There is an exhibit here in New York City called Ashes and Snow. It’s a series of photographs and an hour-long film showing animals and people interacting, but in ways most of us haven’t seen before. One photograph, which is also part of the film, shows a young African boy sitting on a high rock, leaning next to a cheetah sitting beside him. In another photograph, this same boy kneels with his forehead on the paws of a resting cheetah. Other photographs involve elephants, whales, birds of prey and other animals sharing space and interacting with both children and adults. One of the most powerful qualities of the exhibit, for me, is the deep quiet expressed by the people involved. In many moments of the film, as in the photographs, the people are completely still as the animals move about or join the stillness. There are also moments of bright movement and graceful, sensual dance, but the stillness, the deep quiet, is what reached out to me. (If you’d like to see some of the images, go to www.ashesandsnow.org.)

Watching the children and adults find such depth of quiet reminded me of how being settled affects our environment – our own, internal state of body-mind being, and that of the people and creatures around us. It also reminded me of how little of this we have in our current culture, where there is always so much to do and rarely a moment of true internal quiet. Whenever I come across it, there is always something compelling about deep stillness, and the ways in which it radiates out into the environment to create an invitation to join it, or to dive into it in the kind of way we take a sudden, deep breath when we are letting go of stress.

Because the focus of so much of my work as a trauma therapist is to help people rediscover how to shift from high states of activation to states of rest, the Ashes and Snow exhibit created a visual representation of the importance and impact of states of ease. The effect of this ease on the animals was evident in the casual ways in which they approached and interacted with both adults and young children.

So many of us sorely lack quiet moments, and have lost touch with the capacity to settle in deeply, unless we follow a regular meditation or other practice. Finding images and other ways to remind ourselves of this important state of mind-body being can become a source of nourishment and renewal, and can help us rediscover the value of seeking moments of quiet, settled stillness each day.

And so, for this week’s experiment, I invite you to explore images, symbols, sounds, and circumstances around you that touch into settled stillness. Notice how you respond to these quiet places in your world, how they affect your internal experience. For some people, finding quiet and settled places is like finding an oasis, like coming home to rest. For others, this kind of stillness and quiet may be uncomfortable, and may create a sense of unease. Whatever your experience, I wonder how it would be to sit with your response and notice what arises, moves through and, then, moves on.

If you find that the quiet reaches out to you in a positive way, notice what happens this week if you create some time each day, at whatever time works best for you, to settle into internal and external stillness. If you are one of those people who finds yourself uncomfortable when you attempt to meditate, or to go inside, notice what happens if you find a photograph, a plant, a place in nature, or any other representation of ease or quiet and allow yourself to spend time looking at it. Without any expectation or demand, notice what emerges in your experience as you do this. If you’re one of those people who needs movement in order to be able to settle, explore what arises if you walk mindfully and slowly through a place in nature or indoors that brings quiet and ease into your awareness.

As with all the experiments, bring curiosity along as your companion. There’s no place to arrive, nothing that has to happen. It’s an open invitation to notice your relationship to deep quiet, to settled stillness in your life and to discover what supports that state of being in you.