ENGINEER STILLNESS PROGRAM WELCOME LETTER

Welcome to body-breath-mind practice.

Balancing our nervous systems, taking control of our minds and coming back to holistic wellbeing requires a capacity for stillness. A physical and mental stillness that allows us to disconnect from all the noise and ‘doing’ of the outer world, and of our minds. A state that supports undisturbed inner quiet and clarity, in which it becomes possible to hear an inner guide or intelligence that knows who we truly are, what we truly want, and how to live with greater ease, fulfilment and purpose.

Yet our physical selves are constantly busy, moving like fast-flowing rivers. Modern lifestyles overwhelmingly support, reward and demand it. And we often find it useful, because it keeps us skimming across the top of all the sand and silt and debris that lies on the riverbed, our subconscious.

It almost becomes impossible to stop. Because as soon as we have even a taste of stillness and silence, it’s like damming the torrent, and that subconscious debris piles up, triggering difficult questions and difficult emotions, which may be accompanied by a sudden awareness of uncomfortable physical sensations in our bodies – restlessness, tightness, pressure, a sinking feeling in our guts, perhaps.

So, we keep going and going. And the more we keep moving, the more our bodies and minds seem to both crave and create it, without arriving anywhere. After a while, it may seem as though we have to be on the move, we have to be doing; it’s the only way we know how to be.

Until at some point, something gives.

Maybe it’s mental or physical illness, or both. Maybe it’s burnout and overwhelm. Maybe it’s growing chaos in our lives and we can’t seem to get a break. Or a feeling of absolute stuckness. Each person will experience it uniquely (perhaps you are already).

innate healing toolkit

However, you have an innate ability, a body-mind toolkit, that can support you in attending to your own healing and finding your way back to that place of stillness. And I know – it happened to me - that with perseverance, the strength, stability and peace that you develop through practicing these tools will follow you into every area of your life, from lifestyle to work to relationships to finances.

I’ve used the word ‘engineer’ for the name of this program because there really is a way of using this toolkit to self-manage and self-regulate our responses to the things with which life inevitably challenges us, to engineer a better way of being; a stable, integrated body-mind platform from which to show up authentically and thrive. We just need some instructions, and luckily they already exist.

I’ll introduce you to a combination of bodywork (‘asana’ in the Sanskrit language), breathwork (‘pranayama’ or breath control) and meditation (‘dhyana’) practices to equip you to guide yourself towards wholeness. In other words, to integrate body, mind, and all aspects of your being (which we’ll explore further) and then, with the stillness and clarity of this state of balance, connect to the true Self at your core, behind all the conditioning. The Self that is always at rest, at peace, still, and that does not suffer.

Many of the techniques and concepts used are drawn from the ancient (non-religious) systems of Yoga and Tantra, though I also weave in mindfulness, which has been pioneered by Buddhism; and techniques that have emerged from Western scientific research investigating the effects of these practices on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), along with other categories of mental illness and physiological dis-ease.

We’ve become expert not only at cleaving body from mind, but also at separating different approaches and viewpoints from diverse times, cultures and continents into distinct boxes, and that is counter-productive. Rather than being mutually exclusive, there are many ways in which these disciplines reinforce one another.

The reading material throughout this program explains the science and philosophy behind all the the tools you will learn. It offers context and insight into why I’m asking you to do the things you’ll do, through a multi-tradition, multi-disciplinary, historical and modern, Eastern and Western lens.

MY TEACHING BACKGROUND AND ETHOS

My main practice is Tantrik Hatha Yoga, a sophisticated system of body, mind and energy management designed to first stabilise us physically and psychologically; and then from that steady base, to equip us with the power we need to thrive in life.

I belong to and have been trained by teachers from a Himalayan lineage of masters over 5,000 years old. Their teachings remain true to the original scriptural teachings, diluting nothing but always moving with the times and integrating new scientific insight. As such, if you’ve practiced any Yoga before, particularly where there is an emphasis on extreme flexibility, no time for meditation at the end and a lot of ‘flow’ set to music that leaves you sweaty and breathless….this practice will feel unfamiliar. It is not an exercise regime.

I don’t want you to be breathless, because that puts your nervous system into a highly activated state. You’re likely here because it’s very familiar with that state, because it is calibrated at a too-high pitch. One that feels ‘normal’ when you are rushing around, sweating, moving fast, muscles tensed, juggling many things, fulfilling many expectations, following this thought and that, ticking off boxes, suppressing emotions because you must keep going, because only then do you feel you are good enough. This is not how we are designed to thrive. The opposite is true.

For the body-mind to be strong and stable, to healthily process experiences, to repair itself and to release tensions, to digest food properly, to prevent your immune system weakening and mind spinning and dis-ease taking hold; in essence, to maintain homeostasis (inner balance), it needs time free of circulating stress hormones. It needs mental quiet, steady, deep breathing, vital organs nourished by healthy blood flow and a heart rate that readily returns to baseline. It needs rest. Again, stillness.

That’s far, far harder than handstanding, flowing through an intense and sweaty vinyasa sequence (a modern, dynamic, flowing kind of yoga) or running a marathon.

And so, when the practices that make up Yoga were being gathered into a coherent and comprehensive system between the first millennium BC and first half-century AD, a small number of postures (asana) were included to help practitioners train their bodies to find ease in physical stillness as a gateway to mental stillness. And then a little while later the Tantriks significantly expanded the number of asana practices. Because even more than the habitually cave, forest or ashram-dwelling yogis, they recognised how much help we ordinary householders – with all our responsibilities and commitments - need to calm down physiologically (to regulate what we now call our nervous systems) before we can have a hope of tackling our over-active minds.

Yet most of the postures were still seated or floor-based and were far fewer than the huge array you’ll see now on social media. I explain more about this later in the manual; for now, I’ll just say that Yoga as you see it in many modern Yoga studios, though movement per se can be wonderful, powerful medicine, is unlikely to get people – especially stressed people - to an experience of their pure, clear, undisturbed selves, or towards ease and equanimity amidst the stresses of daily existence.

You will learn that less movement is more; longer holds in stillness can be far more transformative; and that asana practice is used as an appetiser for the main event, which is meditation.

I’ll say it again: the point of this practice, first and foremost, is stability. Only once stabilised can we thrive.

This program…

…cannot change the external events in your life that may be causing you stress, sleeplessness or a sense of overhwelm. But it can show you tools that help you to train your nervous system to respond to them in a healthier way and change the habitual over-eactivity of your mind. And if you sustain your practice, you will experience how it feels to resource yourself from within.

I promise you this: it will not always be easy. We are conditioned to avoid stillness, not to look too closely or too deeply within. But if you can get through the initial pain barrier of committing to daily practice, despite inevitable resistance from your mind, from the inner critical voice or voices telling you there are better things you could be doing; and if you can override the belief that there is a quick fix, as we’ve come to expect; you will come to want to practice. Maybe, one day, to love it.

And it’s worth it, because beneath the fog of beliefs, self-beliefs, expectations, prejudices, assumptions and triggers that we’ve come to call ’personality’, is the true you. The you that you were before these things encased you like armour as you grew up, went to school, made your way into your society, went to work, entered into relationships that perhaps left scars and strove to hit any number of milestones set for you by others.

It’s a state more than anything; a calm, clear, peaceful, more empathic and loving state in which you see things and people more as they really are, not as you’ve been conditioned to perceive them, and derive your sense of worth from within rather than seeking validation from outside yourself.

And over time, in my experience, as you respond to the world differently, it responds to you differently. Life stops feeling like some kind of race; material things that mattered so much once upon a time start to lose their hold over you; you stop taking things other

people do and say so personally, and therefore stop reacting impulsively in ways you later regret; and you feel more aware and alive in each moment.

I have designed the program to show you the benefits of self-practicing, once you know how to do it, rather than always needing a teacher to be present; to show you the empowerment of being able to regulate your own nervous system, to manage your own energy levels and to guide your own extraordinary mind to a state of calm.

How to approach the written content of this program

There are parts of this manual that are instructive and tell you directly how to do your practice and explain why and how it works, scientifically; and there are other parts that provide historical and philosophical context.

I go into some depth about the teachings of the Yoga and Tantra traditions because I feel an awareness of the origins of many of the tools you are using is important. It’s a mark of respect for the cultures that have been their custodians, but it is also important to me that you come to the practice with a better understanding of what Yoga and Tantra really are - rather than what they are widely perceived to be – and how to use them than I did when I first started doing Yoga classes many years ago.

The language the ancients used – and I’ve included some of the original Sanskrit terms – may sound strange at first, but it’s really just different words, metaphor and

imagery for many of the same concerns around wellbeing that preoccupy us today. For example, they spoke of nervous system responses in terms of masculine (activating, doing) and feminine (calming, being) or solar (warming) and lunar (cooling) energies; of mental distress as excessive ‘roaming’ or ‘spinning’ of the mind caused by negative ‘impressions’ left on us by past experiences (neural pathways); and of disease as a physical manifestation of excess negative, suppressed or blocked energies.

Where the ancient wisdom of the scriptures is especially helpful (though I include some insights from living enlightened teachers too) is in helping us navigate higher states of consciousness. The ‘seers’ whose accounts they contain were master navigators, and left detailed maps and descriptions of our subtle, inner world – and how our outer world may change as we spend more time going inwards. To most people, higher states of consciousness are deeply unfamiliar, and as your practice - especially your meditation practice - develops, you may find you have experiences that are hard to describe in everyday terms, at which point the teachings can be very supportive.

However, I outline in equal depth the Western scientific insights into why these practices work, as I know this can make them more accessible, especially if you are coming to body-breath-mind (or body-breath-mind-spirit) practice without any previous experience.

You may initially be most drawn to understanding the neuro-physiology at work behind the tools of nervous system management.

Or drawn more to the ancient wisdom and spiritual aspects of practice.

Or compelled by both, as I am.

Or be keen at first simply to practice and feel your own way through.

What matters most to me, for the purposes of this program, is that you understand enough of what I’ve told you and taught you to start to guide yourself towards the greater steadiness, ease and clarity that you are likely seeking.

I recommend you keep a journal throughout this program. Try to avoid reading back through your journal entries until you come to or close to the end of the program. It brings you back to day one with much fresher eyes. Day-to-day we don’t tend to notice change, it can be so incremental. But when we stop with some time-distance behind us and look back, it is then that we are able to see how far we’ve come.

I wish you well in your practice.