How do we hold eternity when we only have 5 minutes?
A coach from our community brought this brilliant question to our Live Podcast with Bob Anderson a few weeks ago.
We were talking about the greater intelligence that’s available to us when we drop in and find deep presence in a coaching session.
The question — How do we hold eternity when we only have 5 minutes? — came in because this coach, like many of us, works in a company with a lot of moving parts.
Their clients are busy, their attention is being pulled in many directions at once, and there isn’t always much time to create an expansive field.
So how can we drop in and find presence — quickly?
Slow down.
That was Bob’s immediate answer.
And while it might seem counterintuitive, slowing down is actually the fastest way to drop in — and when you do, you’ll find that presence creates a paradoxical expansion of time.
You’ve likely had glimpses of this, even if you didn’t have a name for it. Maybe in moments of deep connection with your clients. Or profound stillness in nature.
Lessons from the ocean …
A woman on our team here at Coaches Rising is an avid ocean swimmer. We were talking about this time-expanding property of presence and she shared this story…
A few months ago, I was swimming in one of my favorite bays, when I heard the unmistakable (and loud) breath of a humpback whale. I turned towards the sound and I could see this beautiful, knobby nose coming towards me. Closer and closer, until a second, much smaller nose came into view. Mama and baby.
My whole being went still, and I just hung there in the water. Mama guided her young one within just a few feet of me, and they both looked me in the eye as they passed by.
The whole experience was only a handful of seconds, but it felt like hours. And I am forever changed.
Eternity in an instant.
How can we all access deep presence?
While we don’t all have the opportunity to eye-gaze with a humpback whale, we can all access the time-expanding capacity of deep presence.
The key is to remember that it’s less about creating the experience, and more about dropping in, falling back, and connecting with the field that’s always here.
Consider the internal stillness that flows over you when you:
- Hold a baby for the first time
- Pause to watch a beautiful sunset
- Rest with a purring cat in your lap
- Or simply close your eyes and take a few deep breaths
Here are two practices for dropping in:
- Bask in a past experience
Can you recall a time — maybe within a coaching session or simply in your personal life — when you felt wholly present?
A moment where time slowed down, or even became meaningless?
I invite you to close your eyes, drop into that memory, and bask in what presence felt like for you. Maybe your heart rate sped up (or slowed down), maybe a smile took over your face without your noticing, or perhaps you felt like crying for no clear reason.
Let yourself feel presence in your body.
- Practice Mindful Glimpses
This is a quick and powerful practice, inspired by Loch Kelly’s “Mindful Glimpses.”
As Loch describes it, “a glimpse is a type of shifting, letting go, dropping, or stopping to allow a natural clarity and connectedness to emerge. It is a micromeditation or rest stop where we can refresh or reboot our whole body-mind system.”
To drop in quickly, you can ask:
“What’s here when there is no problem to solve?”
A final note…
Presence, like any craft, deepens with practice. As you hone this capacity, you’ll likely notice two things:
- You sink deeper into presence the more you practice
- Over time, it becomes easier and quicker to drop in
After a while, you’ll find that you can access deep presence in a moment. You might even notice yourself naturally resting here in your daily life.
I’m curious to know about your experience with presence — and whether time feels different when you’ve really dropped in.
With care,
Joel
