Wishing: In gladness and in safety,
May all beings be at ease.
Whatever living beings there may be;
Whether they are weak or strong, omitting none,
The great or the mighty, medium, short or small,
The seen and the unseen,
Those living near and far away,
Those born and to-be-born,
May all beings be at ease.
The Buddha’s Words on Kindness, Metta Sutta
I have written before about Michael Chekhov’s theories on Peak Performance and a little bit on the subject of The Feeling of Ease that Mr. C includes as a key pillar in the Foundation of all Great Art. The Four Brothers of Art are Beauty, Ease, Entirety and Form. I am sharing here a path to Taking IT EASY!
If any one knows the enneagram, I only recently learned that I seem to be a counter phobic 6. If you don’t know what that is, the Enneagram is, in a simplified explanation, a ancient personality profiling system like “Type A” or “Type B” or the Zodiac or the more businessy Meyers-Briggs. The aim of identifying these types is to help us understand our tendencies, play into our strengths and strengthen our vulnerabilities. We gain greater tolerance of our flaws, can navigate more calmly. And by knowing what someone else’s profile is, we gain that same tolerance or ease by learning how to relate to their strengths and support their weaknesses.
My 6-ness suggests that I am untrusting of the world, skeptical and loyal. I can’t RELAX. A 6 is by nature, UNEASY. My mind races with worry into the wee hours. And the Counter phobic part of the term means instead of phobically hiding from what I fear, I dive headlong into it. Thus, photos of me untethered on ledges or spinning out in a formula ford or spinning my tassels as the Loving Madonna are not a surprise. As I learned about this concept called ease, through acting training, I grew to appreciate the definition of EASE versus RELAX. That distinction that Chekhov makes opened up what is clearly a long standing principle as presented in the teachings of the Bible and the Buddha, brought to my attention today in church.
I tell people who discover the magic of the Chekhov teachings that if my inner hardware fried, and all the knowledge of this empowering path to Peak performance living were to be erased, and if I were given just one singular concept to retain, I would pick the Feeling of Ease. Maybe that’s the most important to me because of my 6-ness. So maybe the need for ease isn’t as urgent for you. Or maybe its more urgent and just feels out of reach.
So, just relax! Here comes the key info:
Just Relax! Yeah Right, easy for you to say. I do my breathing, I do my prayer, my meditation, my music, my yoga, my …… and I calm down only as long as I am actively doing that, or until I fall asleep. In traditional acting class, the first 2 hours of class were spent doing relaxation exercises. After all, how can you achieve a peak performance if you are tense? (Same for life, right?) After those 2 hours, thirty seconds before you go “on” your stomach flips, trembles and your mind races and you are supercharged with fight or flight energy, furious with who ever conned you into thinking that this wouldn’t happen, screaming silently at yourself “RELAX! RELAX! RELAX! Your esteem swirls into the toilet and you are terrified you won’t be able to operate with this energy pulsing through you. The more you try to relax, the more wired you grow.
WHY?????? Simple…sit back and relax, right now. Come back to this after one minute of relaxing.
Notice what you had to do to relax.
Did you move your body?
Change your breathing?
Center your energy?
And would you want to live moment to moment in this physical state? Might be hard to drive, eat, play, work from this position? Maybe you want EASE–not RELAXATION.
What ever you DID to relax was an active DOING.
It resulted in a state called relaxation.
WE are humans BEING- and the being is an ACTivity.
Relaxing is PASSivity. A RESULT of a sequence of movements done with EASE.
You moved easily, breathed easily, all by instantaneous command.
Yes my dear Fellow Spirits, You can walk, talk, sit, breathe as if it is EASY to do so purely by choice at any moment of your life. Just try it for the next 24 hours. Whenever you begin to tense, don’t relax, don’t ask yourself to calm down. Simply allow yourself to walk, speak, and breathe EASILY as if in this moment and this series of moments, you can easily do so now. Try it sitting at a light, standing in a line, or when mulling over what aggravates you. Pretend its easy to sit, to mull, to wait.
The goal of relaxation is to achieve an easy flow of light, energy, blood, nurturing, mental acuity, creativity, vitality, focus, or rest.
The goal of Peak Performance Living is to develop ease through your daily life of activity.
When you see a peak performance, the performer appears to be at ease. Most of the time, you would not say they are in the state of relaxation. The Adrenaline of stress that we dread is the identical chemical as the adrenaline that we cherish in PEAK PERFORMANCE. It is a divine gift provided to help us exceed the average and spring board to super human, life saving, life transforming acts. Finding the beauty of the adrenaline, welcoming it with ease, and allowing ourselves to move easily in life gifts the world. Yes< your active choice to move, breathe, write and speak with ease, activates the field of ease around you and with all whom you come into contact. Right?
Have you noticed there are people who put you at ease in their presence?
Do you realize that every 5 minutes that you appreciate their ease boosts your immune system for over 6 hours? Are you willing to practice EASE and gift the world with your powers to heal with personal leadership?
Relax for sleep, for rest and rejuvenation and Ease into your POWER.
