ACTIVE STOPPING

One of the greatest paradoxical names is Active Stopping. How can you be active and stopping at the same time? Active is the catalyst, the choice to stop, the precursor for stopping well. Did you know that you can make stopping even better in preparing to stop? What about turning off your phone? Isn't that active? Active is what makes the stopping more profound. Prepare well for an Active Stopping session and you will get a lot more out of it.

Is Active Stopping just meditation? No. Many meditative practices involve stopping, but not all of them. Active Stopping can facilitate a meditation, but it doesn't always. So besides preparing well to stop, what makes Active Stopping so different from meditation? The "short" answer is that three types of Active Stopping exist. Stopping for the Sake of Stopping, Stopping for the Sake of Awareness, and Stopping for the Sake of Answering the Call are very different from each other.

How do you know what type you should use? You can choose the type if you believe you need to stop for one of those reasons specifically. In-touch-ness, for example, may facilitate a great degree of awareness during Active Stopping. It can also cause you to move in certain way to "answer the call" that organically comes from being more in touch. Enhancing awareness is of the sensory system. Answering the call is of the motor system. Stopping by itself is neither system. One of the best usages of Active Stopping is letting it be revealed to you. Instead of choosing to stop for the sake of stopping, awareness, or answering the call, you stop and let what happens happen, knowing that whatever happens is what you need. Active Stopping, therefore, can be you "actively" giving yourself permission to let stopping do what it needs to do, with no judgments, only permission and going-with-it-ness.

When beginning an Active Stopping session, give yourself permission to enter in the initial phase of stopping. At the moment you stop, you are still holding onto the tensions you had one second earlier so actively relax, release, drop in, give a great exhale with a breath-sounding sigh, wiggle gently to let more tensions unwind, and then settle down into the deep level of stopping and stillness. Preparing to stop is as important as the stopping itself. Let yourself dissipate and release energy in order for the stopping to be of a higher quality of peace.

An Audio Conversation about Active Stopping is available here. A guided meditation about Active Stopping is available here.