Week 30 | Smile on the Inside | Practice the Taoist "Inner Smile" Technique

Ok, Ok, so the apology letters from last week aren't in the mail box yet, but they will be by tomorrow morning. $5 (half) donation to the Preeclampsia Foundation for half completing my weekly intention.

This week, I'd like to introduce you to the "Inner Smile," a Taoist practice of mindfulness and inner healing. Read more about it and how to do it here:

http://taoism.about.com/od/meditation/ht/inner_smile.htm

After what my organs went through with HELLP Syndrome, I am very curious to discover the impact of this practice. I still feel like my liver, heart and uterus need so much healing energy, as well as the whole of me and all of my parts. ;)

This week's post is short and sweet.. we've had more visitors and our summer energy is very much outward, so sitting at the computer is happening less and less often!! Thanks for being out there!

Week 30 

Mantra | Smile on the Inside

Action | Practice the Taoist "Inner Smile" Technique

Week 29 | Mantra: Accept Fault | Action: Write an Apology Letter

Last week was definitely "breath week." When I went to my acupuncturist she even picked up on that before I told her about my weekly goal. I happen to have a lot of "heat" in me. (Part of it is seriously from being a redhead, mom!) She taught me to let my breath out in a "ha" sound in order to get the heat out of me. I've been doing a lot of that kind of exhale this week, which has been funny to anyone around me. (Btw, Jamie, she also recommended Rescue Remedy, and suggested that I empty the dropper before every use, and set an intention before taking it.) I've also found myself doing more breath work than normal with my clients. Maybe all this breath work will stick and I'll start breathing better on a daily basis. I'm going to keep my alarms on my phone set for 4x/day.

In unrelated news, Brian and I celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary this weekend. He got us the coolest present! It's a Sonos, which is a genius music system. It's so perfect for us, two people who LOVE music, but who love totally opposite music. I've always let things default to his musical control because we do agree on lots of things like our shared love of bluegrass. But I miss my chick rock and old hippie stuff that drives him nuts. Now we can just click a button on our laptop or his Iphone and switch the music. We've had music playing non-stop ever since he got it hooked up. This thing is awesome! I feel so much happier and more connected in this temporary space.

On to this week's theme... Children have a way of teaching you how to be a better person. That happens all the time with Gavin. Like tonight. We had a big struggle after his bath when we expected him to brush his teeth. It's a non-negotiable for us, so we pushed hard to get the job done. Being that he is in the age of autonomy, he was really mad at our forcefulness about the situation. A few minutes later, he and I were sitting on the floor in his room drawing a "good night picture" on his easel, and out of nowhere, he stopped drawing, looked at me and said, "Mommy, I sorry I fighted you." It was his first true apology. He's two and a half. What a wonderful human being.

And what an inspiration.

As an aside, here's a really creative way to apologize for something that you can't do directly. Thanks to Bri for finding this neat site.

Week 29
Mantra | Accept Fault
Action | Write an Apology Letter (Really mean it.)

Week 28 | Connect to Your Breath | Stop & Breathe 4x/day

The house is quiet. It's never quiet like this. I had the luxury of going to the gym this afternoon and Brian and Gavin both took late naps and are still asleep! The "shoulds" are running through my mind like a scrolling sign, but I really don't want to clean or fold laundry or work on business stuff. You'd think I'd be well-rested after my action plan for last week, but I had a really hard time actually going to sleep that early. I tossed and turned every night this week. :( Which makes me think I need to take my own advice, the advice I give all of my clients, and do some daily breathing exercises to relax.

...
And then Gavin woke up. Where was I? Oh yah. Breathing exercises.

Here's a simple one that I like a lot. Place one hand on your chest and the other hand on your belly. Close your eyes and just breathe for a minute. Notice which hand is moving more. If the hand on your chest is moving more, you are chest-breathing, which is not a full breath. It suggests anxiety and/or stress. If the hand on your belly is moving more, you are taking full belly breaths, meaning that you are more relaxed. This is a nice check-in, or you can do it for longer than a minute and meditate.

I attended a mindfulness training last fall where I learned that you can actually change your brain through meditation. A study at UCLA (I think) showed that the minimum threshold for changing your brain, also known as neuroplasticity, is a series of 4 minutes of meditation 4 times a day. I was very motivated after this workshop and I ended up setting the alarms on my cell phone to go off 4x/day so that I would actually practice four 4 minute meditation sessions. Then life threw us a huge curve ball in December and I had to turn off the alarms. I haven't gotten back to it... until now. There. Alarms set.

Week 28
Mantra | Connect to Your Breath
Action | Stop & Breathe 4x/day for 4 minutes

Week 27 | Mantra: Sleep Heals | Action: Set a bedtime this week and stick to it

OK. Here's one that I overlook all the time. It's something that I always mean to do, and something that is imperative to my well-being, yet something I hadn't yet considered for the blog. Well, now is certainly the right time, given that I've barely slept since Friday and I can't think of another topic anyway. It's SLEEP. I'm going to set a bedtime for myself this week. A work-put-away, laptop-off, phone-off, lights-off bedtime. 11:11, my magic time. (This one will be tough tomorrow night when my last client ends at 10:30?!! But I am making a commitment.)

Tonight, I will be in bed by 10:10. This will be a record for earliness. (Is that a word?)

Sleep, sweet sleep.

Week 27
Mantra: Sleep Heals
Action: Set a Bedtime this Week and Stick to It

Week 26 | Transform | Use a Fire Ritual to Transform Something You Want to Change

Is this the halfway point of the year of positive intention? 26 weeks!! Thanks for coming along on this journey. Let me know how you're doing and what you're up to with a comment!

I blew it last week and never made time to post. Brian's mom came in from Oklahoma City and we were exceptionally busy transforming a messy extra floor of our temporary rental into a guest suite for her.

.....

Happy belated summer solstice! What did you do to celebrate? I gathered with the women from my therapist collective and we had a wonderful sage cleansing followed by a small fire ritual. It has been way too long since I celebrated the solstice with an actual ritual and it was soo nice! It reminds me to invite ritual into my life more often. I've left behind the part of myself that was so engrossed in women's spirituality, my inner pagan. I'm reclaiming her**!

I'm still feeling a strong sense of the summer solstice and the changing of seasons, so I want to focus on the energy of the solstice in this week's mantra and action - transformation. Fire is the element of the summer, and fire represents transformation. It's a time to look at what brings you fulfillment in life and how it can transform you to be a better person.

For a simple fire ritual, you can sit outside in the dark and light a candle. Think about some things that you want to transform and visualize sending them into the flame. {transform: to change in condition, nature, or character; convert.} Be with nature. Enjoy the moment. Absorb the abundance that is around you.

I'm looking forward to being in nature next weekend in Wisconsin. (See you there, Jamie! Can we do a fire ritual together?)

**Major aha moment here that I'll share.
I am seeing an acupuncturist who specializes in psychological concerns. She is amazing and I have had two really intense sessions with her. My first session included a terrifying and jarring vision that rocked me, but that also helped me start to reintegrate the parts of myself that my trauma severed. I expected my second session, which happened to be on the solstice, to be equally intense, and was a bit disappointed and surprised to only have a calming, centering experience on the table. But when I was done and I sat with Barb to talk about the session, she told me about a shamanic vision she'd had while I was on the table. It turns out she'd taken the intensity on herself to make it safe for me. In her vision, she and I were standing together and watching a "crazed, wild, primal version" of myself in the wilderness. This self-part was clutching an umbilical cord, dragging the baby that was on the end of it in a slight disturbing, but very protective and primal way. Barb was alarmed, but I let her know that everything was okay, that this was what was supposed to happen. We coaxed this wild part of me to sit in a tree and calm down. She then transformed into a serpent and slithered over to me, wrapped many times around my body, and then entered my body through my skin near where my liver is. (My liver that was in distress when I had HELLP, mind you.) I'm still making sense of the whole vision and the message within it, but I'm pretty sure that my inner pagan is closely related to this crazed, wild, primal version of myself, and I felt it that night when we were doing our fire ritual, but only just now clearly see this connection.

What do you make of the symbolism in this vision?

The day before my appointment Gavin had noticed an image of a snake eating its tail. I explained the symbol and we talked about it. It's the first time I'd thought of a snake in a long time. Tonight at bedtime he told me that we both have a snake that lives outside. His is yellow and mine is blue. Just coincidental? He's a very spiritual little being.

(Let me know if you want Barb's number!)

Week 26
Mantra | Transform
Action | Use a Fire Ritual to Transform Something You Want to Change

Week 24 Animation

Look at this fascinating animation about time and our orientation to it. Brian found it today, not having any idea what my post was this week, and I thought it was very appropriate to share with you all.

Week 24 | Love Where You Are | Document Your Day-to-Day Moments of Bliss

Summer is just about here. My favorite season! And we've had the warmest spring in Chicago's recorded history. I love, love, love this weather! If there's any time when I should be in love with being here, it is now. But, you see, I get struck with bouts of restlessness that strike me when I'm least expecting it. And I can't really blame it on Chicago, because I experienced this while living in San Francisco, one of the world's most beautiful and amazing cities.

Brian and I are searching for a new home right now, a process that usually triggers my longing to be elsewhere. This restlessness forms an emotionally toxic combo when paired with my basic temperament, which involves spontaneity, zig-zagging, living from moment-to-moment and feeling my way through life. It's hard for me to commit to most things for longer than about a day. (My Virgo sister is laughing out loud reading this, and my Virgo husband is probably rolling his eyes. Lovingly.)

Anyway, I am struggling hard right now with my restless sense and yearning for vague something elses. I do think that part of my healing from my traumatic HELLP experience, as well as my continued adjustment to the rigidity involved with raising a young child, requires that I just sit still and look for the happiness that is all around me, instead of focusing on the something elses. The happiness that is all around me goes with me wherever I go, and I know that. So this week's focus is on the happy day-to-days that exist wherever I am in time and space, like Gavin just walking up to me to show me the squirrel sticker on his toe. This week I'm going to take photos of things otherwise ignored that happen every day. If I get around to it, I'll post some here.

Thanks for reading!

Week 24
Mantra | Love Where You Are
Action | Document Your Day-to-Day Moments of Bliss

Week 23 | Make Someone Happy | Do one thing a day to make another person feel happy

Thanks to Bree for this week's inspiration. "Make someone happy." For those who don't know, Bree is my childhood best friend. You may have read about her in the post from Week 21. We met in 4th grade when we started a new school together. It means the world to me that we've stayed in touch over the years, in spite of different high schools, universities, cities, lives... She was just here in Illinois two weeks ago and made the incredible effort of taking the train into the city, not once, but twice to see us and meet Gavin for the first time. Bree and I played sports both together and against each other :( so it was really special that Gavin's first time "playing baseball" was with her. You can watch the video here. She sent an email today that included all kinds of daily actions for conscious living, which is where I got this idea for this week. Plus, she always makes me happy. :)

Week 23
Mantra | Make Someone Happy.
Action | Do one thing a day just to make another person feel happy.

(And sorry for skipping a week last week. I wrote a check for $40 to the over the weekend to make up for the weeks I've skipped or haven't completed my action.)

Week 21 | Be Grateful | Notice and write down one thing every day that you're grateful for

Week 20 was good. Did you do one thing you've been meaning to? Brian got me a journal and Sharpies for Christmas and I had only drawn in it once! I got that out the other night and it was so great to lose myself in drawing, something that I need and just don't do. Ever. I also did some charitable giving that I've been meaning to do. Felt good.

This past Sunday was the Promise Walk to raise money and awareness for the Preeclampsia Foundation. After the battle to get a two year old dressed and agreeably in the car seat and a drive to Hyde Park, we were 45 minutes late for the walk. We were also juggling a simultaneous visit with my childhood best friend, Bree, who was in town from Oakland. I hadn't seen her since I was 37 weeks pregnant, about the same time I was starting to get sick. It was a wonderful thing to hug her, and to watch her playing with my son, and to be able to look around and see the smiling faces of all of the children who survived preeclampsia. But there wasn't much time to be alone with my feelings. It was easy to do what I so often have to do - block out the memory of what happened to us in order to just keep living. At one point, I was walking along the path on my own, and I finally let myself just be. And I looked around at all of the women and families and children. I made eye contact with some of the women whose stories I know. I let myself feel the sadness and the fear and the anger that goes along with what we've all experienced. I cried under my sunglasses for a little while, then put on a smile and helped my son climb a tree. Life moves on.

But I've been thinking about gratitude a lot. I do feel grateful a lot of the time, but I would like to be more conscious about it. So this will be a week for gratitude.

Week 21
Mantra | Be Grateful
Action | Notice and write down one thing every day that you're grateful for

Week 20 | It's Never Too Late | Do One Thing You've Been Meaning To Do

I have really been trying to post every week by Monday night. Here it is Wednesday night, almost Thursday morning. So .. let's see. What makes sense?

Week 20
Mantra | It's Never Too Late
Action | Do One Thing You've Been Meaning to Do