MY NOW 4
SESSION FOUR — SOMATIC STILLNESS
IGNORING INTERNAL DISTRACTIONS
The fourth Golden Rule:
“Meditation teaches you to clear your mind, Somatic Stillness teaches you to be ok in the clutter of life.”
― Robert (Sherpa) Millar
For the past three sessions, you've been stripping away layers—distractions, comfort filters, analytical thinking—to access pure somatic attention. Contemplatives refer to this as the "Naked Now" (Richard Rohr), Buddhists describe it as "bare awareness," Stoics refer to it as "seeing things as they are," and neuroscientists identify it as "bottom-up processing"—the body's direct perception before interpretation. Your primitive hunter lives in this state. It reads the room, notices danger, senses opportunity, all without the protective layers your conscious mind builds. Session Four focuses on Somatic Stillness: the capacity to remain here without needing to act, fix, or move. "I can feel ok" means you've arrived.
This session teaches how to catch your somatic breath even in the fiercest storm. Most operators have been trained to calm down, take the intensity out of the situation, set aside their feelings, and focus on what they think about the problem. This session contradicts that advice. In the reflection section, you find your way to the eye of the storm and discover you can feel ok, even if it's the end of the world. Somatic Stillness is looking the abyss in the eye, breathing, then throwing it a Shaka!
PROFILE — SOMATIC STILLNESS
Reflection sequence:
The activation process brings itself to the foreground of your mind. Lean in and feel the storms. The sequence of I can, We can, and It can, covers almost any imaginable storm you face in life. Step into the reality of tier-one operators: shit happens. Can you feel ok when it gets really windy? I confess I love being in storms—I rush into the ones I see. If I can't see any near me, I've been known to create one.
Now that you have conjured up those storms, I want you to slow down, find a quiet place to sit, then close your eyes, put your dominant hand on your chest, and check how you felt when reading the Principles section of this session, the instruction, the images, the tone. Don’t remember a storm, find the one you are feeling right now, the one tugging at your clothes as you read this.
Now that you have delved into the somatic plans you carry, move into the practice section after the regular tension check. Losing sight of why you're doing these exercises means you don't wake up as effectively.
THIS IS NOT TRAINING. IT'S CALIBRATION.
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— Robert (Sherpa) Millar | Bespoke Compass