Going Out to Go In: Nature’s Healing Power

Windswept

 

Our son gave me a journal earlier this year, for Mother’s Day. In it, he had copied a quote from a book I brought him back from Portland’s Hoyt Arboretum.

 

“I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out til sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in”—-John Muir

 

Where do you go when you want to refresh? How does this reset, recharge impact your day?

Six Ideas On New Spaces With Familiar Places

Yoga in the Park
Yoga in the Park

When you want to shift a familiar practice or discipline into a deeper or somehow refreshed experience, simplicity can be a friend. For example, if you like yoga, have you taken your mat outside? Mats are adaptable just like choices. We can wipe them off, wash them, spritz them, learn from them.

Our regular habits may serve us well and be of great value to overall well-being. Even in the midst of established habits, we may begin to notice that enlivening the practice or discipline feels important.

Here are some simple ways I’ve found helpful in this rejuvenation process that may provide an element of jaw-dropping effectiveness.

  1. Consider your established habit. What is that one foundational thing that you might be a little bored with or seems a bit stale? What do you know about you and this habit? Write this down.
  2. What would it be like to take your practice to a new location? If journaling or writing is important to you, go to a public place, sit down and write. Seasoned author Natalie Goldman of Writing Down The Bones suggests this and other strategies for combining accessible, mindful ways to write.
  3. Ask a friend or someone you’d like to know better to practice this established habit with you. Perhaps a walk in the park, neighborhood, during lunch? Inside your office building for 15 minutes? Would you enjoy writing or journaling with another? How about asking a friend to a public yoga event? Give yourself permission to get creative. Being in community with others is life sustaining. Be bold! Just ask.
  4. What if you practiced the same habit a different time of day? If you meditate, what would the benefit be of practicing before bed instead of morning? Or, at lunchtime to pause and refresh? What if you made yourself more comfortable while meditating, such as sitting on a pillow?
  5. What do you notice about the season of year and this habit? Each season brings new opportunities, schedules, people, and themes. Some of us may feel more energized in autumn, for example, and want to surge into new areas, while others want to more firmly establish roots in an area they have wandered away from in the summer months. Cultivate ways to pause and notice your emotional and physical landscape.
  6. What are your needs in the areas of rest and rejuvenation? If restoration seems what the body needs that day, how about reclining on your back for 5 minutes while putting your legs up the wall rather than a more vigorous yoga practice? Often, the only thing that keeps us from being flexible with our established habits is beliefs about “what counts”. In other words, why wouldn’t it “count” as yoga to lie down with feet up the wall? Who is evaluating this, anyway?

It’s amazing sometimes how we can get out of the rut back into a new groove by staying with the familiar in a new way. So mix things up, get curious, experiment, invite others. See what tiny shifts build memories and motivation, create community, positive emotions, inspire you to learn, and develop new structures that support you.

 

 

Two Ways to Rest The Mind

valley of the mind
valley of the mind

 

Way #1:

When’s the last time you got outside for a hike around your every day habitat? Even if you walk for 5-10 minutes, you reap benefits and create space for yourself. Especially when overwhelmed with to dos, or thinking through a problem. Here are some measurements behind that. In fact, research suggests that shorter, more frequent walks bring more benefits than long treks. Walking provides healthy habit building, exercise, stress reduction, lowers blood pressure, creates a state of flow and ease to the day. There’s only so much we can ponder things. Our minds need a break, a rest, the natural world to gaze upon. So what if you can’t go on a 5 mile hike in the mountains today? Why not just go out your door, or to a nearby park? How about taking 10 minutes during lunch to get outside? Even if it’s in your work parking lot, you will benefit.

savasana
savasana

Way #2

When you return from a 5 or 10 minute walk, lie down on the carpet or a mat for 2-5 minutes. Or, you can lie down outside. If you have an office chair, sit comfortably there with the spine straight and belly relaxed. Get comfortable. If you really need to rest, just do it without the walk. If you lie down, try resting on the back, with a rolled blanket under the knees to support the lower back. Bring breath into the belly, soften the muscles of the face, jaw, and tongue. Place your palms up. Close your eyes. Endeavor to stay awake and focus on the movement of breath. Count the breath if you like. This helps give the mind a focus. Breathe in for 2, out for 4. This is 2:1 breath, and deeply relaxing for the parasympathetic nervous system, the calming system of the body.

So, 10-15 minutes later, how do you feel? What do you notice about the body and breath? What do you notice about the problem you faced? What’s changed? What new perspective seems available?

Let The Summer Begin

Rose of Estelle May Scarborough
Rt. 2 Rose

Summer Tool Kit

Here are some tried and true practices to help you move forward, pause, refresh, learn. Some things are kind of old-fashioned too, just like this very old rose of my grandmother’s, dug up at least twice and moved from a beloved mountain paddock to a new Central Virginia home.

  • Check In. What’s your internal weather report?  Notice and practice your breathing. Notice how your body feels during day, where you hold stress. Breathe into those areas. What are your heart and gut saying? We make healthier, more informed choices when we are aware of our thoughts, feelings, and body signals. Use this as a centering practice during calm. Your body will remember because you strengthen these neural pathways just like muscle.
  • Walk. Move the body. Get outside early in the morning. Listen to the sounds, observe the breath. Commit to giving yourself 5 minutes. Read about walking meditation.
  • Do a 180. Seek a compassionate view of yourself. Notice internal dialogue. What you say to yourself about what you can and cannot do, who you are or are not– matters. Challenge those beliefs. Focus on meaning, not the story. Learn a new, fun skill that has nothing directly to do with an area of challenge. Laugh. Dance in your room with your headphones on.
  • Write. Focus on areas of life you feel competent inIdentify your strengths, your gifts. Write them down. Be specific. Ask someone you trust and care about to name 3 strengths they see in you. Experiment with journaling in new enviroments, such as a coffee shop or outdoors. Find a journal buddy to write with, kind of like parallel play young children engage in—no need to share, just be beside someone.

 

 

Mornin’ Rituals

MORNING MIST copy

 

When one wakes up, rituals can establish a rhythm to the day. Some are early morning risers, others may rise much later, as I well remember when working night shifts in the hospital a good while back. (I must admit I had a challenging time figuring out what and when to eat.) The important consideration here is consciousness of what you bring into waking up. What are you waking up to?

I’m not suggesting there’s a right or wrong way to awaken, rather, to become aware of what is present. For example, do you watch the morning news, check your social media status, or do you allow yourself a minute of noticing your feet as they carry you to the bathroom? I remember when our children were wee ones that it seemed I bounded out of bed and was somehow carried miraculously to their crib, in spite of being incredibly sleep deprived. I realize that there are times in life when a minute of conscious breathing or noticing seems like an eternity.

What do you drink in the morning? A cup of water? Tea or coffee? Smoothie? How does that refresh you, bring you into the day? What mug or cup do you drink in?

What chair do you sit in? What do you see out your window? What do you read? Who do you greet upon awakening? How do you greet them?

You probably notice flux during the year in your morning routine. In the wintertime, I get up and sit in a favorite worn chair and watch the daylight come. I tend to write more in my journal then. In the summer, I keep my eyes open and may sit on the porch and watch the birds and insects, listening to the outdoor sounds.

What’s your spiritual or prayer life? How do you incorporate that into your day?

Some of you get up really early and walk, run, or practice yoga, perhaps with a buddy or at the gym. Does this change with the seasons? When is it important for you to connect with others, and when is it time to be more solitary? When do you yearn for quiet? Some may have jobs that provide conversation all day, so the morning is a time to drink in the quiet. It’s taken me many years to give my husband ample space in the morning. He needs time to wake up and I appreciate that now—finally!

If quiet is important to you as a morning ritual and doesn’t seem to be created at home, can you gravitate to quiet within, perhaps in your car before you get out to go to work, or on the subway, or on the bus?

Since life is by nature in constant flux and we are adaptive beings, I invite you to look for moments in your day that create rituals that mean something to you. One of the first great conversations I remember having with my coach was about rituals and the rejuvenation provided. So have fun with rituals. They don’t need to be so serious or complex, rather simply of benefit for you and in turn, perhaps for those you love or care about.

Here’s a robust post from Gilbert Ross on morning rituals.

Savoring

CLEAR SKIES, GOOD BREATH

 

During a yoga class recently, I drank in two ways our teacher encouraged us to use our breath. One was “allow your shoulders to rest on the breath”. Wow! I love that, mostly because a lot of us carry tension in our shoulders. During coaching sessions, I ask clients how they’d like to begin. If they’d like to begin with some form of relaxation exercise, such as imagery or mindfulness, or any simple breath awareness, I usually include an invitation to drop the shoulders away from the ears. That’s one of the first things I learned in yoga 16 years ago.

The second prompt our teacher, Kat gave us was to imagine our breath expanding our ribs and diaphragm out from the sides of our body. I liked that as well because it helps me visualize the breath and make it 3D.

When you see a body of water this season, stop and breathe. Water is a fundamental element of life; it’s a wonder in itself.

Here’s a video link to water lapping on the Cheasapeake SAVORING

Grazing

Sampling
Sampling

I’m finding myself in a bit of transition. In some ways, it feels like these cows grazing on delicious and familiar green grass, and in others it’s like moving to another pasture and chewing new flavored varities. For most of us, creating new programs or new work takes continually feeding oneself on core values—things that if they are not present in your life, you know they are missing. Two core values of mine are creativity and relationships. I’m reconnecting with some really important people in my life and sampling some new things, such as teaching myself how to play the guitar. I’m giving myself permission to enjoy the process, the learning, in small bites rather than saying “in two months I’ll know how to play a song with x number of chords and with this strumming pattern”. As a coach, that’s something that I work on at times…not setting goals, as crazy as that sounds! When it comes to transitions and generating creativity, I find it’s useful to simultaneously build the “doing” and “being”.

If you are in some sort of transtion, which can be subtle or quite obvious to self or others, consider these things.

1. Ask yourself when you get up in the morning, “Who do I want to connect with today?”

2. Ask yourself upon awakening, “What’s one thing that I would enjoy today?”

3. Where could I release a “should” or “must” today?

4. How could I move my body today?

4. What’s the most important piece of work that I want to accomplish today?

5. At the end of the day, how can I send myself and those I love, caring?

This is a ever-evolving list! Give yourself the opportunity to sample different questions. Keep the ones that feel like bedrocks. Create new ones. Notice.

Mindful Opportunities

Wavescape
Wavescape

Today an opportunity presented itself. I took advantage of lovely sounds in my dentist’s office, while waiting for the biannual scrub. Truly lovely sounds. A flatscreen monitor placed in the corner of the waiting area displayed waves lapping on the shore of Hawaiian Islands. Instead of hearing broadcast news in a healthcare provider’s office, I listened to ocean waves at what seemed like nature’s perfect cadence. As I sat on the comfortable couch, with my back supported and feet flat on the floor, I began by watching the waves on the beach. Then, closed my eyes and simply drank in the auditory landscape. I knew there was a gentleman sitting nearby reading a magazine, and I could occasionally hear the staff quietly talking. I thought about looking at my smartphone and checking e-mail, and although that would’ve been perfectly OK, now I have the gift of a beautiful image that keeps bubbling up in my awareness today.

In her book, The Willpower Instinct, health psychologist Kelly McGonigal  states “Neuroscientists have discovered that when you ask the brain to meditate, it gets better not just at meditating, but at a wide range of self-control skills, including attention, focus, stress management, impulse control, and self-awareness.”

Where are opportunities, even for 1-2 minutes during your day, where you can listen, or “watch” your breath, or observe the world without striving to accomplish anything, except for the gift of self-care?

Loving Kindness

Sun
Sun

 

Are you wondering about how to practice Loving Kindness Meditation? Here’s a straightforward one from University of New Hampshire Health Services. This particular script is applicable to most…you’ll see.

Loving Kindness practice may help you boost your overall health, including decreasing inflammation and increasing positive emotions. Here’s an article from the HuffPost Health Living.

Since relationships cause us  great distress and great joy, why not try this?

Loving Kindness Meditation for College Students

Looking Out

 

Bentley's Perspective
Bentley’s Perspective

 

If you allowed yourself a brief, intentional pause or breath today, what might that bring you? Are you willing to do it? How much is your breath worth to you?