The 3 stages on your journey to stillness, as outlined in a previous post, closely parallel the 6 Fundamentals of Stillness, where each of the three stages aligns with specific Fundamentals.
Stage 1: Rest and Feel
Stage 1, Discovering the State of Stillness, aligns with the first two fundamental elements of stillness: Rest and Feel.
- Rest emphasizes the importance of activating your parasympathetic nervous system during the practice of stillness, thereby reducing chronic sympathetic mobilization. Restful stillness gives rise to inner comfort, the bio-signal of homeostasis and inner wellness.
- Feel introduces the conscious experiencing of feelings—bodily sensations of comfort, excitement, and unease. It is essential to differentiate between thinking about feelings in the mind and actually feeling feelings in the body, as they manifest in muscles as pleasurable or uncomfortable tension, as well as pleasant softness. Giving space to all feelings is a fundamental principle in the practice of stillness.
Stage 2: Embodiment
Stage 2, Becoming an Embodied Still Self, is underpinned by the third fundamental of stillness: Embodiment.
Embodiment focuses on your “biological identity” beyond social identities, where you experience yourselves as physical beings and presences. The key is the kinesthetic sensing of your body —not just as something you have, but as something you are: an embodied, separate existence. Embodied living brings an acute awareness of your state of stillness in contrast to your state of movement, as you respond to the challenges and opportunities in your lives.
The embodied mind is also essential at this stage, where you learn to recognize your mind as an organ within your body, designed by nature to serve the wellbeing of the body it inhabits.
At this stage, you learn to differentiate between the sleeping, still, or moving version of yourself. These whole organismic states are more fundamental than social identities and roles, focusing on our biological origin and nature and are defined by the survival behavior of yourself as a biological living organism.
Finally, establishing an embodied still version of self introduces the meeting between your still and mobilized self, where the still and restful self—often experienced as the most mature version of yourself—meets the mobilized version of yourself, frequently perceived as a much younger version of yourself, as you face the world’s pains and pleasures. This dual identity within one body and the integrative dialogue between the still and mobilized self is the source of wisdom and becomes the main focus in Stage 3 of the journey to stillness.
Stage 3: Reassurance, Care, and Acceptance
Finally, Stage 3, Responding with Stillness, is enabled by the remaining three fundamentals of stillness: Reassurance, Care, and Acceptance.
- In Stage 1, you stepped back from the world and directed your attention inward to rest and feel.
- In Stage 2, you formed the identity of an embodied still self, separate from the world and autonomous in your behavior.
- In Stage 3, you reintroduce the contexts of your environment and your embeddedness in the natural and social world, aiming to develop a map to navigate your life with wellbeing, vitality, and joy.
In line with Carl Gustav Jung’s observation of an eternal inner child that exists within all of us as we mature emotionally—and that is in constant need of reassurance, care, and gentle education towards accepting what can and cannot be—Stage 3 focuses on the cultivation of self-guidance, self-reliance, and inner child work.
- Reassurance addresses your deepest need to feel secure and protected.
- Care addresses your need to be nurtured and developed.
- Acceptance is the essential, life-long ability to deal with disappointment as a gateway to accessing the gains of life beyond its losses.
If Stage 1 focused on upgrading the mind with new skills, and Stage 2 updated the mind with a new set of embodied identities, then Stage 3 is a process of expanding the mind and outgrowing your childhood beliefs and perceptions, forming the wise behavior with which to navigate the pains and pleasures of life.
“In every adult there lurks a child – an eternal child, something that is becoming, is never completed and calls for unceasing care, attention and education” (C. G. Jung).