Make a Puzzle
{A Written Practice}
Make a Puzzle
Sometimes you need something that will slow you down. Something that will exert a certain drag on your mind, help you shift gears. A puzzle is a marvelous restorative practice when you need something to focus on, something to occupy your attention, when you want to keep your mind somewhat active, hunting for patterns, but you need to slow the body down.
A puzzle is often more enjoyable with a partner. There is a kind of quiet shared concentration that can emerge, punctuated by the tiny victories of finding a piece that fits, which accelerates toward the end, as things come together.
Related Practices:
See Study the Pattern Language of Nature. See Nature Faces. See Balance Rocks. See Partner Drawing Exercise. See knitting, painting, sculpting, pottery, building fire, gardening, cooking, bake. In addition, for exploration of the way that the hands, and specific classes of motor gesture, are deeply intertwined with the Autonomic Nervous System, watch Film One: Turning on the Connection System, and Film Three: The Polyvagal Theory.Photography: Stein Egil Liland | Licensed from Pexels.com, used with permission.