It usually happens somewhere around the fourth room. The paintings are still beautiful, the labels still interesting, but nothing goes in any more. Your feet ache, the crowd hums, and you catch yourself walking past a masterpiece the way you'd walk past a bus stop.
It's tempting to think you're bad at museums. You're not. Your senses are simply full.
What Patanjali called pratyahara
Around two thousand years ago, the Yoga Sutras attributed to Patanjali described an eightfold path. Most of us know the postures and the breathing. Fewer know the fifth step, pratyahara: the drawing in of the senses.
The idea is simple. Our senses are always reaching outwards, towards every sound, colour and movement. In pratyahara, you let them come home for a while, the way a tortoise draws its limbs into its shell. Not to shut the world out forever, but so that, when you look again, you can really see.
A museum is the perfect place to try it.
A five-minute practice on a museum bench
- Find a bench, ideally facing one painting you haven't looked at yet. Sit, and put your bag down.
- Close your eyes. Notice the sounds of the room, then let them become one soft background, like rain.
- Feel your feet on the floor, your hands in your lap. Let your attention rest inside your body for ten breaths.
- Notice how your eyes feel behind your eyelids. Let them soften, as if they were sinking slightly back into your head.
- When you're ready, open your eyes and look at only the painting in front of you. Nothing else in the room exists.
- Stay with it for as long as it holds you. Then stand up and leave the room, rather than moving on to the next picture.
A painting worth resting for
If you're ever in the National Gallery in London, Piero della Francesca's Baptism of Christ is a good place to practise. Everything in it is still: the white tree, the clear water, the three angels watching quietly on the left. Even the dove seems to hang in the air without moving.
Piero della Francesca, The Baptism of Christ, probably about 1437–1445. The National Gallery, London
For more museum days that don't wear you out, read how to meditate in a museum and why you shouldn't try to see the whole museum.
A museum that comes to you
"(letters) On Art" brings a letter and a postcard every month, and each season the printed issue of "(meditating) On Art": one painting at a time, at your own pace, with no crowd at all.
Remember to take as much time as you need, and meet me at the next one.
Love, Evi