The Clumsy Interloper

“The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes ah, that is where the art resides.” – Artur Schnabel

I’ve been captivated by “The Sacred Art of Pausing” that Tara Brach describes in her book Radical Acceptance. She posits that practicing mindful pauses throughout your day will slow down your reactive brain, disrupting your habitual behaviors, and open you up to new and creative ways of responding to your wants and fears.

As Tara states, “A pause is a suspension of activity, a time of temporary disengagement when we are no longer moving towards any goal. The pause can occur in the midst of almost any activity and can last for an instant, for hours or for seasons of our life.”

As someone with an anxious-avoidant attachment style I have an aversion to uncomfortable confrontations. As the burbling onset of dissension rises, my eyes instinctively start scanning nearby windows for the quickest access to a hasty self-defenestration. When I have strong emotional responses, either lashing out or retreating within, it usually occurs because I have gotten swept up in the moment and taken something out of context or, worse still, applied an unresolved feeling from the past to a present situation. By cultivating a conscious intention to pause more regularly, we can be better prepared to throttle down our reactivity when tensions first start to heighten. If you’ve ever said or done something you IMMEDIATELY regretted this exercise might be for you.

Please try this for the next 24 hours: Identify a handful of things you do routinely (e.g. wash your hands, get a drink of water, pick up your phone) and for the next day before you do those things take a brief 30 second pause. Close your eyes, take some deep breaths, consider how you feel in that moment, turn off your mental hamster wheel and cast your attention inward. Just pause and be still. 30 seconds. Then resume. That’s it.

We dig our own holes when we don’t stop to listen to ourselves. Pausing is akin to putting down the shovel and picking up a cuppa chamomile tea.