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Daily Intention: Slow Down

I’m trying something new.

I did this yesterday and it went really wonderfully, so I’m going to keep it up.

I’m making an intention to hold for my day. Kind of like an extended, occasional meditation.

Yesterday’s intention was to be accepting of the moment I was in. Which was a really helpful intention to hold in my mind while I was at work, and often, would prefer to be elsewhere.

It reminded me a bit of the practice of choosing a word for the year… where it just serves as a gentle reminder whenever I could feel myself start to get disgruntled. It helped to bring me back, at least into a frame of mind that wasn’t struggling against my unavoidable reality.

Today, my intention is to go slow.

There was one visit, several years ago, that I made down to Orange County. I was at my friend Nathan’s house and had just said a brief hello to his parents as we were heading out the door, when his dad stopped me. Without having had any kind of update on things going on in my life at the time… he told me that he felt like I needed to hear something before I left. Slow down. he said to me. He said a few more things, I’m sure. But to this day, I can still hear the soft, gentle tone of his voice, and feel his hand on my shoulder. Slow down.

I told Nathan about it later and he reminded me that his dad had once been a pastor. And also said that he definitely had a some prophetic sensitivities. And I’ll never forget that. Because it was, exactly the message I needed to hear back then.

And while life is dramatically slower paced than it once was… Internally, I often still feel like I’m running the hamster wheel. So today, it’s my message to myself. To slow down, take things as they come, and allow myself some mental space when I’m not sure what should come next.

Tags: awareness, daily intention, meditation, practice, ritual, soulcare, spaciousness

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Categories Daily Intention

Soulcare of a Different Kind

11 Apr

Mason was a gem yesterday. Sweet and cuddly, quick to laugh, happy to play on his own fora while, and easy to lay down for naps. But beforehand, I was kind of worried about how the day would go. Mark was going to be out late for a work event, so it was going to be just baby Mason and I all day and night. No one to pass the baton to if things got tough.

So I developed a strategy for the day. Each time Mason took a nap, I let myself watch a show on hulu. To the unforgiving eye… this might seem like a lazy excuse for an excess of zoning out. But let me tell you, yesterday was exactly what I needed out of the day.

Here’s the catch… it’s nice to watch a show every now and then. But usually, when I do… I’m mentally beating myself over the head because I “should” be doing something more productive. Something that will make the apartment cleaner or more organized. Something that will contribute to dinner, or to a blog post, or something that will turn one of my collections of magazine cutouts or photos or blank notebooks into something creative and pretty.

But today I didn’t. Today I decided, this was my day to start putting into practice some of the soulcare stuff I’ve been learning and contemplating over the past month. So while tv watching isn’t generally applauded in the realm of self care, what was nourishing about it is that I laid down the whip. And that’s about the best thing I could possibly have done for myself. (Because even when they’re gems… caring for little ones all day by yourself is still tiring!)

So I watched my shows. I did a spot of yoga when I felt too in my head. I ate well and deliciously. And I even treated myself to a ((vegan, gluten free, sugarless – sweetened with agave)) chocolate brownie cookie. And when Mason was awake… I had the energy and enthusiasm to play with him. To recognize when he wanted to be left alone. To catch those times when he got sleepy before or after his normal naptime.

And after a couple post baby-bedtime shows… I didn’t feel like watching anymore. And I turned off hulu. Turned on some music. And I wrote. Listened to The Weepies. Eventually turned that off too and just listened to the rain. And can I tell you just how lovely yesterday was?!

Small steps to soulcare.