From the category archives:

sleep

How do we Soothe Ourselves?

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…

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7 Tips to Getting a Restful Night Sleep

The bedroom. It’s the place you go to recharge, unwind, and indulge in the sensual. Think of your bedroom as a sacred space. Look around with an unbiased eye and take note of what’s happening in your bedroom. Is it cluttered? Are there pictures or knick-knacks that drain your energy? Do you feel inspired and restful?

Sleep is critical for our physical, mental and emotional health. It is our time to unplug, recharge, detox, and quite literally, rest.

Without quality sleep, we experience greater emotional stress, susceptibility to illness, premature ageing and wrinkles, and anxiety.

Here are 7 tips on enhancing your beauty and health through sleep.

1. Remove the cell phone from your room. If you’re using it as an alarm clock, do yourself a favor and purchase a real one. Cell phones are always sending out and receiving a signal and this is highly disruptive to sleep.

2. Choose an alarm clock with red or orange light, not blue or green. Or go old school. The spectrum of red or orange light is much more soothing to our bodies. If you want to drop 100 or so bucks on a super-duper zen battery operated chime clock, check these out.

3. Sleep in the dark. Our bodies are programmed to sleep in the dark and wake with the light. Have you ever gone camping? Once the sun goes down, sleeping happens much sooner.

Buy black out curtains or simply hang extra fabric to seal out the light. Studies have shown that light while sleeping can affect ovulation.

4. Keep electronics away from your head. Electromagnetic fields (EMFs)  disrupt our health and can trigger anxiety, restlessness, and prevent sound sleep. This includes alarm clocks (you can put this across the room or in the hallway), lamps, really anything plugged in to the wall. If you like to read at night, unplug the lamp before you settle to sleep. Some people even like to flip the circuit breaker.

5. Remove TVs, computers, stereos (does anyone use these anymore?) and other unnecessary gadgetry from your bedroom. Studies have shown that once you turn off the TV it continues to radiate for 8 hrs. Not so good if you’re trying to rest and repair.

6. If you suffer from insomnia, eliminate caffeine. Even a small cup of coffee at 8am could affect someone who is extra sensitive and prone to insomnia.

7. Create a nighttime ritual only 3- 10 minutes will do the trick. A hot salt bath (or if your feet are hot, a cool foot bath with peppermint soap), slow yoga to meditative music, 10 deep belly breathes, a foot rub. All of these bring your energy inward, calm the nervous system and prepare the body for sleep.

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