‘My mind and my body are one system. I am facing a clear mandate from myself to figure out how to insert rest, relaxation, sleep, stillness, quiet, solitude and sanity into the day-to-day living of life.’
This is the third newsletter of 2025. Three! Already! I know I am not the only one who is bamboozled by the speed with which time is passing. And to open March’s newsletter I am quoting myself (above), from my February “ode to rest”. I am also seeking not to harrumph with a mixture of dismay, cynicism and gallows humour as I read, and re-read that quote.
It is quite simply astonishing to me to be discovering that despite my ‘clear mandate’ the water I am swimming in is the same old muddy puddle of rush and urgency from which I retreated at the end of last year.
Except that is not actually entirely true. Yes, the well-worn neural pathways of busyness have kicked in with alacrity – astonishingly well-rehearsed. It would be easy to throw my hands up (like the 🤷🏼♀️ emoji) and resign myself to assumptions like “well huh! Trisha, so much for that blah blah blah of your February newsletter on rest…..” But I am no quitter.
I have positive news to report. Because, as I shared in my previous newsletter “By the time I left [my self-retreat in the Karoo], my body had internalised, at a deep cellular level, the experience of being rested, at ease, still and peaceful.” Guess what? There is no going back from that, not really, truly.
Certainly I could be forgiven for being disheartened. I am doing a very good impersonation of a headless chicken at the moment.
But, in truth, I am still feeling exceedingly buoyed by what I discovered in the Karoo. I feel a bit like how I imagine a scientist on the verge of a life-shattering discovery might feel. Even though her subsequent experiments after her first breakthrough have not yielded the hoped for results, there is still very much a twinkle in my mind’s eye.
This is what I am thinking now. (Prepare to encounter Trisha sounding a bit wild, ok?). I think I may have discovered the answer to the question “what is the meaning of life?” And the answer is “relax”.
My narrative about myself for ever has been that I am a restless human. As regular readers know, I had my first life-threatening asthma attack at 7 months old. There followed a childhood of subsequent threats to my survival, oxygen tents, hospitals, doctors, medication. To this day I take medication to manage my lungs. It stands to reason that I have a deeply internalised sense of alarm bells in my body. Hence the Himalayan expedition approach even to so called holidays that I wrote about in February’s newsletter. Relaxing has most definitely not been my forte.
However, what I have now glimpsed is both the cellular, embodied experience of deep relaxation and what happens in one’s comprehension of life when one is relaxed. It is nothing short of awe-full. It makes me want to understand what is happening so much more accurately and deeply than I currently do.
Right now, I fear, my decipherment feels rudimentary and gauche. But if pressed what I would say is I have encountered that when relaxed my experience of life is that it, together with me in it, flows unimpeded. The “only” thing required of me is to relax. And relaxing requires me to be detached from outcome and control. It is a moment by moment choice. And part of the practice requires that I do not get into trying to grasp being relaxed!
An analogy that came to mind today was that of being a dandelion head floating in a world of Velcro. The art of being a freely-floating dandelion flower is the art of noticing the potentially encroaching strands of Velcro and relaxing in the face of whatever that Velcro represents: the need to be right, attachment to a point of view, the need to control the outcome, attachment to the way something should turn out. ‘Should’ is a big Velcro word! And if my dandelion head gets snagged on a blade of grass, all I need to do is relax about that. Before long, it seems to me, a puff of wind will lift me off again. Right timing will take care of itself.
Blades of grass abound, don’t they? We live in challenging times. In a recent thread of messages last weekend between a group of dear and trusted colleagues, we were responding to the horrifying disregard for human dignity with which one world leader was treated by two others. The emotions being felt and expressed in the group were very big, very hard. I struggled to find the words to say what was in my heart. In the end, the puff of wind that lifted my dandelion flower back into play with the warm breeze of life as it can be, if we stay connected to our essence brought me these words for my response to the group:
“I am more distressed than words can express. I can only imagine how devastating it is for you and the many Americans who must feel totally distraught by what is happening in your/their country and to our world. I am completely unable to compute what is taking place in the world at the moment. Right now my only hope is that Americans can find the wherewithal to stop what is happening, but I don’t know if that is possible. I don’t know what, if anything, can stop what is happening. It is a profound experience of disempowerment. My only solution is to go within and connect with the truth I know from that place, and to be as kind and decent as I can be in every interaction I have. Sending much love to everyone.”
What also lifts me off the Velcro is that I notice that things like serendipity and synchronicity are relaxation’s playmates. Just as I grappled in conversations today with the tantalizing enigma of finding words to express the numinous phenomenon this newsletter is seeking to communicate, this showed up on a WhatsApp group I am part of:
“You are a sunlit absence, mistaking yourself for a thing.
We are not found in things, we are found in the absence of things. The sheer mystical delight of this absence has long captivated my heart.
Rumī was once asked, Why is it you talk so much about silence?
Rumī replied: The radiant one inside me has never said a word…”
Andō @ Silentium on Substack.
So, here I am sitting on a step at the edge of the yard, chin resting in my cupped hands, observing the headless chicken. I am extending compassion for its reeling and staggering circular dance. I am connecting to my breath, and dropping down to the ocean floor where it is quiet and still, and I am re-membering, gathering myself in to that still point, and practicing. Let’s see where that takes me from now until April’s newsletter. Thanks for staying with me on the journey. I appreciate you deeply.
From my brave heart to yours,
With love
Trisha x
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