the first time. As class begins, they try to breathe deeply and move slowly. The sweat starts to flow, their bodies relax, and their minds settle. At the end of class, they take the final pose, savasana, a sweet five-minute rest.
This final pause, in stillness, allows students to let go and relax. In this space many students experience sensations they haven’t felt in years. It often brings them to tears. They feel their body come alive, buzzing and tingling from head to toe. They directly experience a profound sense of ease and peace.
This experience is not random. These students are meeting themselves beyond distraction and drama, and the next time they practice, they will likely experience it again. You can experience this too, and you never need to step onto a yoga mat to do so.
Mount Cardigan
There’s no mistaking high-definition, high-voltage living; experiencing it often stops me in my tracks and makes me pay attention. One such full-sensory encounter happened years ago when I hiked up Mount Cardigan in New Hampshire with friends. Unbeknownst to me, we took the “most challenging” route. Lagging behind the group, I found myself face-to-face with a steep wall of rock, on a cliff no less. Attempting this climb without gear was above my level of expertise, but being the knucklehead that I am, I decided to go for it anyway. As I placed my hands and feet on the sheer rock, my body visibly shook. Step-by-step I climbed, never daring to look down. Although the climb didn’t take long, it felt as though it lasted forever.
Finally, I made it to the top and dropped to my knees, dramatically tossing my backpack out of the way. My friends, who had obviously been there a while, casually glanced at me and smiled. It was clear they had no idea what I’d just endured (and I wasn’t about to tell them either!). Still shaking and panting, I stretched out on my back and tried to recover.
As I settled down, I noticed a pulsing, a sort of tingling in my arms and legs that spread to my spine and shoulders, then to my head. I felt this wave of energy pulsating from my feet to my face! I felt the sun on my skin, heard the whistle of the wind. I smelled the sweet scent of early spring floating in the air. My body was a symphony of sensations buzzing at high voltage. My senses had lit up, in high definition. I felt fully alive.
When Do You Feel Fully Alive?
High-definition, high-voltage living is right here in this moment, and in this moment, and now in this moment. It’s a matter of recognizing when you feel alive. I don’t know what makes you feel alive, but you do.
What makes your skin tingle, your heart sing? What makes your mind focus like a laser beam on a target? What transports you beyond your thoughts, drama, and distractions? What makes you feel clear and bright? Is it music, nature, sports? Work? Being with your kids? When do you experience high-voltage energy? What makes you feel fully alive?
I don’t know what makes you feel alive, but you do.
I posed these questions to my Facebook friends when asking for help with this chapter. I received dozens of answers, wonderful slices of the everyday human experience. Here are a few responses:
Walking to take in the sun and nature’s beauty
When I just have to sing
Hiking with my dog
Telling the truth
Knowing my kids are happy
Connecting with people of other cultures and religions
Pushing the final minutes of my run
Sunrises
Giving a compliment to someone I don’t know
Feeling the wind
Hearing children’s laughter
Feeling in love
Giggling…crying…touching
Laughing until I cry from laughing so hard
As I read through these comments, the words “ordinary” and “available” came to mind. These were everyday experiences. It was remarkable how many comments included water, beaches, nature, and children. None, and I mean not one, of these comments included having more stuff, more money, or six-pack abs. Best of all, these moments of being fully alive were all free of charge and commonly available to most of us every day.
Gut Checks
Welcome to your first Gut Check. Gut Checks are inquiries to help you notice what you’re doing and how you’re living. Found throughout this book, they help you investigate and identify where you’re open and available and where you’re still stuck in your stories and beliefs. When you come upon a Gut Check, please just do it. The only way you’ll truly benefit from what I’m sharing is to roll up your sleeves and get curious about your experience right now.
GUT CHECK: WHAT MAKES YOU FEEL FULLY ALIVE?
Please take a moment, just one moment, and jot down three ways you feel fully alive. Refer to the examples on the previous page for hints. Use the lines below or write them in your journal:
1. _______________________________________
2. _______________________________________
3. _______________________________________
Try this every day for a month. Before closing your eyes at night, recall three moments or three ways you felt fully alive that day. Then list them in a journal or notebook. You don’t need to explain why they made you feel alive; just list them. You’ll soon learn to recognize moments of aliveness all the time.
Remember that feeling fully alive doesn’t always mean feeling good or blissed-out. High-definition, high-voltage living is not always peaceful. Glimpses are snapshots of reality, your life exactly as it is in the moment — unfiltered. The more you get to know what makes you feel fully alive, the more often you’ll experience high-definition, high-voltage living. This is precisely when you glimpse the space beyond your busy mind. This is where you meet your natural state.
Your Natural State
Your natural state is ordinary and always available to you. It’s a state in which you’re present, simply living in the moment. You experience this very normal and natural way of being when you show up in this moment, aware of your senses and surroundings. You don’t need to improve anything to meet this state. You access it when you shift your attention from busy mind to the space that lies just beyond thinking. In a matter of a few breaths, you have the capacity to shift from distracted to present, from frazzled to focused, and from confused to crystal clear. When you show up in this moment, you meet your most authentic way of being you. This is your natural state.
When you show up in this moment, you meet your most authentic way of being you. This is your natural state.
Sky gazing is a way to shift beyond your busy mind and settle into a space where you can glimpse your natural state. This relaxing practice allows you to feel what it’s like to experience high-definition, high-voltage living. Do this practice when you can look out a window or, better yet, sit outside. It can be done day or night. Join me for a guided Sky Gazing practice on the Verge Mobile App.
1. Settle into your seat or lie down. Set your timer for at least five minutes.
2. Close your eyes and take three deep breaths.
3. Now, bring your attention to your exhalation. Don’t strain to focus; just rest your attention on your exhalations.
4. Open your eyes and look at the sky. Rest your gaze softly on the wide open sky, not focused on any particular object.
5. With each exhalation, allow thoughts, distractions, and emotional tensions to gently release out of you into the vast sky. If a thought comes up, simply focus your attention on your next exhalation and allow the thought to pass. Repeat as often as necessary.
6. Allow yourself to be absorbed in looking at the sky, resting in the space inside of you, around you, and above you.
7. Notice your experience.
8. Continue until your timer goes off or, better yet, stay for as long as you like.
Glimpsing Your Natural State Is Being Fully Alive
Being fully alive is who you are beyond your stories, roles, and beliefs. Call it energy or awareness. In the context of this book, the words you adopt aren’t important, as being alive is ultimately indefinable and ever changing.
Don’t let the terminology confuse you. Ultimately, being fully alive goes beyond definitions — it must be directly experienced. What I’m here to point out to you is how your busy mind operates, so that you can recognize moments when you’re not living from your busy mind, moments when you’re living from your natural state. And it’s there, in the space beyond thoughts, doubt, and fear, where you feel fully alive.
I’ve had thousands of my own such glimpses of being fully alive not only standing on my yoga mat or on a mountaintop, but also with my family, in my car, and even while writing this book. You’ve had them too; you simply haven’t been paying attention to them — yet.
Being fully alive goes beyond definitions — it must be directly experienced.
Being fully alive isn’t a feeling that just happens when you’re at the beach or even in the middle of a crisis. It’s a direct experience of high-definition, high-voltage living. It recharges you in ways that you can now only imagine. Some days you may feel it faintly, and other days it will light you up. Don’t try to do anything special. You are already fully alive. You are already on the verge. Just take a breath, keep reading, relax, and enjoy.
