You might have heard it many times in your life: stress kills people, it directly affects your immune system and your health. But nevertheless we surf with stress and we love it. We love to rush and to get things done. We find all the reasons in the world to get angry and contract, when things are going wrong. Wrong means that things are not going the way we think they should be going. Stress is responsible for your addictions to food, cell phones, work, your flue, your relationship problems and many other things. The german philosopher Friedrich Hegel once said: “ …because its so familiar it remains unknown.” Stress and contraction is so familiar to us and our lifestyle that it remains basically unknown. Think of stress as a habitual form of contraction which you are so used to, that you think it’s absolutely normal. Imagine what a chronic form of contraction does to your body, your heart, your blood vessels, to your muscular structure, to your mind, your emotions, and to your relationship. Then multiply this state of mind, of life with a couple of years or a decade or two and you will find why people are divorced, unhappy, frustrated, suffer from being from high blood pressure, heart attacks or even cancer.

Slowing down and relax, for somebody who is used to this form of lifestyle, which is almost everybody in this culture, seems to be the most difficult thing in the world. Why is this so? The answer is, because we are all “doers” and we live in a “doers prison”. When we are not feeling well, we are doing harder or more. We have not learned to do nothing and just be in the present moment without any agenda. We find satisfaction only in doing, not in being. To get out of this doers prison, one of the first things you have to learn is just to sit still and not do anything. In the East they call it meditation. I also call it doing nothing. In the Zen tradition there is a beautiful little poem which says:

“Sitting silently,

doing nothing,

spring comes

and the grass grows by itself.”

I wish you more and more moments during the day where you allow yourself to just sit with yourself and do absolutely nothing.