If your stress is high, do the exercise at the end first, then read:
When everything seems to happen at once, keeping a peaceful flow becomes more challenging. There are times when several key areas of life needed immediate attention and we begin to feel divided. Our hard-earned peaceful state slips away into anxiety. Then we have to take our fall, find our feet, and stand back up. As we make efforts to regain balance, both being aware of our inner experience and being sensitive to others helps us move into peace.
The barrage of activity often occurs as part of our growth process. I have gained my personal experience to share with others. My lessons are taught through challenges. For example, I started my national Peace Book Tour with a presentation called “Moving into Peace.” To move into peace, you start outside of peace. So, of course, life challenged me with several stressors that brought me out of balance. When the stressors arrive, we simply have to work through the experience to get to the other side. The sensation is best described in a poem from my book called “Falling Apart.” Like a falling cat, every muscle loosens, and allows gravity to realign my position so that I land on my feet. Letting go allows for landing upright, and lessons are learned in the process.
Fortunately, in keeping with the theme of Peace, I partnered with yoga instructor, Joe Somodi, in giving the presentation. He guided the group to “let go” through the breath. After a few minutes of releasing any perceived crisis through the simple act of breathing, I found my center and balance again. Listening to Joe, then listening to myself inside is an example of the interplay we have all day affecting one another.
Learning the lesson of how language affects experience, I re-titled my next presentation in New Mexico, “Moving in Peace.” As a result, the tour in New Mexico was a flow of balance and harmony.
Peace comes from both the environment that we take in and what we manifest through our thoughts and actions. The more you become aware of both, the more capable you can be at directing yourself into peace and balance. Following is an exercise that you can do in a few minutes anywhere and in any situation that sharpens your awareness of how your inner and outer environment is affecting you. Once aware and centered, you can choose the direction that you wish to go in with clarity.
Moves into Peace:
1. Breathe in, pulling your awareness to the space in your head behind your eyes.
2. Release the breath while keeping focus behind your eyes.
3. Breathe in and out three times, pulling the breath deeper into the belly each time.
4. Imagine that a skylight opens in the crown of your head, allowing a sun ray to travel through the center of your body out the bottoms of your feet and anchor deep into the center of the earth.
5. Feel the support of the earth press up against your feet and the sunlight moving down through your body.
6. Take three breathes (or more), feeling the support of the earth and energy of the sun fill your body and being.
7. Say, “Today is a good day.”
In completing this exercise you give yourself a boost toward living a day in peace.