On the Verge. Cara Bradley

radio

       Focusing only on finishing the email

       Exercising without listening to music

       Cooking dinner without trying to multitask

      The fact is, if you are breathing, you are experiencing your life. Whether you’re aware of what you’re experiencing is another matter. I want to help you to become aware of and recognize your direct experiences. Start actively paying attention to what you’re experiencing right away. Try it again, right now. Try it several times today. What’s happening in this exact moment? What do you see, smell, or hear? How do you feel? Are you tired or energized? Do you feel dull or awake? Start naming your experiences throughout your day.

      Naming what you’re experiencing gives you breathing space. Pausing to acknowledge sensations interrupts your busy mind and allows you to rest for a moment. Such pauses in the frenzied speed of our everyday lives can be a great relief — like a breath of fresh air.

      They also make you available to experience brief moments of beauty or intensity that you’ve been too distracted to notice. For instance, you may stop at a red light and glance up to notice the sun peeking through the clouds, or you look up from the kitchen sink and catch your daughter dancing by herself in the backyard. Perhaps you take that first bite of a juicy peach and close your eyes to savor its sweetness. I view these brief moments as glimpses of being fully alive.

      Such glimpses are happening all the time, and with practice you’ll start noticing them in every corner of your life. Glimpses are not just feel-good moments. They are like arriving on the threshold between a moment ago and a moment from now. They are your direct experience in this exact moment.

      Glimpses invite you to experience how you’re always awake and fully alive. Like a whisper in your ear, they remind you that you already have everything you need to experience your life fully and that you already know how to show up and shine.

      Your life is too precious to treat it like a spectator sport, so don’t be content to sit courtside watching the game happen in front of you. Why not directly experience your life fully? Let’s explore high-definition, high-voltage living. Let’s directly experience living on the verge.

      Glimpses invite you to experience how you’re always awake and fully alive.

      Are you ready? I hope so.

      Come on, say it out loud with me: “Let me do!”

CHAPTER TWO

       On the Verge

      As a competitive figure skater, I spent hours on a clean patch of ice practicing figure eights. I traced my figures over and over while on one edge of a very thin blade. I recall drinking in the cold damp air on those early mornings before school in the hushed stillness of the quiet rink. I loved every minute of those training sessions, including the precision of the movement, the serenity of silence, and the joy of being alive.

      As a young skater, I became keenly aware of the accuracy required to glide on the edge of a sharp blade. A slight shift in focus or a moment of hesitation would throw my body off just enough to affect the crispness of my edge on the ice. Even a subtle distraction while creating a figure eight could result in the difference between a gold medal and eighth place. There was no room for error. I needed to be fiercely focused as I leaned into the edge of my blade. I needed to be fully engaged. Without knowing it then, I was training my mind to recognize when I was distracted and to show up in the moment again and again. I was training to live on the verge.

      This Moment Is the Verge

      If you’re like most people, your mind is busy, filled with untamed emotions and unruly thoughts. Your attention is often anywhere but right here. You churn out thought after thought as you live in the chaos and clutter of your busy mind.

      Busy mind is a catchall term I use to include anything that pulls you away from showing up right here and now. Your busy mind includes the thoughts, emotions, stories, and perceptions that often mute your experience and trap you into stressing and overthinking your way through life. Too much mental content frays your nerves and keeps you awake at night. Simply put, your busy mind is an overwhelming place to live. The mental junk drains you; the drama and distraction always leave you feeling exhausted.

      Busy mind is a catchall term I use to include anything that pulls you away from showing up right here and now.

      Although thinking is useful, overthinking can be detrimental and even destructive. It increases stress and blocks your capacity to connect with your body and access your natural intelligence. But please don’t fret. Knowing you have a busy mind is the first step. Get to know your busy mind, and you’ll see how too much thinking mutes your experiences.

      When you’re preoccupied by thoughts and emotions, you experience life through the filtered lens of your busy mind. You see life through the haze of emotional disturbance or the tension of mental stress. If you are living from your busy mind, you’re not aware of your body, and if you’re not aware of your body, then you’re missing the full, direct sensory experience of this very moment — forever.

      You are not your busy mind. You are not your thoughts and emotions. When you are settled and stable, you shift beyond your busy mind and directly experience a natural sense of clarity, vitality, and confidence. Beyond your busy mind, you arrive in a space that feels open and vast. You meet life head-on. In this space there are no veils to hide behind and no filters to alter your perspective. Beyond your busy mind, you experience your natural way of being, a state you’ll come to know as clear mind, bright body, and open heart. Beyond your busy mind, you arrive on the verge — where you naturally wake up, show up, and shine.

      Verge Yoga

      A year after my husband returned home from the Amazon, I opened a yoga center in suburban Philadelphia that I appropriately named Verge Yoga. It was born from my insatiable enthusiasm to experience my life fully. I wanted to share my discoveries with as many people as possible by offering them practices and strategies that would enable them to have their own experiences of being awake and fully alive.

      Beyond your busy mind, you experience your natural way of being, a state you’ll come to know as clear mind, bright body, and open heart.

      Verge Yoga’s tagline, “Unblock, Unfold, Unleash,” is an ongoing invitation to do just that, to directly experience being awake and fully alive by shifting beyond your busy mind and showing up in the moment — not just once, but all of the time. For the past twelve years, I’ve been developing a method of synchronizing the mind and body through movement, silence, and stillness that enables students to glimpse their natural state. By slowing down and breathing deeply, students experience high-definition, high-voltage living: they experience themselves beyond their busy mind where they feel clear, energized, and fully alive.

      After thousands of hours of my own investigation and just as many hours teaching, I’m ready to offer you my practices and strategies to synchronize your mind and body so that you can have your own empowering direct experiences. I want to help you live on the verge, not once in a while, but every day. Take a look.

       Verge Practices: Glimpsing Your Natural State

      The Verge Practices are easy-to-use tools to help you get to know your busy mind and shift into the space beyond it, where you glimpse your natural state. During practice, you’ll recognize glimpses, short moments, of your natural state of clarity, vitality, and confidence. The practices include:

      • Notice This Moment: A toolbox of mindfulness exercises to help you recognize your direct experiences in practice and in your daily life; the Primer Practices are all included in this toolbox.

      • Move My Body: A way to synchronize your mind and body through movement and discover how rhythmic movement settles and calms your mind and nervous system.

      • Meet My Mind: A way