When I drop down into myself in those quiet hours of the night, it feels as though I have tapped into a deep river that runs strongly beneath the busyness of my daily life. When I allow myself to fully experience this deep river within, I connect not only with myself and what matters most to me, but also with a powerful stream of silence, mystery, clarity, aliveness…I seem to tap into a universal source, available to us all, of deeply nourishing spiritual qualities that can provide a healing balm for our out-of-balance-lives. Although this kind of experience can happen at any time, day or night, it is not something that can simply be added to one’s to-do list and squeezed in between finishing up ant work and doing the grocery shopping. We experience this sort of connection only when we allow time for it, which is increasingly rare in our overscheduled lives. Yet we desperately need to make time for it, because the nourishment it gives is a crucial antidote to our frenzied lifestyle and to the culture that feeds our nonstop pace of life
Abby Seixas, Finding the Deep River Within
The first snow fell yesterday. A strong stormy wind blows this morning, scattering the leaves which begin now to fall in earnest. Shorter days. The changing outside weather impresses itself on our inner life, challenging our “routines” and confusing the body. It reminds us of rhythms and patterns in a world that loves predictability, and of things passing through when we foolishly give permanence to our mind states:
To be mindful means that we notice th
We are so used to projecting our attention out into the world around us, it is a noticeable shift when we face inward and feel the subtle swaying of the head on the shoulders, along with all the muscular microcompensations keeping our body centered in gravity. The acrobat, like the meditator, is bringing conscious awareness to a process that is always occurring but is generally overlooked, which is a vital first step to learning anything valuable about ourselves.
Emotions are mixes of “felt senses” and activities. Witnessing them is helped by the simple fact that the body resonates with the moods and impulses that run through it. (When we’re angry we tense up and the heartbeat changes; when we’re loving and joyful, the body feels vibrant and so on). This resonance gives us a way of addressing the heart by addressing the bodily aspect, of steadying or relaxing the emotion by grounding attention in the body and simply breathing. 
