This morning I woke up at 3:30 and could not get back to sleep. My jaw was tense, I felt a general feeling of unease, and so after 30 minutes of tossing and sighing, I just simply got up and started my day. In fact, I’m writing to you now form my meditation spot in an effort to stay focused and clear.
The turning of the seasons naturally hold a lot of change. And recently, all over the world change, movement, and shifting is what’s on the menu. In just one week on the east coast we’ve had an earthquake and a hurricane, and of course we see what’s happening elsewhere around our country and the globe.
This got me thinking about how we soothe ourselves. If we look at children and how they seek soothing through breastfeeding, thumbsucking, pacifiers, temper tantrums (release), we can perhaps reflect on how we choose to (consciously or unconsciously) soothe ourselves. Some are temporary foxes that end up exacerbating our tension and stress, and there are others that really help us leap to the next level. Here are a few that some to mind:
These habits keep us stuck in stress and tension:
- Tuning out and getting lost in Television
- Watching the news
- Drinking, drugs
- Eating comfort foods (childhood foods, sugar, heavy foods for grounding like pasta, meats, cheeses)
- Caffeine and Coffee (also a drug – “America runs on…”)
- Creating drama and arguing with loved ones
- Pavlovian attention to smart phones, email, Facebook (this takes us out of the present moment)
Here are a few habits that while sometimes challenging to start, help to ACTUALLY SOOTHE:
- Meditation
- Yoga, or simple gentle morning/evening stretches
- Deep, belly breathing
- Qi Gong (this is very slow Thai Chi)
- Wandering in nature or for a walk with no particular destination
- Cultivating an herbal tea connoisseurship
- Dancing
- Drinking water (we are approximately 70% water)
- Sitting and watching anything that has life force: birds, trees, wind, people
- New earth comfort foods (dark leafy greens (life force energy), green drinks like Green Magma barley grass powder (my current favorite), E3live (amazing microalgaes), root vegetables for grounding (sweet potatoes, carrots, beets, burdock root)
- Gentle cleansing with foods
- Spending quality time with loved ones
- Making more love (literally – both physically and emotionally)
The concept here is to be in your body, be present in the moment as much as you can. We are really just very tall children who desperately need some free play. There’s this odd thing going on in our culture which takes us not only out of the present moment – into the future or past – but into a virtual world – a playground of the mind (Facebook, email, etc). This keeps us disconnected from our bodies — our first house.
Yes, you read that correctly. This is similar to the concept of Body as Temple, but different in that I hope this metaphor helps you connect more deeply back to your Self. Our first house is our body. We literally inhabit it. And yet we forget how to care for it properly. Or rather, we weren’t given the maintenance manual that many ancients had. We tossed that information out around the time of the industrial revolution.
Here’s the thing, as you come back into your body and remember/ relearn how to listen to what it has to tell you, how to care for it, how to love and appreciate it NOW, you will find that life is completely different. When you know how to soothe yourself in a deep and intuitive way, you will actually become soothed.
I know that when I wake up early with tension and stress that I actually need to spend some time soothing myself. This morning, I understood that something was creating tension, something in my body or mind was overstimulated. I decided to soothe myself. I did some yoga, some meditation and deep breathing, drank my green barley grass, cultivated a state of gratitude for choosing those things, and then this topic came to me. I try to keep my posts short and sweet, but apparently this one needed some space to breathe.
So, the questions I have for you are:
- Where do you need to breathe space into your life?
- Where do you need to breathe? (what is weighing down on you?)
- What is your default soothing mechanism?
- What is one new soothing habit would you like to cultivate?
Email me back or post to the blog, I’d really like to know.
Personally, I am recommitting to meditation. I’d like to show up and sit every morning for 10 minutes or so. I do guided meditations – which are easier for me, they allow me to shut off my brain chatter. I’m a much better person with daily meditation practice, more intuitive, connected, less reactive to stress, in general – more happy.
Off to enjoy my morning tea…
