Let me just start by saying I have never liked hills. I always dreaded the pain in my body, the struggle to reach the top, the exhaustion that soon followed. I never understood why people would choose to put their body through such pain… for what? To ‘conquer’ a hill? To feel like they had achieved something? To feel they could make their body do ‘incredible feats’? It all seemed such a push and drive, with a lot of pain, without much to truly gain at the end of it, except perhaps the initial high of achievement and an inflated sense of self to make up for a deep-seated lack of self-worth that is not being addressed. Climbing hills seemed to me to be clearly about ‘proving’ something.
Come many years later and I have moved to a road that has an incredibly steep, long hill. I do have the option to walk a flat road one way if I so choose.
I had been pre-warned by a neighbour to take it slow and start by only doing half to begin with. So one day I stood at the top of the hill with a view that takes your breath away, and taking the advice from my neighbour, I started my half way descent.
I knew from past hill experience that if I went into drive I would be exhausted and out of breath, so I made a conscious effort to stay with my body and feel each step. I took in the view with every breath and with every breath felt the expansion within as I opened up to feeling my connection with my environment, the world around and within me – the undeniable Oneness with God felt in every cell of my body.
In connection, one cannot help but feel every breath and part of the body as it moves.
I came to a halfway point I had noted at the beginning and turned around. Now this part would usually be my most dreaded part, but not today in this solid connection I had built with my every step on my descent. I started on my way back up, still very connected and expanded, feeling my every move. I noticed that if I stepped away from this connection and my mind would wander to some mental issue, the walk felt hard on my legs, I would lose the consistency of my step and it would become unpleasant. Bringing back the connection, my breath became steady, my body expanded, I felt the immensity that I am – not just the physical body that is walking – and I kept moving with ease.
I have now managed to walk the full length of this hill many times and every time my enjoyment increases.
I began to see how life is the same process as this hill. When we are connected within to the light of our Soul/God/the Universe, we are expanded. We feel the delicateness of our bodies; we take note of our movement. In fact, we love our movement for we are moving in tune with a far greater rhythm and not against it.
I often appreciate how this is what making love truly is. It is in our every move in synergy with the whole that we are a part of. When we are present with this movement nothing is hard, a push, or done in drive. Life becomes about movement, joy and making love. We don’t get tired, for it’s impossible to get tired from love; it’s the ultimate health pill that supports every inch of our being.
This hill has given me an incredible marker for how I can live my everyday if I make my everyday about consistency, connection and God, and wow – what an incredible life is on offer if one chooses to love hills!
By Kim Weston, NSW, a forever student of The Livingness
Further Reading:
Exercise – it doesn’t need to be hard work
Enjoying my Gentle Exercise Programme
Self-worth and self-development – does it work?
624 Comments
Landscape is something that can very easily remind us what we are here to do… that is, to not be here.
So gorgeous what you have shared Kim, I love this line ‘it’s impossible to get tired from love; it’s the ultimate health pill that supports every inch of our being.’ this is one pill that changes every part of our lives with its health giving qualities, with no nasty side effects.
A pill that comes from the inside, and not something taken from the outside to fix or make us better.
I have never liked hills even when I was young, fit and very energetic. These days I appreciate the difference though in struggling in life versus gently moving my body to keep my body vital for what is needed in life to do.
I love this blog as it is a good marker for when I walk up hills. When I am pushing/straining, I remember this blog and I connect back to myself and be super present and it is much easier!
A fellow hill walker I appreciate the connection to each breath that leaves you feeling the connection to the body and not the plight of getting up to the top of the hill. The view at the top offers the confirmation of stay in tune with the body!
Recently I have really started to enjoy walking up the stairs to our flats. Our flat is on the third floor and I usually always take the lift but lately once a day I am enjoying the time I have with me to connect with me as I walk up the stairs.
I have to say that I also appreciate stairs! I used to teach in a very large school campus, so much of the day I would be walking through the grounds and up and downs stairs for much of the day and it felt great for my body. When I transferred to a tiny village school that was all on one level I soon realised that I dropped a level of fitness. I was quite shocked to feel how out of condition I was when having to climb 2 flights of stairs recently… so I say bring on the stairs and hills!
It is amazing to see how there can be such a gentle and considered approach to something so big and challenging as a huge hill. And how this challenge is actually something that has helped you to grow and to understand yourself more.
Nature has a tremendous amount to offer Humanity at the moment. We should stop and listen.
I totally took this blog away with me when I went to LA recently – which has many hills. Each morning my husband and I would walk up a very steep hill – and it was fascinating to see how my body was each time and the changes that were taking place based on how I was living.
We may use the hills to re-energise, to return or to retune the body, but anyway we are reviving ourselves in nature. What if we could go to nature for the reflection that we are so much greater than it when we are in our essence and reflect our beauty to it?
It also shows how every time we have something we don’t like to do in life, it can totally change when we change how we are in life. I have already many times experienced this – that the way I am defines how I experience life.
What a difference between moving while thinking and moving while remaining connected to the body. If we stay with the body we can experience much energy and joy. If we go into the mind our body gets heavier and our lives get harder.
The consistency and surrendering to the rhythm of life is something I am learning to accept is there and available to all. True movements rather than old relied upon movements that are in opposition to the energy of love.
What a beautiful example of how in connection we experience our natural way of joy and enjoyment.
Most of my life I have lived on hills, and every day has had a different feel to it with how I have walked down and up them. They can seem insurmountable at times and exhausting and yet at others like they don’t exist at all and it is easeful and a joy to walk them. I know now that it depends entirely on whether I stay connected with myself and in full awareness of my body and surroundings and not off in my head somewhere else, worrying or creating issues.
I love that feeling of being 1 million % at one with the movements of one’s body, the smoothness, warmth, flow and lack of distraction. The hill is a blessing for you, and also wonderful you have both the flat and the hill to choose from, to suit what is needed at any particualr time.
What a lovely metaphor, your walking the hill with daily life. It is indeed all about conection and keep on chosing this, especially when we drift into thoughts. For me it is a constant practice. It already starts in the morning with how I wake up. If I go into thought, it feels like my getting up starts with heaviness. But when I connect with my body and breath and do light exercises to deepen this, I get up with lightness and a big smile.
So the hill was presented to you to stimulate your evolution. I do the same in the gym, as Holland does not have any (well almost any) hills at all. And in the end we don’t need any hills, to walk and live this way.
Sometimes it seems we create hills where none exist, to stress ourselves out. Perhaps if we followed your lead Kim and disregarded drive we would find an equal beauty between flats and any incline.
It is staggering to feel how different moving your body from your mind and from your heart are from each other. One is invigorating and fulfilling. Whilst the other is driven and merely about function.
To be in rhythm with our bodies and or surroundings feeling each step we make and in doing so the joy there can be when we walk no matter where is magic.
I love the simplicity and frankness of this blog. It offers a simple change that can be felt throughout the day in a myriad of ways.
These changes are what offer us a deeper understanding of where and what we can connect to.
I love noticing how the angles of nature’s sturctures can have such a profound effect on an area.
We can sometimes feel more clarity in the body when walking up hills. Does our breathing change as a hill inclines, is there a hardness felt in the body as we step forwards, is there a push from the shoulders and arms? As I walked up some hills last weekend, I felt all those things, and it was a delight to let them go.
That sort of exertion does highlight where we are a bit tight, holding onto things… and its through the movement that they clear and we are left more often than not in deep connection with ourselves again.
Very gorgeous and wisely shared Kim. It is one thing for sure, that we can never tire from being moved by love, as it is in fact everything that truly sustains and evolves us so that our true potential is realised and lived.
and we can and do get utterly wiped out by being constantly moved by what is not love.
Sometimes dealing with hardships in life, or better said, seemingly hardships, can bring on the best in people.
Absolutely Willem, if the path out of hardship is the path of love.
This photograph really caught my eye today as it reminded me of my walk this morning with the sun bursting through the trees, only these trees had bright fresh young leaves on them and the warmth was very welcome after some very showery weather. my walk has a steep hill in it and it often surprises me how differently I can feel about that from day today, like today when I hardly noticed the hill at all.
I love re-reading this blog when I have a bit of a task a head of me. Like today I have basically two days work to fit in today and the weather has turned really bad. So I basically have two choices. Totally check out, grit my teeth and get on with it, or stay totally present and focussed on the day as much as possible and treat it the same as your hill.
Well said Kev, it comes back to our choices of how we chose to move up the hill. In resistance or with support.
‘it’s impossible to get tired from love; it’s the ultimate health pill that supports every inch of our being.’ I love this, it is so true. Whenever we feel out of sorts we know we are out of love and it’s time to reconnect.
Wow it’s really amazing how much vitality we have when we are fully present. It makes sense that when we’re off wondering in our heads, it takes energy away from what we are doing so we get tired.
Universal Medicine has helped me to understand that before the word love is spoken or written, there is an alignment to an energetic source that each person makes. And so it is the source which actually determines the quality of that love being expressed. Which for me, explains how love can become bastardised, abused, and used to manipulate. Because true love and the kind of emotional love that keeps you feeling empty and needy are two very different expressions of the same word, showing that they have completely different sources of energy behind them. So it becomes clear with this understanding that to say that you love, is to show your alignment not by the word but by every other movement that you make, by every movement that surrounds that word, and that is how we all know what you are actually really saying.
I love talking about God who is in the hill’s and inside of me. Thank you God for being you and thank you for Serge Benhayon, who’s inspiration transformed my life.
The hills represent a great analogy for life because they magnify everything. If we fight the hill we need to use a big force that blocks the flow and beauty of the Universe.
I too love hills, I lived at the top of one for much of my life and I never tired of the magnificence of the view that I had every time I left the mountain. The feeling of presence and connection was always there, in that moment the view was first seen. You could not help but connect, as it asked you to embrace it. It is super amazing how this all works, as to embrace the beauty that I could see, I also had to embrace myself. An awareness that I was not aware of for much of my life, but aware or not, it was still happening.
Such a way of living is at our fingertips, literally. We can all feel that synergy when we stop and take in the beauty that is nature. But what is shared here is beyond the simple feeling, it is offering that these moments become our normal and we expand to be equal with nature and all that holds it.
When we see life as a constant opportunity to connect and go deeper with God, every part of the day is like jewel just waiting for us to shine it up. Whether we succeed or not is not the point but the commitment to this relationship and ‘going there’ is what makes our lives deep.
I love hills because right now I love feeling my body as I walk, I love seeing the beauty of nature all around me, it inspires me.
“In connection, one cannot help but feel every breath and part of the body as it moves” – yes, because in connection we are (at) one.
I do enjoy observing nature’s landscapes as they remind me there’s a simple beauty in life of just being and not playing a particular role.