The Art of ‘Floating’

Over the last few months I have been traveling and working away from home and while I had a great time and met many fascinating people, it was also wonderful when I finally returned to ‘my’ island and my own bed. I felt ready for a break. I was ready to ‘float’.

Floating is my alias for ‘going with the flow’, for letting go of wanting to control everything and for following my heart, my intuition, for responding to the NOW. Floating is fascinating because you never know how you will get where you want to go.

Floating is an Art that draws on 3 basic principles:

• Approaching ones vision for life or any particular goal by not getting attached to the outcome.
• Declaring ones intention and then letting go of wanting to control things
• Dealing with the demands of each moment without making a fuss; then moving on without taking credit or beating oneself up.

The secret is that when you do not have any limiting expectations you will find more joy in everything you do.

There are no disappointments in floating, only SURPRISES.

Let me I share with you the following short story, which I feel clearly captures the essence of this 'Art'.

It was a bank holiday on the island and all the shops were closed when we suddenly realized that we had no bread. We decided to go on a bread hunt and to ask some of the local tavernas and neighbors if we could borrow some - but nobody had bread to share.

After an hour of getting more and more obsessed with bread and frustrated that we couldn’t find any we decided to give up and go for a floating walk. So we gave up our search for bread and decided to go wherever our legs would take us, to follow our body’s intuition.

Try it and you will see that it takes some getting used to.

The mind likes to be in control and will make numerous attempts to take over and inject some logic into your movements. The key to truly float lies in surrendering to the moment, in trusting your intuition and that you can handle whatever comes your way and in having faith that there is a purpose in everything. Believe me - it works.

For some weeks I had been looking to find a bakery or someone who was producing whole grain, brown bread like back home (Germany). I had no luck; the only bread I could find was the fluffy white stuff – all calories and little nourishment.

Now on our floating walk across the island our bodies took us through streets we had never walked before and into areas we didn’t know. We were having a ball and at the same time, no idea of how or where we were going to go next. But this was ok; we were having fun. And then after about 40 minutes we suddenly saw a large sign outside a house – ‘Anastasia’s.’ We were curious and entered through the gateway. And there it was - a private home bakery that produced brown, whole grain bread just like back home. And not only that, we soon realized that Anastasia’s shop was only 5 minutes walk from our own house. . . . . . and she had bread to sell to us that day. We happily bought our loaf and returned back home.’

In short, this is it: The 'Art of Floating' and how it works.

Floating can take you places you have never been before, places the mind can only dream about.

Floating takes the effort out of living and paradoxically takes you where you wanted to go in the first place. Remember, all you need to do is:

• Surrender to the moment, to what is.
• Trust your intuition and your ability to handle things.
• Have faith that there is a purpose in everything.

And soon you will realize that this is also the Art of Living. So have a go and start to float more and struggle less.