There are many different wisdom traditions that talk about winter and the New Year. Some honor the changing of the sun and the bringing of light with the Winter Solstice, some are more focused on starting new things and resolutions for the (Gregorian Solar) New Year, while (Indian) Ayurveda says winter is a good time to look inside…
According to Ayurveda, winter is a time of going back to the foundation, back to the roots and the trunk and the bare branches. Of noticing what is here, what is supportive and what is weighting us down.
It’s a time to get quiet and notice what you’ve cultivated over the past year… What of that do you want to keep and nourish? What of that do you want to prune away?
So if you’re “in,” grab your practice, a cup of warm tea and open into your roots.
Change can be destabilizing and difficult on every level. Our self-care practices, on the other hand, can help us recenter and navigate change with more ease.
What do you do that helps you stay centered or return to center?
And how can you encourage yourself to continue doing this during change? …right when you need it most and possibly when you feel you don’t have time or capacity for it?
Your answers will be unique to you.
For me, (during calm times) I’m making a point to notice how my practice helps me ground into myself, and be clear about what I’m thinking, feeling, etc. My thought is that during chaos I’ll more clearly remember these benefits and how quick and easy it is to do!
I know that you are, but how can YOU know whether that’s true if it isn’t your current experience?
Most modern humans only experience themselves as their mind (including emotions). Anyone telling them they they’re bigger than that just sounds like a crazy person!
Or at best like they are having a really different experience than you are… which isn’t so helpful.
As a Mindfulness Coach, I task myself with explaining the “unexplainable”… helping your mind understand that you are much bigger than it, despite what your mind thinks (and experiences)… and despite it’s limited ability to see anything outside of itself.
It’s a little bit like getting your eyeball to see itself.
Tricky, hey?
I’ve been “thinking” about it for years. ;) Here’re my latest ideas for you to play with.
Begin by getting into position, whatever position works best for your body. This position will become your body-mind’s signal that you are starting a practice. I suggest the following as it uses little muscular energy to stay upright and alert, and allows you to breathe easily :
Sit on a chair (sofa, bed, etc) with your feet flat on the floor.
Rest your hands where ever they are comfortable (neither propping yourself up or pulling yourself forward with your hands).
Feel your sit bones pressing down.
Float the crown of your head up so that it softly lifts your torso.
Tuck your chin in a tiny bit so that the back of your neck is long, making sure it’s also soft.
Soften your jaw.
Close your eyes. Or keep them open, and look down at the floor (or whatever is in front of you) a few feet or meter or so in front of you, keeping your eyes relaxed.
Bring your attention to your breath. Notice how it feels to breathe. (Note that if you always start your meditation practices by focusing on your breath this is also a great way to signal to your body-mind that you’re beginning a practice. Also, at other points during your day, you can focus on 1 or 2 breaths and drop into a calmer, more meditative state.)
Gently shift your attention to what you can hear.
Imagine that you are a rock in the middle of a river. A river of sound.
Notice the whole river of sound as it floats by. Don’t focus on a particular sound, rather soften your hearing and listen to all of the sounds. Listen to the whole river of sound as it flows by.
Keep most of your attention here as much as possible. Let everything else float by in the background. Let thoughts, emotions and physical sensations flow through like an undercurrent.
When your attention has become absorbed in your thoughts (emotions or sensations) to the point that you are no longer noticing the sounds, simply let the thoughts go, and gently and kindly bring your attention back to the river and start a fresh. You can have an infinite number of fresh starts, so you can relax about that.
End the practice when you feel ready or when your timer rings by bringing your attention back to your breath for a few breaths and then gently opening your eyes.
To Download:
Click on the Download button below. If it does not download automatically:
A new window will open with an audio player (like the player above).
Right click on the player and choose “Download File” or “Download Video”
iPhone users will want to first copy the meditation into iTunes (on your computer) and then sync with your iPhone.
Note that you are welcome to download and share this file as many times as you like provided you do so in it’s entirety and used it for personal or educational uses only (no commercial uses).
When we’re creating a new habit, it’s usually easy at first. We’re excited to be doing something new and good for ourselves!
And then the honeymoon wears off and we slide back into our old habits. Have we failed?
No! We just need to keep going and realize that changing habits takes time. You formed your old habits because they were helpful and now they are, well, habits! They’re really easy to do. You do them with out thinking, on automatic! That’s really easy!
And now, you’re changing to something new that you have to think about. That’s much more challenging.
As change coach and professional mentor, Robin Rice, says, this is why we need to make our new habits as simple and easy as possible!
And go slow. We need to give ourselves the time and space to change. Habits take time to form… we have to create new pathways in our brain, and change the old ones. That takes time, so allow yourself the time to do that.
And go small. Rice also points out that small changes are much easier to make and we’re more likely to succeed. Changes that are too big require too much time, space, attention and brain power and thus they usually don’t work!
It doesn’t have to be! You have all the tools you need already to expand your horizons infinitely.
If we spend our time only using our mind to perceive reality, we miss out on a lot of what’s going on. We miss out on all of the things that our mind simply doesn’t pick up on.
Same if we’re only relying on our body/gut/intuition/instinct (however you think of that kind of perception). Or only navigating using our emotional intelligence.
We’re limiting our reality down to just one kind of perception: mental, or physical, or emotional, etc. It’s like only seeing one color when there’s a whole rainbow of variety out there.
This is quite simple to change… start paying attention to the other ways you have of perceiving. Get used to blending together your different modes of perception and you’ll get a much better picture of what’s going on around (and in) you. You’ll get the whole rainbow of reality.
Add in one at a time (add body to your mind or vice versa), get used to the new blend, then add another… and notice how your reality gets richer and richer, more and more colorful.
This is especially helpful if you’re ever feeling stuck, lost, etc.
As you add in other ways to perceiving, you will see how to get un-stuck, etc. Even better you’ll notice that you weren’t actually stuck or lost at all… you just weren’t “seeing” what else is here.
This is incredibly helpful with depression and anxiety. With a richer pallet, we begin to see how to evolve out of these as well.
The best news is that you have all of these modes of perception already! All you need to do is pay more attention to them so that your picture of reality includes all of the colorful parts available to you.
Begin by getting into position, whatever position works best for your body. This position will become your body-mind’s signal that you are starting a practice. I suggest the following as it uses little muscular energy to stay upright and alert, and allows you to breathe easily :
Sit on a chair (sofa, bed, etc) with your feet flat on the floor.
Rest your hands where ever they are comfortable (neither propping yourself up or pulling yourself forward with your hands).
Feel your sit bones pressing down.
Float the crown of your head up so that it softly lifts your torso.
Tuck your chin in a tiny bit so that the back of your neck is long, making sure it’s also soft.
Soften your jaw.
Close your eyes. Or keep them open, and look down at the floor (or whatever is in front of you) a few feet or meter or so in front of you, keeping your eyes relaxed.
Bring your attention to your breath. Notice how it feels to breathe.
Gently shift your attention to what you can hear.
Imagine that you are a rock in the middle of a river. A river of sound.
Notice the whole river of sound as it floats by. Don’t focus on a particular sound, rather soften your hearing and listen to all of the sounds. Listen to the whole river of sound as it flows by.
Keep most of your attention here as much as possible. Let everything else float by in the background. Let thoughts, emotions and physical sensations flow through like an undercurrent.
When your attention has become absorbed in your thoughts (emotions or sensations) to the point that you are no longer noticing the sounds, simply let the thoughts go, and gently and kindly bring your attention back to the river and start a fresh. You can have an infinite number of fresh starts, so you can relax about that.
End the practice when you feel ready or when your timer rings by bringing your attention back to your breath for a few breaths and then gently opening your eyes.
To Download:
Click on the Download button below. If it does not download automatically:
A new window will open with an audio player (like the player above).
Right click on the player and choose “Download File” or “Download Video”
iPhone users will want to first copy the meditation into iTunes (on your computer) and then sync with your iPhone.
Note that you are welcome to download and share this file as many times as you like provided you do so in it’s entirety and used it for personal or educational uses only (no commercial uses).
Ever felt a bit lost or lonely or depressed? (Ah, welcome to humanity circa… modern times.)
What about those times when you go into a spiral of lost, lonely or depressed that you can’t seem to get out of? Yuck!
That happened to me a few weeks ago, and I want to share with you how I got out of it!
❖ Ruminating ❖
First, I used to live this way most of the time. For me, I would get lost in my head, thinking about things, disconnected from any other intelligent part of me that could offer perspective, like my gut instinct or my emotional intelligence.
I’d start thinking about things like, “Why did he say that to me? Why did that happen? How can I defend what I did in response? How am I right in this situation? How is he wrong?”
I’d play the scene over and over in my head.
Sound familiar? Most of us do this type of thing. (Yay, us.)
It’s call ruminating in meditation circles, as in chewing over the same ideas over and over again…
Recently, I totally went into this heady downward spiral about reality… “What is reality? Is there any such thing as objective truth? How can I ever know?” It was a depressing mess that lasted about two weeks. Icky.
❖ Head, Body/Instinct, Emotional Intelligence ❖
Some people get lost in their heads, others in their bodies, others in their emotions. The point isn’t so much which intelligence center you choose, the problem is more that you’re getting stuck in it!
One way out is to remember that you have more than one way to “think” about or relate to things.
❖ Solution: Get Perspective ❖
One solution?
If you get stuck in your head, drop down into your body and see how you feel about it. Check out your emotions and see what your emotional intelligence has to say. Where ever you’re stuck, jump to somewhere else. Stuck in your body/instinctual reactions? Check out what your head thinks about it.
All of these parts are intelligent and accessing different ones of them can help you get out of being stuck in any one part! It’s not that the other parts will have the answers, it’s more that you’ll gain a broader perspective, which reminds you not to get stuck in the “knowing” of any one center.
Make sense? It’s kind of like asking for different opinions to broaden your thinking on a subject… suddenly the world gets bigger, the way seems clear and less depressing.
❖ Solution: Self-Care ❖
Another way out of ruminating is to focus on taking care of your body. We often stop taking good care of ourselves when we get stuck, so make sure you’re exercising, eating and sleeping well.
❖ Talk to People Different Than You (Social Perspective) ❖
Also, you could go and actually talk to other people, especially people who process information differently than you. If you’re heady, go talk to an instinctual or emotion based person. You don’t need to share your issues, more just get different perspectives on things. That can pop you out, too.
All of this is pretty simple and won’t pop you out of major depression. They are great tools for your everyday sorts of nastiness.
❖ Solution: Meditation (Personal Perspective) ❖
For me I needed to start practicing meditation again. I had stopped, as often happens in these cases, I had dropped my healthy habits. As soon as I sat down to practice and accessed my deeper wisdom, BOOM! I was out! Two weeks of nasty blues ended in 3 seconds. Amazing.
Do whatever it takes to get perspective. The healthy stuff, of course. And see what happens. Go ahead. Surprise yourself.
Do you have a friend that you can be honest with? That you feel safe enough with that you can give and receive truth from, even when it’s not so comfortable?
Most relationships are more surface, which is usually a good thing.
Most of us aren’t equipped to hear what everyone really thinks, and most of us think so many goofy things, that it’s not great to be sharing all that silliness anyway. Certainly my inner critic does not need to be given free rein to speak her mind to everyone all the time!
Still, it’s good to have a friend that you respect deeply and can be honest with.
Why? Two good reasons that I can think of:
Sometimes you just need to talk to someone about what’s really going on with you. Sometimes the act of verbalizing helps you recognize what’s happening. If you talk to a surface level friend, you’re not going to be so comfortable sharing your deeper thoughts and feelings, and this sharing won’t be so helpful.
Sometimes it can be really helpful to share with someone who can give you honest feedback about what they see in you. “Hey, Elena, I think you’re missing something here. This might be heard to hear, but have you thought about it like this?”
This can be life saving! I recently went through two weeks of internal craziness, getting lost in my wacky brain. When I finally got around to meditating, I felt much better, and then hours later talking to friends helped me clarify what had happened. Listening to myself be totally honest with them about my experience helped me understand what I had done… and how to recognize if it started happening again.
Journaling is another great way to do this. Journaling helps you get clear about what you think and feel. The added bonus with friends is that they can talk back to you. “Yep, Elena, that sounds like you. I think you’re right on target. Something else that might help…”
Priceless. Honest friendships are like gold. Wonderful resources. Great places to give and get wisdom, joy, honesty, perspective, reflection, etc.
If you don’t have a friendship like this at the moment, it can be helpful to feel into who in your current circle of friends you feel the most comfortable being honest with. Which relationship could shift out of just “being nice” and into deeper territory. There’s likely someone there, the relationship will just take some investment on your part to deepen.
I can definitely say that I wasn’t when I started meditating! I was all over the place, and as I started to be self-aware enough to see the patterns I was running in my life, I realized that 1.) it was going to take a while to sort out my anger issues! and 2.) it was possible!
Self-awareness starts with training our attention.
First, what we start with in many kinds of meditation is training our attention, which 99% of us have totally lost control over.
How many times have you wandered off mentally during a conversation, maybe thinking about an email you didn’t send, only to come back and realize that you just missed everything they were saying?
Yeah. You are not alone, my friend.
Focusing our attention is key to being self-aware. At least it’s key to being self-aware for any appreciable length of time…
Self-awareness is simply being aware of yourself in time and space. This is a natural act or state that we’re all able to do, we just aren’t able to do it for very long and most of us don’t even realize its importance!
Self-awareness is easier to experience than explain.
Do this: First, notice your body: your feet pressing into the floor, your bum on your seat. Second, now that you’re aware of your body, take a look around and notice where you are… check out the space you’re in. Are you in London? Paris? New York? Delhi? At home? On the train? In a field?
Voila, you’ve just become self-aware. You can also call this being present to or mindful of yourself.
Pretty simple, right? Self-awareness is simply noticing yourself, your body in space. And can include noticing your thoughts, emotions, sensations and surrounds.
The Value of Self-Awareness
Where this gets interesting is that this is a type of meta-consciousness. “Meta” meaning bigger or larger and “consciousness” meaning thinking state or perspective.
We can see ourselves. We can see ourselves thinking, emoting, sensing, acting, reacting, etc.
Instead of just being down in our thoughts and emotions, we actually have a larger (meta) perspective on them. It’s the difference between being in a forest or being in a forest with a map. If I’m in the forest, I’m down here with the bushes and flowers, which is pretty great. If I also have a map I have a bird’s eye view as well… a bigger perspective on what’s happening. I can see the paths that led me here, and where I am in the larger landscape of my life and experiences.
As soon as I can see myself more clearly, I can make better choices. That’s the gold of self-awareness. Now, instead of just being lost in thought when that person is talking to me, I can see myself starting to drift off and decide, “Hey! No! I want to pay attention to what this person is saying to me!” or say, “Hey! You just reminded me that I haven’t sent you that email! Let me make a note of that, and I’ll send it to you when we finish this conversation.”
Or, you could decide to stop yelling at your lover/child/friend, because, really, you aren’t mad at them, you’re frustrated about work – and that’s where this anger needs to be utilized for change – not ruining your personal life!
The first thing that I noticed was that I stopped getting mad at waitresses in Thailand who kept bringing me the wrong order! “I don’t want that! What do you mean I have to pay for it anyway?!!” Instead of just getting angry at them, I began to see that the issue here was my terrible Thai, and what this situation really needed was Thai lessons! What a relief that was! I ate better, too. :)
It helps me in ALL of my relationships, especially my relationship with myself. I started all of this because I was so angry all of the time and had no idea why! Over the years I began to see that I had many habits that lead to anger like blaming others, being passive-aggressive (not being able to say what I wanted or needed until I things got so bad I exploded), etc.
I still get angry, I’m just better at using it properly.
And this is why self-awareness is so useful. It makes our lives better! We make better decisions. Everyone wins, our friends, our partners and children… even our waitresses.
