THE POWER OF THE PAUSE
When you lay your hand on a body, please don’t think you know it already and just get to work doing massage. This person is like a whole new planet you are landing on – tremendously complex, with her or his own unique history, desires, habits, plans, memories and dreams. Begin interfacing, just meet with each person like it’s the first time. It is. Because we are changing all the time and you can’t step into the river twice - just each first time. So when you land on this mysterious person, pause and take a look around before you go exploring.
“The meaning of “The Power of the Great” shows itself in the fact that one pauses.” – I Ching , Hexagram 34
I often flash on a commercial a few years back featuring Emmitt Smith, the Dallas Cowboys running back and former Super Bowl MVP. It showed him doing sit-ups on a work bench with a voice-over.
"Two rings, Two MVPs. I've been working hard," Smith says.
"Maybe this year I'll take a little time off."
Smith stops for three seconds.
"There, that was refreshing."
If you’re like me, you are so busy these days, that you feel there is not enough time in the day. So you rarely pause or take time off. Or, if you do, you don’t fully let yourself rest, because, well, you’re not getting things done!
Every time we pause, we provide the possibility for something new to come into being. The spirit gets exhausted if we don’t allow for gestation. The roots of the word, “gestation” tells us much of what we need to know and do. It comes from both “riding on horseback”, related to “carrying”, and also the “action or process of carrying young in the womb."
So we are riding along in our life and then we pause, allowing new things to be born.
Even if you just do it, like Emmitt Smith, for three seconds!
Take a breath in the middle of your bodywork, or your writing, or your washing the dishes.
Every pause allows great new meaning in life to arise. Every conscious breath and pause is an inspiration and a gestation.
Every pause is deep life refreshment.
In every pause we find power.
