The body is a clear place

The lockdowns and mandates of 2020 forced a full stop. That was the year I felt meaning begin to shift, like a plug being lifted out of a huge tub, meaning began to spiral down the drain.

It was a redirect of focus from outward to inward. I could no longer go to my studio to work. Staying at home opened the space of the day and my pace through it slowed down. The whole field of humanity slowed down, skies cleared, the hum of cars fell into silence.

My father, aged 96, had made the final passage just weeks before and I was living in that rarified state of grief and gratitude. My heart was raw and open, the world was all feelings and sensations.

It was the beginning of emptying out. Letting go of a way of being, a way of living, automatic and inherited, full of doing rather than just being.

This experience of emptying out picked up momentum as the years passed. I let go of the lease on my studio. We sold our house and moved to the quiet sanctuary of the mountains. Relationships faded and passed over, more grief, more gratitude.

In the spring and summer of 2022, I spent hours a day laying on the floor of the front porch allowing the vigilance of parenting, of all the doing, drain out of my body, decades of constant motion.

We are afraid of being empty. Of being done, of coming to an end. Perpetuation for the sake of keeping it going, whatever it might be. And yet, emptiness is blissful.

Erick Hawkins, a famous dancer and choreographer, once said, “the body is a clear place”. Discovering that clear place requires that we turn inward toward that emptiness, toward uncertainty. The meaning we place on ourselves, relationships, beliefs, material things – all of it is exposed in the light of our awareness. And that exposure is our liberation from attachment, where meaning has its source.

Now the drain has gathered momentum and much is spiraling down and away. We grip and grab rather than let go.

Lay on the floor or outside on the earth. Close your eyes.

Breathe…..allow your breath to deepen.

Soften your body with each breath, allow your breath to caress you.

Feel yourself emptying out with each exhale. Inhale…..exhale and hum…..all the way to the end of the exhale. Another hum and another.

Return to just breathing and invite your attention into sensations.

Allow small movements to ripple through you.

The body is a clear place, your place. Your hands, your nose, your spine. To empty the mind is to fill the heart with presence. This one, tiny moment of being. Meaning reorients to this - I am here now. I am nothing. I am everything. I am Love. It is all Love.

And together, we create the world freshly from being, from Love.

©2026 Sabine Mead

No part of this was produced with the help of AI.