What people say
I can honestly say that, for the first time in 50 years, I’m learning how to just be. How to relish the present moment, which, magically and mysteriously, unlocks the door to the treasure house that is the rest of my life.
- Jennifer Green, Salem, Oregon
From the moment Jon and I connected, I had this deep experience of loving presence and complete trust. Something bypassed my mind and my ability to figure things out, and communicated directly to my heart and soul that I was safe and in the right place. There was a creation of power in our relationship that he honored and witnessed as being mine. It was my power. I had the experience of being wonderfully, beautifully powerful, in the most loving, energized way.
- Laura Lind-Blum, The Idea Midwife, Waterbury Center, Vermont
Jon can help you recognize where you are, and become more clear. My work with him has not been about plotting out my future, it has been about helping me come into deeper relationship with myself so that next steps unfold easily and effortlessly.
He creates a safe, spacious container for you to go as deep or wide or high as you’re capable of in any given moment. It’s a matter of him being able to see the facets and help me make them real in me.
- Sandra Leader, Carmel, CA
My feelings changed from, “Quick, fix me, I can’t stand how I feel, make it better, hurry,” to, it’s not about hurry, and it’s not about fixing, it’s about staying where you are and getting more and more and deeper and deeper sensations that this is okay. You’re fine, this is okay.
It helps me reframe experience. I don’t see anything that’s happening quite the same as I’ve ever seen it before, because my viewpoint has been enlarged. There’s more, there’s peace, there’s joy, there’s love, there’s health, there’s everything.
- Layne Young, artist, Salem, Oregon
What Does “Fully Present” Mean?
March 8 2011
Being “fully present” sounds good. It seems like a worthwhile practice. But what does it mean in actual experience?
Teachings such as “be fully present” often end up being interpreted in ways that aren’t exactly true to their intent. That’s because most people hear something like “be fully present,” and immediately start trying to figure out what it means to do that.
But the teaching is really intended to open your perception to a non-intellectual, full-body/full-being experience — which is a far cry from figuring it out!
Here’s an exploration of some of the ways you may be over-thinking this teaching and others like it — and some ways to find a more experiential, less conceptual understanding.
“Be Here Now”
This is often understood as an instruction to focus on what’s right in front of you, on your experience in this moment.
And of course “focus” is generally interpreted by the mind as an intellectual activity. So you start concentrating on thinking about what you’re doing.
That can quickly start feeling very constricted.
“Be here now” — just like “be fully present” — is simply asking you to notice what’s happening. Not to try to control it; just to notice it.
For instance, notice when you spend time thinking about the past instead of what’s present for you here and now. Notice when you spend time anticipating the future — perhaps just a few moments ahead, perhaps hours or days or even years — instead of staying in your current experience.
As you notice — without trying to change anything — you’ll naturally start also noticing how much of your present experience you miss because you’re so focused on interpreting what’s already happened or figuring out how to “make” something happen in the future.
Noticing these things tends to bring you back into what’s happening now. You’ll begin to be here now — fully present — without having to think about it.
Your location of identity
Stop for a moment and close your eyes. Point to your identity.
If you’re like most people, you’ll point to your head — to your mind.
As I’ve mentioned before in these articles, most people spend the majority of their time in their heads, thinking about their experience instead of experiencing their experience. It’s as if — as a friend of mine likes to say — our bodies have become nothing more than elaborate transport mechanisms for our minds.
When I ask my clients to move into their bodies — to move into the heart, into the solar plexus area, or further down into the pelvic center — they often discover very different experiences of themselves.
One client commented that in settling into her solar plexus area — the midsection below the ribs, which is the seat of the sense of personal power — she felt a strange constriction in her throat. Her sense of personal power and her experience speaking what’s true for her are closely related, and have been very limited for most of her life. In working with this understanding, she’s releasing her voice — and stepping into a bigger experience of her true capacity.
Where are your feet?
It can be surprisingly difficult for some people to close their eyes and really feel the location of different parts of their body.
As odd as it may sound — given that it is, after all, your body, and has been the only one you’ve experienced since you were born — it can be even more difficult to close your eyes and deeply inhabit your body, either in part or in whole.
What happens when you close your eyes and experience the interior space of — for instance — your feet? Keeping your eyes closed, can you locate the individual toes on each foot? In doing so, do you discover a sense of yourself within your feet — and indeed, within your whole body? What does that sense of self feel like?
“It’s as if I’ve settled into the center of myself,” a client said. “I don’t know how to explain it exactly,” she added, “but I can tell you that it feels good — I feel solid, more confident, less likely to be overwhelmed by the people I meet or what’s happening around me.”
Experience yourself as physical
Next time you’re engaged in physical activity — whether it’s a workout, doing chores around your house, or something more pleasurable like eating a good meal or spending time with your lover — see what happens when you move out of your mind and fully inhabit your body.
In particular, see what happens when you settle low into your torso, into the space between your hip-bones and deep within, towards your back.
One client told me, “The difference in strength I experience is startling! I can lift a much heavier weight when I pause first and settle down into the pelvic region. From that deeply grounded place I have a greater sense of my body and of the strength that I can call on.”
Another commented, “I have a feeling of standing straighter, being grounded in myself — it’s bigger than just a physical experience of my body.”
They’re experiencing a being-level sense of themselves that’s very different, as they’ve observed, from what’s available when you live in your mind — from the neck up.
Fully present
Being fully present involves your entire being: awareness (which is far more than just your intellectual capacity), emotion, and physical sensation.
It’s opening to the whole range of experience — with the emphasis on “whole.”
As one client said to me, “I used to wake up and immediately start thinking about all the things I had to do that day. It was pointless, because I already knew all that — it was just a review. And it’s so much more rewarding to notice what a beautiful morning it is — to see the sunlight play in the treetops as the sun rises, to hear the birds, to watch them fly. There’s so much more immediacy and vibrancy and realness to life!”
“A preoccupation with the future not only prevents us from seeing the present as it is but often prompts us to rearrange the past.” Eric Hoffer (1902-1983), American social writer and philosopher; winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, February 1983.
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