Stop

Stop.

Of all the 4-letter words, it can be one of the hardest to hear.

And one of the most helpful.

Dr. Gabor Maté puts it bluntly: “When you don’t know how to say no, your body will say it for you.”

As the world began to abruptly re-open on what seems to be the backend of this plague, I found myself overwhelmed with opportunity.

My guilty pleasure, wait for it…meditation retreats. ALL the teachers were offering opportunities to practice in all the places! So I naturally applied to them all.

After attending my 5th retreat in 5 months, the one I was maybe most looking forward to was coming up last week — a metta retreat with the mindfulness celebrity herself, Sharon Salzberg.

I’d been accepted into this same retreat scheduled to take place back in May of 2020, which was understandably canceled due to health concerns.

So now, I was looking forward to it even more — how many times does one get accepted into such a retreat not just once…but twice!?

In the spirit of cramming it all in, I headed up to Austin to stay in an AirBnB for a few nights the week before the retreat to work with a client and his team for a few days onsite.

I strayed from the sleeping schedule, the slow work-free mornings by the river in the woods, and the healthy diet.

There was a tinge of a sore throat that appeared on Thursday.

Still there on Friday.

Finally back in my refuge in the woods, waking up Saturday morning I only noticed the sore throat, usually an indicator that the body was just fighting something minor. I hadn’t actually gotten ill in years (since I quit drinking), I was vaccinated and boosted, and I was feeling optimistic. Softly celebrating this was all I was feeling, I got out of bed with a smile 😊.

And I literally almost fell over.

The coughing was incessant, and the aches hit me like a tidal wave. The mind was so blurry it took me about 15 minutes to figure out how to self-administer that handy government-provided COVD-19 test. Nearly passing out again in the process, the result was positive…

Still with a tinge of hope of attending retreat, I procured and did all the things, beginning to actually start taking care of myself.

By Monday, I thought I was all better! Time to turn the brain back on, do the usual Monday personal administration…

Tuesday hurt. A lot.

Ok, game over…

Time to stop, for real.

Giving up, finally, I was sleeping ~12 hours a day, barely using the brain, and eating ridiculously healthily.

And yep, this is when I started feeling all the things…in REALLY BIG ways.

The anger.

And underneath…

The sadness.

The meditations were intense.

A retreat in the deepest meaning.

Once the ego got over it all, there was a hint of relief at not going on this retreat. And at having an empty schedule for a couple weeks.

I also found out along the way that my multi-month retreat plans for the summer were also canceled due to this lingering plague. And that felt slightly relieving, too.

As I’ve been able to return to the river for morning and evening walks and meditations, there’s a newfound appreciation for and contentment with the simplicity of this life I’ve built for myself.

I’m so thankful for my practice.

Stopping has been coming up more and more — with clients and in my own life — how are you not stopping right now? Are you telling yourself it’s “healthy”, “good” for you? Is your form of not stopping…avoiding…through exercise, seeing friends, a hobby, or vocation?

I’m not here to say any of these things is bad. But do really you need as much of it? What happens if you slow down, or even fully stop? What’s underneath? Where does it really hurt? What don’t you want to feel?

Until you stop, will you ever know what you’re running from?

What’s so scary about stopping?

We’re conditioned in the west to keep going. I’d argue we’re taught on the most basic level that if we stop, we die…or even worse, fail 🙃.

Well in my personal experience and in what I see with clients, there’s quite the inverse relationship between “effort” and “success.”

Stopping allows flow, or as the hippies say…manifestation.

If you do find the courage to stop, stay stopped a good bit longer than you think you need, maybe double the amount of time that little prefrontal cortex of yours is telling you!

And when it’s time to resume, maybe you’ll naturally have shifted from a motto like Move Fast And Break Things to Take Your Time…It’ll Work Itself Out, because of your own new lived experience.

Thanks for reading,

Andy