Learn about these constellations.Īlso, as you’re watching the sky, realize that you’re actually seeing into the past. Identify three constellations-which you can actually do with the help of an app (Shojai likes Star Walk). Sit down or lie flat on your back, and connect your breathing to what you’re seeing. Shojai suggests spending 30 minutes staring at the stars. Finally, feel for any other tension in your body, and stretch those parts. Shojai suggests trying these stretches: Fold forward and bend at the hips drop to one knee and stretch the front of your hips, then switch to do the other side rotate your neck in one direction and then in the other direction. “Stretching and opening up tight body parts releases trapped tension and trauma from a past time, which frees us from it in current time.” It releases trapped energy and helps us to refocus on the present. We spend time organizing it, and cleaning it, and thinking about it. We spend time moving this stuff from room to room, from storage space to storage space.
Many of us own stuff that we stuff into the nooks, crannies and crevices of our homes.
“Whether you know it consciously or not, there’s a part of your consciousness that has to hold space for the things you keep in life,” writes Shojai, a doctor of oriental medicine, Qigong master and ordained priest of the Yellow Dragon Monastery in China. Below are seven ideas from Pedram Shojai’s newest book The Art of Stopping Time: Practical Mindfulness for Busy People.Ĭlear out your physical (and mental) space.
It has to do with changing our relationship to time and actually slowing down (often the opposite of what we think we should be doing) and savoring. These strategies have nothing to do with working faster or slashing our to-do lists or inboxes-or turning to any other efficiency tips. We still lie in bed at night thinking about everything we didn’t get to.īut there are ways we can stop time. We try to shave off seconds, so we can have more minutes.