Vikki: Stillness scared the shit out of me. Every time I would start to get still, once I started practicing yoga, I think in my late 20’s maybe, they always did that stillness shavasana at the end. And every single time I would start crying. I was not connected to why. Just whenever I laid down, the tears would just fall out of my eyes sideways because I was laying down. And so stillness has always stirred up so much in me. And yet I approached stillness in many different ways from many different people and many different offerings and suggestions. I really got into the work of Eckhart Tolle when him and Oprah did their very first live book club class, I don't know, that was maybe 16-17 years ago. And that was when things really started shifting for me around stillness. Because I understood that stillness changed everything. I just couldn't access it. Because I made it too big, too hard, too difficult too long, I had all these ideas around it instead of just actually practicing it for small moments here and there.
01:37
Amanda: Yeah, I think with stillness, I'm still not the, “I'm going to sit down and meditate for 20 minutes” type. Hell, I'm not even the, I'm going to sit down and meditate for five minutes. It's been baby steps for me, small steps that have made huge improvements in my life, but I will tell you that for me, it's just the small moments, and I'm able to do it quite well, which I'm pretty proud of myself for, but my next iteration of stillness will be quite different than what I'm doing now.
Vikki: Yeah, I think any growth process is gradual and evolves and grows, but again, I think that's why you have to stretch yourself a little bit, but you have to start where you are. If you have no stillness in your life, I would think...45 minutes, you know, you would probably fall asleep, which I did a lot in the beginning and that was okay I didn't judge it, you know. But I think it's important to talk about the importance and how it has the power to change everything in your life because it really, for me, it changes the vibration, it changes the energy it changes who I am, which then changes who I bring to whatever I do. And so the intensity or energy of my doing changes when I can practice some being first. I don't always get it right. I love when Eckhart Tolle says, “one deep conscious breath is meditation.” And so that is a great place to start. You know, I've taken a really long, deep breath with the intention of slowing things down. But for me, when I started, and even now, if I put pressure on myself of, we're going into meditation, everything in you is gonna just rev up. Like just the thought of that.
03:47
Amanda: Right right right…like “rahhhh…no!”
Vikki: Yeah, yeah. And so…I love that you're honest and real, like “this is where I am with stillness and I can see the benefits and how it changes.” And I would like to actually keep going and go to someplace different and new with stillness. But we just have to start wherever we are.
Amanda: Would you consider like journaling sessions stillness or is stillness truly just doing nothing?
Vikki: Stillness is whatever being still means for you. Again, we come back to that place. I'm sure there are correct terminology and words of what things mean, but to me, what I'm trying to get to is really a place of peace. Many times in my meditation, I may have, I don't know, five seconds out of 20 minutes or 30 minutes that I'm there that I'm actually still in my cognitive mind.
Amanda: I love that. You know why I love that? It's because everybody would think that you would do it best and that you would use the whole four minutes and that you, you know, you've got it figured out, but just hearing that. So, so here's my thing with stillness. I'm the type that there's rules around it and you got to sit up and put your hands, your with your middle, your thumb with your middle finger and you're supposed to sit and sit up straight. Okay, first of all, I have a bad back. So sitting up straight on my own accord on the ground or even on a pillow is like asking me to do something I cannot do. So I finally read somewhere like, you know, you can lay down to meditate and you know what? You can, you don't wanna fall asleep, but you can. So I'm really in this place of determining what stillness is not…like getting wrapped up in those, you know, society's rules around what stillness looks like and what Buddha does and you know, all the things. So I think it's important for us to talk about this because there are no rules. There are no rules.
Vikki: There, there are no rules for me. I mean, seriously, I do walking meditations. I do drawing meditations. And by the way, I lay down the majority of the time. If I'm actually doing a meditation of any length of time, because I do have a bad hip and a bad back.
Amanda: We're getting old, Vikki.
Vikki: That's serious. And so, this is a loving act for me. This isn't a way to torture me. It's so interesting. Any tool can be helpful or hurtful. It's all on a continuum. And so, riding my horse, grooming my horses, feeding my animals, I'll find myself lost in thought and then I will bring myself back to this present moment and really just encourage myself, like be where your feet are. Like let all your senses come to life. Like see with a new lens. Like experience this moment. This sounds like so, like whatever, “woo woo” way out there. But I'm telling you…feeding my goats is one of the first things I do in the morning. You have to wash buckets, you have to carry water, I have to sweep shit off the goat front porch, goat pen. There's like this whole process. I don't know, it's just, it's turned into this beautiful act of worship of I'm still moving slow, I'm still drinking my coffee when I'm doing it. How I feed my goats, because it's one of the first things I do, really does determine how I move throughout the rest of my day.
07:39
Amanda: Well, the energy that you bring to it, right? It's not what we're doing. It's the energy that we bring to it.
Vikki: 100%. Always, always. And I really want to share grace and peace and love and kindness…I really do… to my animals as my feet walk on the earth, to people that come out, to my husband. I really honestly want to actually have my life ooze those things, share those things. I do. So it's up to me to choose things to choose moments, to choose acts, to choose presence, to choose whatever that will set up those things for the direction I want them to go in. And the thing I always reach for is peace. I always, that's my first thing. I want to be at peace. I want to bring peace to the world, to life, to my marriage, to my farm.
08:50
Amanda: So you feed the goats with a loving heart.
Vikki: I do. I don't always get it right, but I can say that has really been a repetitive meditation practice for me of can I do this first act of “doing” with “being” infused in this chore, this daily chore, can I do that? And sometimes I actually sit on the front porch after I've swept it, the goat pen and the goats come around and they start headbutting me in the knee and all kinds of stuff. But it's like, God, there's so much going on here and I don't want to miss it.
Amanda: I loved what you said about your walking meditations. Cause I, I too do those. I didn't realize what I was doing those until you brought it up, but I do that with my dogs. And I found it interesting that you talk about opening up all of your senses. I'm going to do that next time because I love like in the fall I love to feel the crunch of the pine cones because they're they're brittle and you know they're falling and they're all over the ground. So it's just that crunching. So I miss that because they're not crunchy anymore. But it's funny because you do it's all those senses it's the the feel of the wind on your skin. It's the sound of the birds. It's you know all the things that you can see and feel. And so I love that. I love that. I'm going to I'm going to open that up more for myself the next time I'm in the woods.
10:18
Vikki: Yeah, it's being fully alive. So the whole point of the walk for me is not to burn calories. I don't even give that a thought. For me, I almost make a conscious act of I'm going to go hang with God in the woods. And I'm going to try to look at the smallest of things. And I'm going to try to look at the bigness of things and just see what exchanges I can experience between me and God.
Amanda: Do you set an intention before you go into these moments of stillness? Do you always set an intention or do you never set an intention?
Vikki: No, it's neither. I occasionally do. When I go on walking meditations in the woods, in the woods is when I gain so much clarity in nature. Again, on our farm, it's just you're in the middle of the woods, you know?
Amanda: On top of a mountain. And it is so quiet out here. You always say, it's “country quiet.”
Vikki: It's country quiet out here. I love it. It really is. Yeah. And there are “hollers”, which are low points on our property. But I don't say, okay, what is my intention? I usually am being vulnerable, but I usually say, “God, I want to experience you. Will you please help me slow down my thinking mind? I just want to be loved by you in this moment. I think sometimes I know for me, I misinterpreted stillness and I always laugh. It does not necessarily mean wearing a loin cloth sitting in a teepee for hours.
Amanda: I so want to see you sitting in a teepee just wearing a loin cloth.
12:14
Vikki: Again, I would, I would, I am so drawn to Native Americans and the way they lived and the earth and the relationships and the animals, how sacred they were. And I wish more than anything, I was a Native American in one of those teepees, like in some kind of ride alongside them. I'm not. And it doesn't mean that I can still have a reverence for nature and animals and life. That is where I come alive. That is really, I don't go out there to solve problems, to find answers. I really don't. When I go out into the woods, it really is to connect with everything God is and everywhere God is and it's in every ounce of nature. It just, I don't know, I feel held, I feel loved. I feel when I'm in nature, I just feel supported. I feel encouraged. I feel so many things when I'm in nature and I'm away from everybody and everything.
Amanda: I feel safe. I feel so safe.
Vikki: I love that. We're held. We are held. You know, I think we are when we're in our everyday doing life I think we trick ourselves into believing that we're making things happen. And you go out in nature and you're like, “Oh yeah, I'm not making a damn thing happen.”
Amanda: This is amazing.
Vikki: This is happening right here. And so it just, it can be, you know, a resetting of so many things, you know, nature stillness. For me, riding my horse, creating art, spending time with people like all of that really is a sacred act.
14:08
Amanda: Yeah, you say at the farm, you know, it's all about experiencing the nature and the animals and art. And I just want to mention that we do some art retreats out here. And those are my favorite. I love them. And it's, it's, you know, a little bit of journaling. It's an art project, but it's never about the end result. And oh my gosh, art for me is almost everything. Yeah. But my animals too. Yeah, but art, I mean, there's so much creative outlet in that and to not have it have like an end result.
Vikki: Yeah, we don't even focus on whatever the end, the outcome is. A lot of times we gather things from nature, use a lot of things from nature and it is the sacred dance of allowing your mind to slow down in your heart to move your hands in some kind of way that brings some form of beauty to your life and then some form of beauty to life.
Amanda: That's incredible. I love the art retreat. And I think with stillness, there's no outcome either. There's no... It is what it is.
Vikki: Yeah. I love what Wayne Dyer says. Not necessarily about stillness. I think he says it more about...or said it more about life, that, you know, when you're dancing on the dance floor, the end result is not so that you end up somewhere on the dance floor. That is not what you're looking for in the dance. Okay, I, the outcome, I gotta end up over there. That's not dance. Dance is every step, every movement with your body, with your soul, with the other person by yourself it is actually enjoying the process of all that is happening during the dance.
Amanda: And being in the moment, really, like when you're dancing, if you think about it and you're listening to the music, there's nothing else in the world. It's just you and the music.
Vikki: Yeah, you're not planning tomorrow's activities.
Amanda: Right, exactly.
Vikki: You're actually being in the moment. And that's where life is and that's where we come to life. I think that's where, you know, we crave so much of that and we don't know how to give it to ourselves of that really just, and it's, you have to find what works for you. That's why I say, you know, for me it's art and walking and God riding my horse is just one big long meditation, but you have to find what makes you come alive and what naturally takes your thinking mind and just turns down the volume and turns up the volume on your soul.
Amanda:I think in today's pace of today's society and world. I think more and more people just are craving that of just turning off the noise. It's always there. I know for me it is. So my heart goes out to so many people that haven't experienced the farm and stillness and learning these tools because it's, it's, it's…It's crazy out there, Vikki. It's crazy.
Vikki: I hear. I don't get out there much.
Amanda: Well, I'm here to tell you. It's crazy out there.
Vikki: I hear, but like again, you can create your own farm, your own stillness, like wherever your world is in your life, nobody's gonna hand you stillness, by the way. Hey, you know what? Here's some stillness for you. It's like, you have to claim it. You have to create it. You have to discipline yourself. And that discipline is not in a harsh way like discipline. It is in a way of you have to actually decide I'm gonna choose this.
Amanda: Say yes to you. Not all the other things. Say yes to you and go feed yourself. Lift up your heart, fill your soul.
Vikki: Yeah, it changes everything. It changes everything. There's an order. There's a one and a two. That's ancient wisdom, by the way. There was a Mary and a Martha, and Jesus said, Mary was doing the right thing, and Mary was sitting, being fully present, receiving love. And Martha was busy doing dishes and cooking. And Martha said, Jesus, tell her, this is my interpretation.
Amanda: Give it to us.
Vikki: “Jesus tell her to help me. I'm over here cooking and can't you see I'm doing all this…” and Jesus said “Mary has chosen what's best”... so to me He didn't say “the only thing…It's “what's best?” So there's an order… Yes, there's shit to do. We have to eat there’s cooking and cleaning that has to be done…
Amanda: But Mary's tired…Mary's honoring herself
19:13
Vikki: Yeah, I think Mary's longing to be loved. Mary's longing to be…I'm projecting what I think Mary is feeling onto how I feel… but she's really longing to be in the presence of the creator of everything. And He was there, and she chose to be there. And He is here, and we can choose to be here. It's totally up to us. It's all up for your own interpretation. That's just my childlike way. There's an order, a one and a two. There is a best and there's a better. When you choose one, it changes who you bring to two, which changes everything, but you have to choose it.
Amanda: And you have to get still, right?
Vikki: Yes. But only if you want to…you don't have to. But if you choose to, I can absolutely promise you, it'll change your world.
Amanda: All right, I think that's a wrap on this one.
Vikki: Woo!
Amanda: Woo, that was big, that was big, good job.
