9 July

People often try to lift themselves from one stair to the next when they’re going up stairs. (‘Climbing’ stairs.) And they drop or fall down from one stair to the next, with a loud thump, when they’re going down stairs. In both cases, they have a weird idea that there’s a separate ‘me’ that has to either lift the rest of me ‘up’, or drop the rest of me ‘down’. We’re a whole body, from head to foot. If you can feel that whole body as you move you’ll find that you don’t need to lift or let drop, each stair is just another support for all of you. It takes no more effort to go up stairs than it takes to go down, if you stop trying to split yourself in two and lift or drop the other half of you.