Ruth Stender

Writer

Be Still Now . . . Be Still

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I grew up hearing, “Be still now….be still.” My parents meant for me to go away, to stop being a bother, to not “crowd” them. I often wandered off to my cave up on the hillside, just above our house out on the holler. With the cool earth beneath my bottom and the smell of dirt in my nose, I did as I was told. I sat still. Inside the shadows of my cave, I watched. I could see my family, but they couldn’t see me.   

Subtle sounds of nature seeped into my ears, capturing my attention. Rustling leaves, busy squirrels, chirping birds. And, in the quietness, I noticed my breath; how it felt and sounded as it moved in and out of my body. It felt separate from me; like it had its own mind. Like it could just stop if it wanted to. I was convinced that it could.

Polly, my little sister who was profoundly disabled, was evidence that all of life is contained in the breath. She had no control over bodily functions, so it was curious to me how the breath moved an otherwise static body. It was like the breath was breathing her, not the other way around. Her seizures really confirmed this. A seizure would leave her limp and lifeless, as if some greater force was sucking out her very essence. Mom would tap on Polly’s chest and rub her face while asking her to come to, to come back. To breathe. Watching Polly, so often on the precipice of dying, over her short life of nearly fourteen years proved to me that the breath is what holds us between life and death.

Breath is life.

Unlike Polly, most of us do have the ability to control our body, our breath. As part of yoga and meditation, we practice what’s called pranayama. In Sanskrit, prana means life energy (or breath) and yama means control. So, in simple terms, pranayama means to control the breath. Intentional breathing is at the heart of energy medicine. This is why the art and science of yoga brings immediate positive change to us. Breathing with purpose is deeply healing—on every level.

My fascination with breathing began at an early age and now, in my later years, things have come full circle. Teaching others about what I’ve come to know about breathing is my work. My journey has taken me from very conservative environments, deep into woo-woo land, and everywhere in between. Integrating spiritual insights with my practical way of being is how I approach working with clients. I meet each person where they are and, together, we build a system that suits their needs.

I now know that being shooed away [[“go on now, git….you’re crowdin’ me”]] was a blessing in disguise. A blessing because, although feeling like a burden, a bother, those moments of being alone in my cave taught me how to soothe myself. Much like how a calming salve eases the pain of a scraped knee, being still and watching the breath soothes our invisible aches, hurts, and sorrows. Your breath is your superpower—it should be your primary tool for every situation in life.   

So long as you have breath, you have a way to help yourself. Intentional breathing calms your nerves, which, in turn, harmonizes your body and mind. When your body and mind are in harmony, the hard stuff in life doesn’t rattle you so much. In fact, the tough stuff becomes more of a curiosity than a hardship. Intentional breathing is, in and of itself, a self-healing and meditative practice. It’s not complicated. It’s available to everyone.

Be still now.

Come breathe with me. Sign up here.

Breathing Class: Be Still Now

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Please join me for a breathing class! See details on the below flyer.

Upcoming dates are:

August 15, 2023 at 6:00pm — Seattle, WA

September 19, 2023 at 6:00pm — Bellevue, WA

October 17, 2023 at 6:00pm — Seattle, WA

November 21, 2023 at 6:00pm — Bellevue, WA

December 18, 2023 at 6:00pm — Seattle, WA

The Wandering Wisdom Within Your Body: The Vagus Nerve

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When we ignore our body’s wisdom, and its innate ability to heal itself, we experience stress. Stress in the body sends a message to the brain that something is wrong, releasing stress hormones into the body. This is a normal response, and not a bad thing, unless it’s an everyday occurrence, in which case it’s called chronic stress. And chronic stress causes inflammation, which is at the root of many illnesses.

When stress levels are reduced in the body, so is inflammation. Your body is naturally more resilient to illness and your mind less prone to anxiety and depression.  

So how can we reduce stress? By tapping into the body’s wisdom, the all-knowing nervous system, we can balance all aspects of our being: mind, body, and spirit.

Meditation and yoga are two ways we can work toward integrating mind, body, and spirit, and the reason they work is because of the breath. When we breathe deeply, as in the full yogic breath, the body responds by releasing tension, and the mind relaxes. The nervous system calms down.

What’s happening here, specifically, is directly related to the vagus nerve, the longest cranial nerve running from the brain to the gut, a two-way informational highway branching out along the spine and interacting with major organs until it ends around the area of the second chakra.

The vagus nerve is nicknamed the wanderer because it wanders into so many areas of the body. This wandering nerve gathers information from the body and sends it to the brain. When the body is under stress, it sends the brain a message that something is wrong. But when the body is at ease, it sends a message to the brain that all is well. Relaxing the body through gentle movement, stretching and breathwork, helps us turn off the alarm bells in the brain.

From an energy medicine point of view, this understanding of how the nervous system influences overall health is exciting because this major nerve runs along the same pathway as the primary energy centers; hence, breathing exercises automatically reset our subtle energy body. Likewise, as we work with our energy centers, and their particular God aspects, as explained in my book, The Eight Aspects of God: A Pathway to Bliss, we simultaneously calm an overactive nervous system. This understanding also explains those “gut feelings” that we can’t quite describe but we’ve all experienced. Think of your vagus nerve as your body’s intuition.

By working with your vagus nerve, a physical and tangible part of your anatomy, by way of intentional breathing, you are harnessing your natural ability to heal. Tapping into this energetic highway revitalizes your body and mind while empowering your spirit. And it starts with your breath.

Let’s try it:  

If it’s comfortable, sit upright in a chair. Place your feet flat on the ground, hands resting on your lap. Close your eyes for a bit of regular breathing to get settled.

Once settled, begin breathing with intention. Imagine the breath as intelligent and able to travel anywhere in your body. See the breath moving up and down your spine—up on the inhale, down on the exhale. Now, imagine the breath moving along the spine but then branching out and reaching into the smallest crevices throughout your body. Let the breath flow. Let it pause and gather. Rest and relax.

It’s important to note that deep breathing should be easy, quiet and relaxed using the nose, mouth closed.

After ten minutes of practice, sit in silence. Then ask for any wisdom to come forth. Contemplate any messages from your body. Honor what’s being communicated to you with compassion, love, and understanding. Journal a few pages about what comes.

Note: this article was originally published on Contemplative Journal, 2016. The platform no longer exists, so I wanted to share it here. I made a couple of revisions for clarity.

Philosophy: An Antidote to Stupidity

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“I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.” ~Socrates

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In my quest to overcome ignorance, I have found Socrates. Philosophy. I am currently reading from (more like studying) two books:  

The Socratic Method: A Practitioner’s Handbook, by Ward Farnsworth.

Philosophy 101 by Socrates: An Introduction to Philosophy via Plato’s Apology, by Peter Kreeft.

What is philosophy?

Kreeft says in his Philosophy 101 book that philosophy is “the love of wisdom.”

In Farnworth’s book, The Socratic Method, the author begins with, “The Socratic method is a style of thought. It is a help toward intelligence and an antidote to stupidity.” This definition rubbed me wrong.

For a good portion of my life, I believed that ignorance equaled stupidity. I developed a complex, a sensitivity, about how others saw me. I worried about what they thought of me because each time I exposed my ignorance, I was certain they saw me as stupid.

If “intelligence” is the opposite of stupidity, then where does ignorance fit in there?  I see intelligence as having the capacity to accept ignorance as a fundamental condition of being human. I see stupidity as denying (ignoring) that you are, or might be, ignorant. Ignorance is an innocent “not knowing” about something, whereas stupidity is a sort of unwillingness to consider yourself ignorant (like those annoying know-it-all folks).

Is Farnsworth suggesting that intelligence is the opposite of stupidity? Ignorance? Or both?

Is Stupidity the same as Ignorance?

But are the two—ignorance and stupidity—connected? If so, to what degree and how do you “heal” from one or the other? And am I just so sensitive to being ignorant that I am twisting Farnsworth’s words? What does he mean? Exactly? Does he think that because a person lacks the knowledge about something, like the difference between a salad fork and a dinner fork, that they are stupid? A whole series of thinking, pondering, ruminating exploded in my brain. What to do?!

I immediately turned straight to Chapter 11, Ignorance.

“Socratic inquiry begins with awareness of your own ignorance—that is, awareness of how far short you fall from the wisdom you would like to have, and from the conclusive answers to the most urgent questions.”

“Socratic philosophy starts with “I don’t know.” It ends with “I don’t know.” Between those two points there is a progress and improvement, but it isn’t a journey from a question to an answer; it’s a journey from one question to another.” 

Philosophy, I figure, is more like an antidote to ignorance. Besides, it is a lot easier to accept your ignorance than to see yourself as stupid.

What is Double Ignorance?

Farnsworth talks about “double ignorance”—ignorance of one’s own ignorance and that it (double ignorance) is the heart of the Socratic project. I haven’t explored this too much yet, but I suspect the Socratic project is about self-discovery, inquiry, and contemplation about one’s way of being. I was also reminded of something I wrote in my memoir, Glowing Houses:

“Opening your mind is the only way to diagnose and then cure yourself from the disease of ignorance. But overcoming the disease of ignorance is a complicated paradox: you’ve got to know you have it in order to treat it.”

Ignorance has been one of the most debilitating ailments in my life. But here in my later years, I understand that being ignorant is one of the greatest teachers one can ever know. In my memoir, I claim, “Although ignorant, I ain’t stupid.” The below excerpt from my manuscript is a bit about preparing to move to Colorado back in the early 80s.

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“Nothing shines a light on your ignorance, your stupid ways, more than how you say a word or how you use it (wrong). I figured the O part of Colorado must be said like an O but really I couldn’t be for sure because so far I’d only heard people say the last O like ah, as if it ended with an A. Shoot, take the word color, for instance; if you really look at it, it could easily be said as c-OH-l-OR so sometimes it’s just really hard to know until you hear it said out loud by people who know how it’s supposed to be said. I decided I’d wait and see how the people who lived there said Colorado and then I would say it like them. They oughta know.

Even when I thought I knew a word, I learned through the pain and shame of exposing my ignorance that certain words I didn’t have right at all. And the more I interacted with people who said words the right way, like the town kids and teachers at high school, especially my Language Arts teacher who often rolled her eyes at me, the more embarrassed I got and the less I talked and the more I tried to fade into the background like you do at a party when you feel like you don’t belong. My poor grammar shone a light on my ignorance more than anything. I’d say things like infactuate instead of infatuate, aggerfate instead of aggravate, chimley instead of chimney, or take something for granit instead of granted.

I could tell I’d said a word wrong by the look on the person’s face. The heat in my belly was quick to rise into my own face. In a lot of cases I wouldn’t even know what the other person was talking about because I’d never even heard a certain word before, let alone seen it written out. Once I learned how to say a word, though, I practiced using it to make it stick.

When you don’t use words correctly, it’s a dead giveaway (to those who know words) that you don’t read, that you’re stupid.”

***

Even though I don’t think Farnsworth means to say that ignorance equals stupidity, exactly, there’s an element of truth in this thinking. Even a modest amount of learning about anything makes us less stupid. But the key is to know the difference between stupidity and ignorance. To overcome ignorance or stupidity, you must first consider that you might be one or the other: ignorant or stupid, and perhaps both.   

Definitions:

Intelligence: the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills.

Ignorance: lack of knowledge or information.

Stupidity: behavior that shows a lack of good sense or judgment.

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