A friend who just attended EURIX for the first time shared something : “At the end, it’s about intensity.” It stayed with me.
We are used to (I would even say trained) that our attention goes to the big stuff. The hyper energy of the crowd - to see and be seen - impressive shapes, crazy suspensions, excitement of dating and mating, all the drama.
Intensity is not bad. It’s just that it makes it easy to forget ourselves, to override subtle body cues, quiet voices of our bodies, little tensions - before they become big tensions and collapses.
I want to plead for subtlety, for small things, for nuances. Small things are powerful. There is so much richness. And a lot of information for us that we are trained to overlook.
Subtlety brings us to the present moment.
Whatever we notice happening in our bodies, we are right there in the present. When we are in a subtle mode (when you get tied, just think of me saying “subtle mode” :), we begin to attend to what is actually happening now.
Our brains tend to simplify: they recognize patterns and erase details. Do you know the feeling? I kind of was in that backbend, but much of the experience is gone. Only what we attended to will stay ours…
Subtlety is a way of developing depth of feeling.
A sensitization. The opposite of faster - higher - tougher…
In a “subtle mode”, we need less impact to feel more. We get more out of less rope - making the experience more sustainable.
Subtlety is also a pathway to discernment.
When we want to understand whether what we feel is habitual conditioning (fear, performance, etc.) or something closer to our deepest truth, the answer is often to be found in the nuances.
Subtlety is not less. Subtlety is a pathway back to ourselves.