Walking through Central Park the other day, the grass appeared for the first time in many weeks. I was surprised to see it, especially on a day when the temperature was again particularly cold and wintry and I was bundled up from head to toe. The day before had held the promise of Spring – warmer temperatures and no need for heavy gloves or ear muffs with most of the snow from prior weeks having melted away.

As I walked through the park discovering the potential for green to again emerge in my world, I found myself thinking about the constancy of change, the unpredictability of what comes next, and our capacity to adapt to what we encounter along the way. I also pondered the practice of having “no preference” – the practice of noticing what is, rather than what we’d like it to be, and then moving through it in whatever way we may choose to do so. This is such a big practice! For me, noticing what is doesn’t mean not working to change things I think could be better, or not attempting to prevent those things I feel would be harmful. I experience the idea, instead, as an invitation to notice where I do have preferences – where I want something to be this way, not that way, or I don’t want something to be the way it is – and how I respond when faced with something I cannot change.

One of the ways I have learned to notice my preferences in the face of unchangeable circumstances is by paying attention to my body. If I find myself clenching, or tightening, during an experience, I can be pretty certain that I’m resisting it in some way. And, I know that when I begin to resist what is, I’m less likely to have a full range of responses available as I move through the experience. I have learned to pay attention to my jaw, in particular, as in the past I tended to clamp my teeth together when I began to get tense. A Feldenkrais body worker taught me something I’ve shared before in the experiments, and that is to imagine that I have clouds floating between my teeth. Whenever I remember this, my jaw spontaneously relaxes, which also affects my psychological stance: I also relax mentally and emotionally.

In general, clamping down tends to restrict our flexibility – physically and psychologically, and it is useful to become familiar with your own ways of resisting what is. As soon as you unclench, resilience and the possibility for a greater range of responses open up. When you learn to recognize your unique ways of tensing and clenching, you can begin to use these responses as signals to let go, to become conscious of what’s going on, and to be more fully aware. Anytime we come into greater awareness, we also create a possibility for choice. As I’ve said so many times in these experiments, even when we can’t change what is, we can fine tune our responses to how we choose to move through whatever we encounter.

For this week’s experiment, I invite you to pay attention to those areas where you resist what is, where you may tighten around what life brings your way. Also, notice what happens in your body and in your mind when you choose to unclench. The first step in generating options for yourself is to begin with what is. Then, once you’ve become willing to be present to what is, notice what options begin to open up for you. Sometimes, there’s nothing to do but ride out a situation. At other times, new possibilities become apparent that weren’t obvious when you were clenched down around not wanting things to be as they are.

As I mentioned above, this is big practice, so the point isn’t to succeed in not clenching or to be willing to be with whatever is without any kind of reaction or response. The key to this particular experiment is to become more familiar with how you tighten and resist what is, and then to play with what happens when you let go. There are, as always, no right answers. There’s just an opportunity to know yourself better, and to bring greater awareness to how you move through the world. Remember to invite curiosity to be your constant companion, and to use those moments when you aren’t able to let go to reflect back to you how challenging it is for all of us to encounter a “what is” that we don’t like and to move through that experience skillfully.

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