Without turning it into a Major Series, I am sitting still every day for one (or two) periods of 20 minutes. Twenty minutes is do-able, not too off-putting, and doesn’t require any shifting around of anything else I want to do.

Why sit still? I don’t really know, except that the only thing I never do is to do nothing. And of course when I am sitting still I am still doing something, namely thinking and sitting. But the body is still and so it is more apparent that the mind is not. And a still mind is not the goal or aim.

Yesterday, day 1, was a doddle. I felt I didn’t want to sit but I also wanted to more than anything. I was in running mode, my standard mode for, oh, a couple of decades and more. Afterwards was the clear knowledge that I didn’t need to run, that there was nothing waiting for me within if I stop a while.

Today, straight after work, within a few seconds massive intensity across the forehead, into the eyebrows, an intense ache. So the question: am I doing this to my face? And it seems I wasn’t, but there it was, the tension tightening up my forehead, eyebrows, then nose, and acute pain into the lips even, all screwed up. Quite literally. The vanity kicks in: you can’t let your face do this! Even the old: what if the wind changes, you’ll be stuck like this! But vanity doesn’t know shit and if this tension is there and continues, it’s going to instruct the face to look that way. That’s what tension does. It’s tense, caught up, uptight, and so are we.

This tightening continued for about 15 of the 20 minutes and then it left as suddenly as it came, leaving tingling skin and hundred of facial muscles softening.

Sit down and shut up
Sit down and open up