How to not

Photo credit: Anne Haarmark Møllmann 2022

What happens when you stop?

This simple question, posed by my yoga teacher in a yin class some weeks ago, has kept resonating in my being.

I rarely stop. It has been a defining element of all the various — and varying — chapters of my life that, whatever else may change, my life is always filled to the brink.

No doubt for related reasons, I find yin yoga deeply challenging. The poses are not usually complicated, but holding them until the connective tissues can release is difficult for both my body (because, decades of long-distance running) and my mind (because, general impatience). And yet this question — what happens when you stop — has helped me feel, rather than intellectually grasp, something essential.

What happens when I stop is that I get to return to myself: my questions, my curiosity, my ability to think. It literally feels like there is air around my thoughts, as if they too released onto some imaginary brain-mat, covered with a cosy blanket, silently awaiting rest. As I lay still after each pose, feeling into what is still shifting, it is as if something slowly realigns.

I know that I invariably will be busy. It is who I am. But I have learned that these holes in ordinary time are essential, that the spaciousness they bring somehow returns all the pieces to where they need to go.

Miraculously, I have also learned that when I stop, there is overwhelming gratitude. Again and again, this is the most prominent feeling when all else is gone. And the only way to hold onto that gratitude is to not.