Heroes Not Zombies

July is the month of rest. I don’t mean by that that you should settle into a hammock and not stir for a month! What I mean, is why not make this a month to consider the importance of rest. Not just physical rest of the kind we consider the opposite of exercise or activity, but the essential part that standing back, stopping, and pausing has in human life.

Consider rest from this point of view – we are reactive creatures. We are continuously bombarded with signals, energies, information. We process it all at lightning speed and instantly, we respond. Our whole systems are created to be instantly responsive. Throughout our lives we create more and more fast feedback loops which are triggered by what we see, what we hear, and, most especially, what we think. Except, we don’t often stop to think.

So, here’s the first way to practice rest this month.
Can you choose not to instantly respond? Can you count to ten next time someone says something you’d find irritating? Can you choose a few moments of silent thought before you speak?
There are two strong mechanisms in the body/mind – reaction, which is experienced as tension; and pause, which is experienced as relaxation. If you spend all day as a reactor, you’ll feel a lot of tension. If you want to feel less tension, you’ll need to stop reacting so automatically.

Here’s a second way. Find twenty minutes every day to sit quietly by yourself and practise some simple meditation. A simple breath awareness exercise will do. If you’ve never meditated before, try this exercise here – it’s the wheel of awareness meditation (narrated by me)

Over the course of this month, let’s think about how to slow down or interrupt the automatic zombie processes, to allow the conscious hero to emerge.