Technology of Stillness

The Technology of Stillness^sm was created by Robert Petteway and Cynthia Zaal and continues to be innovated by them and their partner, Michael Mead.  It is the result of their personal quests for a spiritual way of being.  The Technology of Stillness is a linear, yet holistic, process to create stillness as the way of being.  The process to stillness is relaxing the body and quieting the mind.  As recognized by ancient wisdom and many traditions, the product of stillness is personal peace and harmony.

The Technology of Stillness is profound in its simplicity.  It springs from the observation that the body systematically responds to the trials and circumstances of life by contracting.  Each trial and disturbance in life is automatically and unconsciously recorded in the body -- and in the personality and way of thinking -- with a programmed response designed to protect us against any similar disturbance.   Each time a new trial emerges, we react based on this patterned response.  Thus our constricted way of being is constantly reinforced over a lifetime.

Rather than experiencing life freshly, moment by moment, life becomes a series of automatic responses, limiting our experience of life.  Ultimately, because the automated responses are all that we know, we begin to confuse them with our true being. 

To live a life of choice and expansion rather than reaction and contraction requires letting go of our patterns and programs.  The easiest and most efficient place to let go is in the body. The body learns quickly, instinctively and once learned, always has a reference.  An example of the efficiency of kinesthetic learning (i.e., through the body) is learning to ride a bicycle.  You may have learned ro ride when you were very young but, even now, years later, it takes you only a few minutes to remember how to do it.  The learning is in the "feel" of it.

We were in a state of letting go when we came into the world. Just observe the nature of babies.We are inexplicably drawn to them--like a magnet. Their bodies and their being have no restriction.  They give us all of themselves without hesitation.  They receive all of us without protection.  Such is the objective of the Technology of Stillness--to remember how to be open like a baby.  We want to function in the world as "babies with car keys."  Babies with car keys are those who live in the flow and expansion of a child with the intelligence, capacity and skill of an adult.

Every process, product and program in the Technology of Stillness teaches the body how to let go. By working through the body instead of the mind, there is nothing to believe nor any processing of the mind.