Hi there,
Thank you for joining me.
I'm Lisa J.
Let's take a breath together.
Not a special breath,
Just the breath that is already here.
And as you breathe in.
Make a little space.
Expand your chest.
And as you breathe out,
Let yourself settle into it.
Now allow your eyes to softly,
Gently close.
We move through so much of our life at a pace that asks us to arrive before we have even left.
From the kitchen to the car.
From the car to the office.
From one meeting to the next,
From one phone call to the next.
From one thought to another.
We're always going somewhere.
From one doorway to the next.
But what if today,
And each day forward,
You transform the ordinary hurry of getting from here to there into the art of the stroll.
Instead of moving automatically toward the next thing,
Dramatically slow your pace enough to become aware of where you are.
Not walking to arrive faster.
Not walking lost in your thoughts.
But walking at a pace that creates space to actually be present in your surroundings.
Let's take another breath.
And let it go.
Can you feel how that breath creates space within you?
And I want you to notice that the space that it creates.
It's not emptiness.
It is capacity.
The capacity to notice,
To listen,
To see.
To receive.
So,
When you walk today,
I ask of you,
Walk a little slower.
Allow your shoulders to soften.
Allow your eyes to wander.
You don't have to look for something beautiful.
Instead,
Just capture a glance at the ordinary.
Something you've probably passed a hundred times.
And that's something you've never really seen.
Perhaps it's the texture of an old wall.
A leaf caught in a doorway?
The shadow cast by a railing.
A small crack in the pavement.
Or the way sunlight rests on a windowsill.
Give the familiar and overlooked a moment of your attention.
And then really see it.
Notice its edges.
Its color.
Its texture.
The perfections of its imperfections.
As Mary Oliver wrote,
Pay attention,
Be astonished.
Your attention will turn the ordinary into an encounter.
It gives us back what rushing takes away.
Let's breathe in and create space.
Breathe out.
Let's do that again.
Let's breathe in.
And create capacity.
And breathe out.
When hurry changes to stroll.
The world comes to you.
And the everyday,
The simple,
The overlooked,
Reveals itself as art.
A doorway?
The space between the leaves of a tree where the sky is poking through.
A face reflected in the storefront window.
That staircase that you go up and down every day.
Or the exquisite Euclidean geometry of a fence line.
And you don't have to photograph it.
We do that enough in our day to day.
And you don't have to keep it.
You just stroll,
Slow down,
And really see it.
Thoreau wrote,
It's not what you look at that matters,
It's what you see.
Become an artist at the practice of strolling and notice what happens when you stop hurrying.
The world becomes more interesting.
And you become more available to the moment as well as more available to yourself.
Your capacity for inner space increases.
Take a breath and create space.
Take another,
And create capacity.
And when you're ready,
Continue on your stroll.
One step,
One breath.
One ordinary thing at a time.
And speaking of time.
I look forward to our next time together.
Namaste
