Integration
Watercolour
©2019 Louise Gallagher

I had a plan. An idea of what I’d do when I got to my hotel after the workshop yesterday.

“Ideas are frozen energy,” Philip Shepherd, our workshop leader had said earlier in the day.

What would happen, I wondered, if I breathed into the font of my being, instead of relying on my ‘knowing’?

I breathed deeply into my pelvic bowl, grounded myself in my belly brain and let myself simply feel the presence of all the world in and around me. I breathed deeper and let myself feel my presence as part of the whole of all the world.

My plan changed.

I struck a match and lit the wood that was ready and waiting for me in the fireplace in my room. I sat and watched the flames flicker. Listened to the crackle of the wood as it burned.

I sat and rested. In silence. In the quiet of the evening falling. In the softness of the snow drifting down.

I rested and breathed. Deeply. And felt the world turning into me and me turning into the world. I felt my being tune into the silence within and all around me and felt my entire being held by the stillness of the present.

So this is peace.

This is rest.

Grateful, I pulled out the watercolour paints I’d brought with me and started to play.

Pure, simple, blissful play.

So this is play, my mind whispered.

Shhh, my belly braind responded. Breathe. Be present. Be held in the stillness. Just play.

I am heading off in a little while for day 2 of the Radical Wholeness workshop I’m attending in Banff.

This morning, I stood on the patio outside my room and felt the silence of the forest. The slow dawning light of morning shimmered on the snow-laden branches of the fir trees, the air was cool and crisp. In the distance, a train whistle echoed eerily.

My mind drifted to the unseen train travelling tracks leading east to west, west to east. Goods on the move. Life moving.

I breathed in. And out. In. And out.

I let my breath draw me down, out of my mind, deep into my body.

I breathe in. And out. In. And out.

I stood in the silence and felt the presence of all that is, my body  becoming the air around me, the air around me becoming my body.

I closed my eyes and a tear gently trickled down my face.

I breathed in. And out. In. And out.

Present within this moment right now, I feel the tear’s path slipping down my skin. North to south. South to north.

Tears fall, drawing me down into the crucible of my being present.

Wisdom rises from my belly. I feel myself moving deeper into my being, my core. I feel the welcoming stillness of its deep, abiding presence.

My mind becomes quiet as I slip effortlessly into the beauty, wonder and awe of this moment right now resting peacefully in my belly.

Namaste.