Here are the best ideas I extracted when reading Pico Iyer’s TED book on the art of stillness. You can learn more about the art of stillness here. I’d also recommend watching the associated TED talk.
Stillness has never been so necessary
The World Health Organisation predicts stress will by the major health epidemic of this century. Machines are coming to seem part of our nervous systems. Emails, bosses, parents, everyone and anyone can find us whenever and wherever we are. Interruptions destroy our peace of mind. The more we can contact others, and they us, the more it seems we lose touch with ourselves.
Until recently, it’s been access to information that’s been most highly prized. Now it’s freedom from information, or at least the ability to sift through it and extract only what’s important, that’s most valuable. On a daily basis we’re confronted with too much information, without having enough time to process it.
Everything we do, learn, and work towards is designed to get us somewhere; to propel us forward towards some goal we should have in mind. It’s drummed into us that the point of life is to get somewhere in the world, not to go nowhere.
What is stillness all about? And how can it help us?
Stillness means coming closer to our own body and senses.
It’s about gaining time – something which is finite and irreplaceable.
It involves gaining a sense of clarity and perspective as you step outside the immediacy of your own life with all its noise, complexity and movement.
Stepping away, often makes you feel closer to others – both to your nearest and dearest and to the world more generally.
It may help you to stop taking your thoughts, ambitions, and own self so seriously. It can feel like an opening up of the world; a new and powerful awareness of all the things that are bigger than your own being.
It can lead to unexpected insights. It’s often through the very process of not trying to think that we get our best thoughts. Thoughts which we don’t consciously seek out are often more fresh and imaginative. You don’t tend to sit still in order to actively try to solve problems. Rather you sit with the problems and they somehow solve themselves.
Stillness can help you find happiness and understanding. We often make the mistake of searching for happiness outside of ourselves, when most of our problems, – and therefore the solutions – lie within. Here’s a nice parable: A man loses his keys in his living room, but goes outside to the street to look for them because there’s more light there. There’s also a case for arguing that we can best change our life merely by changing our perspective. It’s not necessarily our experiences that form us, but the way we respond to them. “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” – Shakespeare.
Research on meditation has identified some of the following benefits: reduced blood pressure, slower and longer breathing, reduced anxiety, reduced fear response, reduced reactivity to unpleasant or unimportant aspects of life and greater ability to focus on small everyday pleasures. There are plenty more – just Google it!
How to be still
Here are some tips from the book on adding stillness into your daily routine, or for inserting more substantial periods of stillness as a break from your normal life.
Observe a secular Sabbath in which you disconnect from all technology. Try doing this on a Sunday or even over an entire weekend.
Make a habit to step away from work and emails. Don’t feel guilty about doing this. The quality of your work will often be better as a result.
For your next vacation, don’t plan a trip abroad. Instead, consider the benefits of staying at home or seeking out a quiet retreat somewhere. The places that move us most deeply are often those that are in some way most familiar to us. Here’s some more inspiration from one of The School of Life’s videos on the benefits of staying home.
If you do decide to jet off to foreign lands, try to sit still and do nothing for your entire flight or journey. Don’t plug into the entertainment device, refrain from picking up a book, don’t even nap. Just sit, think and look out the window. This will result in you arriving at your destination feeling remarkably clear-headed, refreshed and harbouring a real sense of newness and possibility.
Try doing nothing in the hour before you go to bed, especially if you are usually one to plug into technology at this time. Sit still, meditate and perhaps listen to some calming music. You’ll feel really different.
When being still, you don’t always have to try so hard to do nothing. It may sound contradictory, but trying too hard to sit still can be counterproductive in terms of making you feel calm and present. The aim should be to exist in a state where you aren’t constantly telling yourself to do something, which includes telling yourself you should be doing nothing! So allow yourself to do a few “gentle” activities that crop into your mind such as jotting down stray thoughts and ideas.
What is stillness ultimately for?
For many advocates of stillness, the main purpose behind this practice is to harness the benefits for busyness. The message is essentially: Be still so we can get better at being busy. This may amount to using new techniques to meet the same old unelevated ends.
But Pico Iyer argues (and I agree with him) that its’s better to value stillness in its own right. He astutely points out that the very point of being still is to help us see through the very idea that we should always be pushing forward. Despite all the benefits outlined above, it’s important to realise that the payoff from stillness might be quite intangible and long-term.
Balance is best
The author is certainly not against movement and external stimulation, in fact this is central to his life and he certainly seems to revel in them, particularly as he’s a travel writer by profession. These things form the core of most people’s lives, even if this is more out of necessity than choice for some of us.
He advocates a balance, in the form of stillness as an escape from the busyness of normal life. He believes we should harness the rewards of stillness and bring them back into the commotion of the world. It’s not very valuable to keep them confined to a monastery or retreat. In other words, he seems to be saying “don’t stay still for too long”.
Ideally, we should aim to circulate between the two states. Stillness helps us process and convert our experiences into meaningful insights. Activity refreshes and reengages the mind, and at the very least reminds us of the pleasures of stillness.
Inspiring quotes from the book
- Clouds and blue sky. This is a Buddhist explanation of the nature of the mind. Clouds = thoughts, especially negative or unnecessary ones. Blue sky = peace of mind. There may be clouds, but that doesn’t mean the blue sky isn’t always there. All you need is the patience to sit still until the blue sky inevitably shows up.
- “Making a living and making a life sometimes point in opposite directions”
- “Half the confusion in the world comes from not knowing how little we need” – Richard Byd
- “Don’t just do something. Sit there”.
- Stillness is a cathedral in time rather than in place.
- Movement is most valuable when set within a frame of stillness.
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