Happy Tarot Tuesday! Let’s talk today about another simple ‘spread’ for self-reflection. I say ‘spread’ loosely this time, as this is technically a single card pull. Despite being small, it’s great for getting to know your deck and heavy on the introspective aspect- which I will always love. For this spread we will again be using the Dreams of Gaia Deck by Ravynn Phelan- but you can use any deck. Today we’re going to be talking about the “Guide Spread”.
The Guide
There is only one card to define in this go around, because well, it’s a single card draw as we’ve said. This card is meant to guide you, help you reflect on something that is prevalent in your life at this time, and can be used to help you reflect on your actions preemptively. Sometimes a guide card may only be relevant for a day. Maybe you happen to pull a card relevant to something that is a larger or more ongoing issue. On a rare occasion a card may need to keep you company for longer than a day.
Performing the Guide Spread
My regular recommendations for tarot apply here: give yourself ample time to complete it and find a quiet space where you can relax and focus. Keep a journal or notebook handy, as well as your guidebook. Find appropriate lighting and light a candle or incense if that helps you relax, same with music/background noise. The point is to intentionally relax and be present in your reflection.
Shuffle. There is no right or wrong way, just shuffle. Stop when it feels right, or your hands get tired. Whatever comes first. Whether you cut your deck or not is up to you.
Before you delve into meanings and reflection, spend some time looking at the artwork, just examining the card. How does its artwork make you feel without immediately knowing what it means?
Review the meaning of the card and take into account if it is upright or reversed/blocked. Reflect on how this may affect your day, if there is something happening that this could help/ hinder with? I find this a good tool to reflect on whatever quality the card is addressing and assess whether I think this is a strength of mine or maybe a weakness I need to pay attention to as I go about my day.
Take your time with this part of the process, as sometimes there are the immediate reactions and the secondary ones after you’ve had a few minutes to think and consider. Don’t judge your reflection as positive or negative. You are simply examining the prompt as it is.
Closing the Reading:
Take a few minutes to write about your experience. This is where we want to be thinking about how this makes us feel. Note that I do not say “where we judge the reading”. That’s not the point, you can feel positively, or negatively, or inspired, or melancholy- whatever it may be; without judging the answer. One is a sensation, the other is a statement. Be careful with this.
Keeping a journal will give you something to look back on, a way to notice trends, and a second round of reflection that is slightly different. Some people (like myself) process differently when we’re writing and the act of moving your hands to reflect things helps anchor the process into linear thoughts when your brain might otherwise be a basket of ferrets on espresso.
The point is that this is between you and yourself. Which means that honest reflection is not only encouraged, but necessary- especially if you can get out of the habit of judging yourself and just letting yourself feel what you feel without commenting on it.
Now you’re ready to go about your day with a reflection excersize done and your mind prepared to be present and take the day as it comes!
We’d love to hear about your experiences with intentional living and I hope you give this a shot.
Let’s talk about controlling your emotions, or rather the importance of it. Not everybody’s favorite topic, I know. A lot of us, especially I have found in social circles I overlap with, really dislike the word ‘control’. It brings up a lot of negative connotations. Many of us are looking for liberation, flexibility, freedom of expression, or just freedom. And ‘control’ pretty much sounds like the opposite of that.
Usually, we are looking for something because we don’t have it. If you’re looking for freedom, you probably feel oppressed. If you’re looking for flexibility, it’s most likely because you feel stifled or contained. By that same notion, if you don’t have control of your emotions, its likely that they have control of you.
Not controlling your emotions is the birthing ground for anxiety, stress, depression, pessimism and a victim mindset. I frequently find that people in my life that have chronic problems with negative self-talk or a generally negative outlook on life are sitting in the day-to-day quagmire of being steam-rolled by their emotions. It’s like trying to keep your head above water when the water line keeps getting higher.
What I don’t mean
When I stress the importance of controlling emotions, I do not in any way mean to shut down, ignore, or distance yourself from your emotions. I can’t think of anything more detrimental to your health or success than that. Your emotions act as a thermometer and warning system for your body and mind. They tell us a lot about our current state of being. Warning systems are meant to be listened to. However, there is a vast difference between heeding a warning system and allowing it to decide the course of action by which solutions are found.
Think of controlling your emotions like running a ship
Let’s say you’re the Titanic (depressing analogy, I know, but bear with me). You have a transcriber (your nervous system) that is taking in data and messages all day and converting them to electrical impulses that are transmitted around the ship (body) and to other nearby vessels (our social circle). Those messages are a constant mix of good, bad, happy, sad, congratulations, observations, warnings, reviews, feedback, you name it (stimuli for want of a better word). It’s the transcriber’s job to sift through all that data, pass on what needs to be passed on, disregard what’s not important, and process everything so it gets to the right place. Your emotions serve as the messaging system in which that data is conveyed, each one like a little memo to a different part of the ship.
The transcriber shouldn’t be labeling messages as good or bad. You wouldn’t want a secretary changing the subject lines of your emails, would you? Nor would you want a secretary holding on to messages for an undue amount of time and delaying important information either. Not when the information conveyed could be the difference between changing course correctly or sinking in the middle of the Atlantic.
Not learning to control your emotions essentially hands over the keys to the bridge to the guy translating morse code in the closet. He’s great at processing vast amounts of correspondence and information but he knows not the first thing about nautical charts, crow’s nests, or steam engines. He can get you the warnings, but he doesn’t have the experience to decide what to do with them.
Not to bore you with the ship analogy, but that’s what the captain is for. I mean you. Your brain. You have the ability to take those warnings, apply context and previous experiences, and make decisions that are based on rational thought as much as they are influenced by your emotions.
What controlling your emotions means:
When I’m talking about controlling your emotions, I specifically mean not allowing them to make your choices for you. This still requires you to acknowledge them and feel them. Perhaps more so than the average person. You can’t control something you’re not paying attention to.
We’ve all heard that person say “yeah, i’m just in my feelings”, “I’m letting this get to me.”, “I know I shouldn’t stew on this, but I can’t help it.” This is what we want to work on: Feeling our feelings without letting those feelings control our day. That’s where eventually the mindset changes will occur and freedom will follow.
Feeling your Feelings
Remember when I said that I didn’t mean shutting down or distancing yourself from your emotions? Let’s go back to that. The key to controlling your emotions is in making room for them. You have to allow yourself time to process them and make peace with what’s happening in your life. If you do not address your feelings, they fester and begin to bleed through into other areas of your life. Your job is not to judge your feelings, comment on your feelings necessarily, or ascribe positives or negatives to your feelings. Your job is to sit with them in the moment and allow yourself to actually feel them before we ever touch on the matter of figuring out what they are trying to tell us.
The warmth in your chest that is love. The Icy dagger that is sometimes fear. A trip drum in your chest might be anxiety and the hot flush and shaking hands might be anger. Don’t try to rush your body through the process of physically feeling them.
Your challenge
In future talks we’ll go through practices for analyzing emotions and figuring out what our emotions are trying to tell us, as well as tools (like mindfulness and meditation) for how to make space in our day to day lives to reflect on those emotions and what may have influenced them. But for now, your challenge (should you choose to accept it) is to practice acknowledging your feelings on a day to day basis without judging them or analyzing them. and to allow yourself a few moments to really sit in them when they happen.
It doesn’t have to be a big to do or routine- I get it, we’re all busy. This might mean a mental “okay, I’m angry” when you feel it. But there should be no shame in the mental acknowledgment of “I’m angry”. Even more important is to acknowledge the positive ones: “This is Joy” as we often highlight the negatives in our life but don’t hold equal space for the positives. Take a second to pay attention to what that emotion physically feels like in your body. Then you can go about your day. But learning to identify what an emotion feels like is the first step to emotional clarity and control that we’ll be working toward in future talks.
We’d love to hear about your experiences! Remember, you don’t have to be perfect and you’re not going to get it right overnight or all at once.
I hope you know it is with 100% sincerity that I say we are so sorry that we have not been as active recently on our social media accounts or our blog. It’s not that we have not been thinking about it, RavenWerks is forever on our mind. Honestly, more so than ever lately.
But the truth of it is we have been getting sucker punched by the universe one after another lately and have been reminding ourselves to give each other grace. Between losses in the family, the move, the new job, the final stages of wedding planning, then the wedding (yay!), and an exploded water heater that has since turned into a mold-meets-asbestos demolition zone; we have just been taking everything one day at a time and reminding each other constantly to take the day as it comes. That sometimes just getting through the day IS the win. Not a win, or part of the win but the whole and only win.
Which brings me, weirdly, to my topic for the day. I don’t mean to come at you from left field, because I feel like its not my usual sort of topic. It’s something that has been coming up a lot lately for me. With everything going on in my world I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting on life, and the cycles it offers us.
Life Has Seasons
Only so much can happen in a brief period of time before you must stop and ask yourself “What is the universe trying to tell me? What is this season of my life trying to teach me?” Sometimes, in seasons like this, I have to think about it for a while and search for the answer. Other times, someone might as well have screamed it in my ear. I feel like this has been one of those times.
So, in case you are experiencing a season like me, I thought I’d share. Because I’m beginning to get the feeling that this is what she wants me to do.
Your Purpose in life is too LIVE. You are a human being, not a human doing. Sometimes you need to just ‘be’. You do not have to have a greater purpose or calling to make your life worth living.
Discover the Freeing Power of Giving Yourself Grace to be Human
Sometimes, you just have to be happy that you made it through the day. I know that sounds backwards from the woman trying to build a huge multi-level all-inclusive safe-space, creative center, and nerd zone. I feel like I have a purpose. And I am passionate. About a lot of things.
Photo Credit: Emma with Let’s Go Sig. Taken at Olympic National Park
BUT what I learned this season is that it’s hard to convey passion about things you ARE passionate about when you are over-extended, burnt out, and drained. You end up feeling mad and disappointed in yourself because you don’t feel like you did something justice or gave it the room or attention it deserved. That to grow healthy roots for a tree we mean to nurture for a long time; sometimes you need to take a step back and nourish yourself so you can grow correctly. Even trees go dormant in the winter. Grow when you are able. grow in your spring. Listen to your body and acknowledge that life has seasons.
I have learned that sometimes the best thing you can do for yourself is give yourself grace and move forward when the time is right to do so. I’m not saying don’t work for things or don’t try to work through things. Heaven’s no. growth happens in the area just outside your comfort zone and I want you to be all that you can be with reckless abandon. But it’s okay to do what you can and give yourself grace with the rest.
A “Higher Calling isn’t Required
Finding your “purpose” or having a passion is great. It’s an amazing feeling to feel like you have “found your calling”. But you were not put on this earth to have a ‘purpose’. Your life is not a waste or somehow worth less if it takes you longer to find it. Some people never find it. Or when they find it, it’s not what they thought it would be. You don’t have to save the world, cure cancer, or even get a degree.
Taylor taking a moment to process life and ground herself following a really rough day.
Those things are noteworthy and amazing. But dial your DNA back a bit and look at humanity as whole. Just a few short centuries ago. Your purpose is to survive. Your purpose is to wake up , look at the sky, fill your lungs with air, smell flowers, feel the earth, eat food, and survive. You are not a machine. You are not a worker bee. You are not a cog in a clock or a gear in an engine. You are a living, breathing, human being. And that is magic enough.
So, if you are in one of those seasons where you are treading water, and just trying to keep your head above water: that is okay. Take deep breaths and remember that floating sometimes saves a lot of energy. I know that it can be hard in the fast paced, achievement based society we live in. Consider starting yourself the practice of “Mindfulness Minutes” first thing in the morning before the chaos of the day begins, or maybe right before bed if you’re a night owl. If you haven’t heard me talk about mindfulness and medititation, that’s okay! You can check out my intro post on the topic of mindfulness and medidation. Its got some resources for anybody looking to start.
Taylor and Mikaela at the Broken Wand
It is okay to say, “maybe not today, because I am tired, or I just can’t yet; but there is always tomorrow, and I will try again tomorrow.” It is okay to ground yourself with the reminder that “I am just one person.” If you haven’t taken time yet today to go outside and breathe, go do it. Take some time, take deep slow breaths. And remember that Existing is enough.
Let’s talk about intention setting. It’s something you hear thrown around directly and indirectly all the time. From mindset and goalsetting gurus to psychologists and even the old adage ‘It’s the thought that counts’; your intentions guide almost everything you do. We place a lot of moral weight behind someone’s stated or hidden intentions. The concept of intentions has sparked some of humanities oldest proverbs and colloquialisms:
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Let a wrong-doing repeat itself at least three times: the first may be an accident, the second a mistake, but the third is likely to be intentional.
He who covers up his mistakes intends to make some more.
No matter how brilliant an action, it should not be considered great unless it was the result of a great motive.
This is one of the fundamental differences in the conversation between magic believers and non-magic believers. Some people would argue that it’s the difference between magic and science, but I fall into the camp of people that believe all magic is science that we don’t have the ability to explain yet. That doesn’t make it not magic. Things that we now refer to as common knowledge science would have gotten you burned at the stake 400 years ago. Then there are those things that I believe mankind just isn’t meant to unravel or dissect- they just are part of the magic of existing.
Whilst I hate being the kind of person that loads you up with definitions- some things bear defining. So let’s start there.
Intention: a thing intended; an aim or a plan.
Stated simply your intentions are your goals, aims, hopes, and meanings. Intentions encompass everything from all that you hope to accomplish to the thoughts behind actions you do for and to others. That’s a lot of weight to put on one little word.
Intention setting is one of those science meets magic subjects that I love. Why? Because right now- the majority of people on the planet consider it hippy woo-woo metaphysical, magical, mystical and otherwise two solid frog hops from the Crazy Pond. Meanwhile the Scientific community is just starting to seriously explore the concept of intentionality in serious depth. We’re at one of those awesome crossroads where we can watch the process of the scientific being used to explain the magical. Its an exciting thing.
The basic concept of formal Intention Setting is the basis for most forms of magic. Intention setting is the first step in Manifesting. It is the spark and creative power that pushes our desires, hopes, and dreams out into the universe so the Law of Attraction can work is magic. Setting an intention is more than just stating what you want and waiting for it to happen. It’s a purposeful direction of psychic and physical energy toward a goal. Anything less is just a wish.
We talk about setting intentions constantly for both big and little projects, seasons, our lives; Before rituals, going into classes and experiences. “What are your intentions? What are you hoping to get out of this?” Setting intentions means being mindful of your thoughts and your inner dialogue.
The law of attraction is founded on the premise that the quality of our most prevalent thoughts, moods and attitudes determines the quality of what we manifest in our lives (What Is The Law Of Attraction? – Forbes Health). Its quite literally the power of the mind and how it interacts with the positive and negative energies of the world.
Ever had someone turn to you and say “Mind over Matter”?
Napoleon Hill posing with his book, Think and Grow Rich
This isn’t a new concept. I mentioned in a previous post a quote by Napolean Hill “The Mind attracts the things it dwells upon.” Which is a more condensed version of his original “Our minds become magnetized with the dominating thoughts we hold in our minds and these magnets attract to us the forces, the people, the circumstances of life which harmonize with the nature of our dominating thoughts”.
In an Article by Forbes, Christy Whitman, a master-certified law of attraction coach in Scottsdale, Arizona, the founder of The Quantum Success Coaching Academy and author of The Desire Factor, has a great way of explaining the basics of the theory:
Christy Whitman
“Thanks to the contribution of Albert Einstein’s famous equation, E = mc2, we now understand that matter and energy are inseparable, and that energy is the basis of everything in our tangible universe,” she continues “Everything that manifests in the physical world does so by a process of resonant energies being drawn together.” Whitman explains that it’s like when a C chord is struck on a piano. “Every other key that is tuned to the chord of C quivers in response to the note that’s been sounded, because frequencies that resonate at a similar vibration are magnetized together,” What Is The Law Of Attraction? – Forbes Health
Oprah Winfrey
Some of the most successful people in the world swear by the ‘Power of Positive Thinking’. Oprah Winfrey discusses it in her book ‘The Secret’. Other celebrity names include Jim Carrey, Lady Gaga, Denzel Washington, and Jennifer Lopez. Whilst I am not a huge follower of tinsel town- what I’m getting at is that there are some very successful mainstream icons that are beginning to recognize the science behind it. The idea also falls in line with the Power of Association (when your parents used to say “I don’t want you hanging out with so-and-so, they’re a bad influence!) and the idea that like attracts like. It’s the concept that the direction and intention of your thoughts has the ability to interact with the Intentions and purpose of the Universe; and in the words of Bernard Shaw “We know there is intention and purpose in the universe, because there is intention and purpose in us.”
When we talk about intention setting in magic we’re talking about the power of setting your mind to something, of setting yourself firmly on a decision or path and using your will to make it happen.
Bruce Lipton
According to Bruce Lipton, an American Developmental Biologist and former professor of Epigenetics states that when we set intentions “the beliefs we hold in our minds are converted into electromagnetic fields by nerve cells and the brain ‘broadcasts’ this information to all of the cells within our body. Cells respond to the information in these energy fields and use it to control their behavior and gene activity.” On the flipside of that same coin, if we are prone to negative thinking and fail to set positive intentions within our lives, our cells will respond by preparing to Fight-or-Flight, adding stressor triggers subconsciously in our day to day lives.
Science is beginning to be able to measure and demonstrate this. If you want to read more about the connection between biology, the brain and mindfulness and how intention setting can affect our neurology and in turn our physiology, this article (The Biology Of Intention-Setting: Our Body’s Response To Activating The Mind – Thrive Global) talks a lot about Dr. Richard Davidson and his work on Neuroplasticity.
Another Phenomenal Read is “The Intention Experiment” By Lynn McTaggart which draws on findings of leading scientists around the world. McTaggart uses cutting-edge research conducted at Princeton, MIT, Stanford, and other universities and laboratories to discuss how intent is capable of profoundly affecting all aspects of our lives.
One of my favorite Excerpts from that book is a quote from William A. Tiller, a professor emeritus at Standford University. “For the last 400 years, an unstated assumption of science is that human intention cannot affect what we call physical reality. Our experimental research of the past decade shows that, for todays world and under the right conditions, this assumption is no longer correct.”
The farther science gets into the study of intentions setting, the more power they are finding resides in the mind. We are even beginning to use the power of intention setting in psychology as a form of therapy and trauma healing as well as traditional medicine. Doctors discuss the idea of “setting the intention to get well, even if you don’t know how to yet.” That the idea of openly stating an intention to get well, to heal your body, and to focus on your health in that time can act upon the subconscious and not only speed up the natural process, but actually open pathways in the body that trigger the body’s natural healing processes on its own. Your body is designed to heal itself- it wants to be at homeostasis. It’s essentially stimulating an immune response.
If you’ve ever heard someone say, “you can’t help someone that doesn’t want to get better.” It falls under this same principle, just on a smaller, more subconscious scale.
Now this isn’t to say that chanting “I am going to get better.” Is going to cure you of cancer. Modern Medicine still plays a roll and for very good reasons; your mind cannot fix 100% of anything- but it does play a huge role. Who knows what science will discover in the next ten and twenty years; in the meantime, the notable improvement in processes of the body that are already there make it worth pursuing. I can’t see why someone wouldn’t use every tool at their disposal to help their body do what it needs to do. If I had an infection and a doctor told me to drink lots of water, get extra rest, take lots of vitamin B and an antibiotic- I wouldn’t skip out on the vitamin B but do everything else. Sure, you’ll probably get better otherwise, but why wouldn’t you try and do it faster? If you’re trying to bake a cake and you only use 90% of the ingredients- you’ll still end up with something edible- but it might not be as good.
The truth behind most modern Magic is at the end of the day pretty simple and straightforward. In more elegant words it’s a combination of intention setting and intense gratitude for what the universe gives us. Call it self-fulfilling prophecy, or the placebo effect. To dumb it down even further- its spicy psychology. And you can label it hippy woo-woo if you choose too but seeing the world the way that I want to and slowly manifesting or out-stubborning it until it reflects my vision has worked pretty well for me for twenty-eight years.
That’s basically all it is. I decide what I want to happen. I set my intentions, very specifically. I focus my whole being on what it is I am trying to accomplish or manifest. Sounds simple huh? But simple and easy aren’t the same thing. Sure, you can say it out loud; whatever the intention may be. But at that point its just a wish more less. We’re talking about actual magnetism and attraction, which works on a molecular level. Its about actively changing your personal narrative and your subconscious on a chemical level. Which is harder than it sounds because humans are complex creatures.
This is in some way, another area that the idea of mindfulness comes into play. You have to be aware of your intentions and your thoughts and your focus in order to direct them. And it takes discipline to build that skill. You’d be amazed at the number of people walking around the world with their thoughts higgledy-piggledy (or maybe you wouldn’t be) with little to no actual awareness of their thoughts or intentions. How many times do you hear “I dunno, I just didn’t think about it.” In response to a question regarding why they did something. And thoughtlessness is exactly it. The awesome thing about this though, is that its totally fixable. Its learnable. It’s something that you are in complete control of within your life.
I would love to hear your thoughts on the matter, your experiences, or your questions. If you’re so inclined, please accept my challenge: Take a few minutes to set yourself an intention. Start small, and don’t give yourself a list a mile long (rule one of goal setting/ habit creating/ or manifesting). Pick one thing. Be Specific. Write it down. Say it out loud. Declare it to the Universe (note here I say the universe and not ‘people’). Pay close attention to how your personal narrative talks about it and thinks about it in your head. Any time you catch yourself referring to it in the negative correct it. Don’t just stop the negative- you must replace it with the positive. Repeat it to yourself multiple times a day. Affirm it. Be very intentional with this one thing. For 60 days. Then come back and tell me what happened and how you feel about it.
Do you feel like the world gets faster every day? Like no matter how quickly you move, or how you habit stack your day you’re just a little bit behind speed, rushing to catch up and get to the next thing on your to-do list? Do you frequently feel like, as happy as you may be, there’s always something right on the edge of your peripheral you’re missing, or missing out on? Do you struggle to stay grounded with all of the multitasking, multi-focusing that society expects everyone to maintain in modern society?
ME TOO.
I’ve spent a lot of time feeling that way. Even if I enjoyed what I was currently doing or working on, part of my brain was always focused on whatever my next “thing” was. Next idea, next obligation, next appointment. The constant mental dialogue and running “to-do” list in my head not only led me to be distracted all the time, but anxious and tired. I would miss important details in conversations, zone out, or when looking back on positive experiences, be mad that I couldn’t remember the details as much as I wanted to.
I get over stimulated easily, and really struggle with anxiety; especially in loud spaces (I recently discovered Loop Earplugs- and they have become my best friends). If you knew me as a child this is 100% ‘a catch 22 meets irony’ moment. Focusing my attention without getting overwhelmed by the sheer volume of stuff (good stuff, bad stuff, exciting stuff, boring stuff, chores, ideas, music lyrics, internal monologue, anything and everything stuff) in my head is a frequent challenge. I struggle to feel grounded and mellow. I do not hold still well, never have (except for when I accidentally zone out standing in front of a bookshelf and don’t move for an hour and a half because I’m staring into space).
If this is starting to sound a lot like a severe case of ADHD…. Well, surprise, surprise; turns out I do in fact suffer from ADHD. Who knew? BUT this isn’t an ADHD self- diagnoses post. In fact, if you suspect you may have ADHD I cannot urge you enough to seek out a medical expert and get tested instead of schlogging through hours of articles and tiktoks or instagram posts. While there’s nothing wrong with doing your own research, I think it is better to see a specialist.
I avoided getting tested because it seemed too complicated and quite frankly a little part of me was afraid of it. I was afraid of what it indicated, and what feedback I might get from certain people in my family. But that’s a discussion for another day. Having finally decided to get tested at the ripe old age of 27 and get not only an answer, but help for some of the aspects that have been causing me issues, I wish I had done so sooner. Not just for the sake of knowing, but because I am learning that there are so many things I could have made easier for myself sooner, and in some ways I was fighting a battle with myself that I didn’t need too. I’ve been able to out hack my brain in certain areas as a result of learning more about the actual science behind ADHD and what it means in my day to day life.
And while I am still learning, and still have things I need to work on (like time blindness), I have a better understanding of HOW to set myself up for success and how to help me get what I need. I also have more patience for myself and I’m learning to have a certain amount of grace with myself. It’s taken stress off of me, and by extension, my family.
Which brings me to my real point. I reencountered something that I have on some level been aware of for most of my young and adult life but never really used or practiced. Now, at a much different point in my life, its been retaught to me and am learning to use as a tool when I get overstimulated, when I panic, when everything is just going too fast. It’s not specific to ADHD. Anybody can practice it and use it. Honestly, I think everybody should. The positive side effects are endless, and the process itself is relaxing. Its been an absolute game changer both mentally and emotionally; but also physically and spiritually.
I WANT TO TALK TO YOU ABOUT THE ART OF MINDFULNESS AND MEDITATION.
Sounds fancy. Sounds New Wave. Sounds like the kind of thing practiced by hippies in the 70’s or gate-kept by rich tech moguls with an excess of time on their hands. Or at least, that’s how I felt every time the head sensei of my dojo or my yoga teacher talked about it when I was a kid. It was ‘hippie woowoo’ and way over my head.
I didn’t have the patience or the attention span for it, and at 11 I couldn’t fathom how on earth thinking about how learning to let go of your thoughts could make you feel present in the moment, or how “letting them go” could really calm my mind or my body. I couldn’t even figure out what ‘letting the thoughts go’ really meant.
11 year old me was like “If I could do that, I would, trust me. I can’t just turn my brain off”
Young adult me also tried to dabble in meditation for a brief period of time around the age of 22 at a Tibetan Cultural Center in Phoenix, Arizona. I had slightly better success, but not by much. At that point, I was more receptive to the idea and I was fascinated by the concept, but I could just never get the practice to stick. Partially because habit forming is really hard when you have ADHD it turns out, but mostly because part of the meditation practices I was attending went through a process of acknowledging the body and its sensations as part of the opening. They did this through a process of focusing your attention to each area in turn and really turning your attention to how your body feels. This was at a time when I was really struggling with getting my Fibro Myalgia under control. I had a particular ongoing problem with my legs and I had spent a lot of time trying to teach myself to IGNORE my body and the sensations attached to it to try and keep myself calm, and that part of the process was acutely uncomfortable for me bordering on panic inducing. So I didn’t stick with it. I wish I had.
FAST FORWARD
I’m about a year into practicing now. And I’ll tell you why it has become one of the biggest tools in my belt. (It EVEN helps me overcome the nerve pain sensations I was struggling so hard to ignore).
You can do it anywhere. At home. In your cubicle at your desk. In your car at lunch. In the bathroom hiding from your kids. In your kitchen while you cook. Practicing mindfulness and meditation does not mean sitting cross-legged for hours in a dim room in silence. You can if you choose to, but it’s not like you’ve either reached a buddha state of enlightenment or you haven’t. Meditation is a constant practice, and you can practice it to whatever degree is useful to you. It’s not a destination or something you can achieve, but instead you can pull out of your back pocket whenever and use as much as you need to.
Once you understand the principle of it, anything can be meditative. I do enjoy sitting meditations, but there’s also walking meditations, laying meditations, and interactive meditations.
What feels like the biggest secret ever kept to me is what mindfulness and mediation actually is. Its not some big fancy right or wrong process full of mojo and specific processes. Stated simply, Mindfulness is the practice of being aware of one’s thoughts, feelings, sensations, and environment in the present moment, without judging or evaluating them.
Meditation is a tool used to practice mindfulness. It is taking a second to breathe, to center yourself, to observe your surroundings. To acknowledge when you feel overstimulated, or anxious, or tired, or even happy. Mindfulness is the practice of allowing yourself to feel whatever it is that you feel in the present moment and acknowledge the emotion or feeling for what it is without feeling guilty or angry. Sometimes half the emotional spiral is how you feel about your feelings. Mindfulness helps to work through that. It helps create the tiny bit of a barrier that I sometimes need to work through something. It removes me from the feeling just enough to allow me to examine it calmly, and in the privacy of my own thoughts. In some ways, its more about being intentional with your thoughts and actions than being some uber calm zen guru.
It costs you nothing to practice. And it does take practice. 5 minutes here. 2 minutes there. 45 seconds here. 10 minutes. 20 minutes. The more you practice, the easier it gets.
I started with focused meditation. I set aside 5 minutes a day to reflect and to go through the process of meditating. It was awkward and I was bad at it and it felt weird. It did. But the more I did it, not only did I get better at it and start seeing the benefits of it but I also began to see different ways I can do it.
Overwhelmed making dinner because your family is settling in for the night? its loud, people are asking you questions, the kitchen is already a mess and you’re trying to keep track of the things you still need to do tonight while setting up your to-do list for tomorrow to include any of today’s overflow and how to prioritize the most important things on that list? Feel like your heart is going a million miles and hour and it might rupture because you’re not actually a racehorse? Now I can breathe a few times, focus on the crunch of carrots when I chop them, feel the weight of the knife in my hand, smell the rosemary in the pan and remind myself that I am making dinner right now, and that makes dinner the most important thing on my to-do list. And therefore I can focus my attention on the moment and what I’m doing instead of everything I need to do or haven’t done.
Does it work every time? No. That’s why it is called practicing meditation. But it has greatly bolstered my ability to regulate myself instead of needing somebody else to help me do that.
Additionally, Meditation has also been show to decrease stress, promote emotional health, lengthen your attention span, reduce age related memory loss, help fight addiction, increase sleep health, control pain, and decrease blood pressure.
It slowly and gently teaches you to be more aware and more open in the present moment. I do feel less ambiently anxious and less rushed. And when I do still feel overwhelmed, I have something at my fingertips that can take the edge off.
There are a number of different styles of mindfulness and meditation, but the overall concept is the same. The hardest part for me, of beginning to practice and find out more about the mindfulness concept was getting out of my own head, and being unafraid to ask questions and meet new people; something I don’t always excel at. As well as finding information that resonated with me.
There is SO MUCH information out there which is both a pro and a con. You don’t have to look very far, but the sheer amount of resources can be overwhelming for someone who is unsure where to start.
If you are interested in starting your own journey, below are some of my favorite resources- from books to do some more learning to audio programs with guided meditations for beginners. I hope that this helps make the journey a little less daunting.
An Invitation to Meditation by Howard Cohn. This is a VERY short easy read. Bordering on Poetry. This really helped me breakdown that feeling of unattainability surrounding meditation. I had the opportunity to meet him at a Meditation event in Phoenix and it was him that sat down with me and answered some questions and helped me work through the struggles of focusing ON my body instead of ignoring it. He gave me the copy of the short book as a gift.
Mindfulness Minutes on the Fitbit Premium App. There are sooooo many different meditation apps out there on the market. I am partial to this one because it syncs with the rest of my fit bit, and I find it fascinating that I can see the correlation between my heart rate and my meditation sessions after the fact. Additionally the library has hundreds of different length and topic meditations for those just figuring it out. anywhere from 20 minute longer sessions to 2 minutes breathing exercising. Cooking meditations, shower meditations, focus meditations. Great for somebody like me who really needs that guided portion because your attention span is shorter than that squirrel from ‘Over the Hedge’.
The waking up app. This one is something my Fiancé uses more than I, but I’ve listened to a lot of them. The bonus to this particular app is it was written and designed by Sam Harris who is a Noted Philosopher, Neuroscientist, & Author. You will notice that his name appears multiple times on this list. This App also includes a number of vintage recordings by Alan Watts, those are worth the membership themselves. The talks are fascinating and I could listen to the man speak for hours.
Waking up by Sam Harris. The book of the same name by Sam Harris is another amazing resource for those of you who prefer to read and be able to make notes in margins, save/ highlight things.
John Kabat-Zinn’s Masterclass on Mindfulness. This was an amazing experience, straight from one of the leading experts themselves. Broken up into small bites sized pieces. He has over 40 years of teaching experience and is basically the father of the Medically applied concept. He is an expert at saying things in simple layman’s terms that are easy to understand and digest.
If you are just starting your journey, I’d love to hear if any of these help you as much as they do me. If you’ve been practicing for a bit, I’d love it if you’d chime in with any other resources that have been incredibly helpful to you. the art of intentionality and mindfulness has so many applications and uses. If nothing else I think it helps make us more self-aware and as a result, kinder, better people with more compassion for ourselves and others. It can be hard to stay in the moment. It can be hard to find inner peace with everything going on in the larger world and around us. This has helped me find peace in a lot of ways. What would having the ability to flip a switch and find peace do for you? What would that inner calm help you do during your day?
