Embody Mental Health

Posts Tagged ‘sun’

Yoga is a light, which once lit, will never dim. The better your practice, the brighter the flame.

B.K.S. Iyengar

So, given the challenge to yoga-up my life again after a month of incessant day-job that leaves me home late every night and stressed all weekend long I realized that the yoga with a capital “Y” has been missing from my life altogether.  By that I mean the yoga in the essence of how I live my life and bring room to breathe, pause, and reboot.  To be frank–I have had none.  So taking Bindu Wiles 21.5.800 Challenge (21 days, 5 days a week yoga, 800 words written per day) I realized how much I have sucked the yoga joy out of my life since yoga school ended and my new job began.  Yoga back in my life really meant a total overhaul.

So my yoga for yesterday was Savasana on a floatie raft in my grandparents-in-law’s pool.  It was divinity–really.  I have taking the yoga less literal in terms of postures and more to a state of mind–and that I am trying to do 7 days a week.  I am dedicating 40minutes-1 hour a day where I give me a moment to breath and pause and reboot.  I am expanding my Savasana to be more encompassing.  I am thinking the next extension of that is to take up on of my Massage Envy massages (which have been back-logging without use) and Savasana my way into a deep tissue state of the Swedish variety.  Yes, I think so.

That said, today’s yoga will be literal.  I am vacillating between power flow and restorative for my home practice–we will see what the day brings.  The joy of home practice is that I can morph it to whatever I feel the need for.  Although, another aspiration of my next few weeks of the challenge is to add a studio practice one day a week–something I have been missing in the last couple of months.  Communal environment is a great invigorator for a home-study practice that has lapsed.

5 Ways You Can Bring Savasana Into Your Life & Some Room to Breathe:

1. Get a massage.  I love Massage Envy because for a reasonable monthly rate  (about $50-$60 per month; half a usual spa massage rate) it commits you to give yourself a moment to take care of yourself–body and mind.  Also, if you are like me and you lapse for a few months your massages stay in a reserve for you to use when you have the time.

2. Go to the beach or get yourself a floatie and head to your local pool. It’s summer!  So, you can take full advantage of nature’s therapeutic qualities such as vitamin D and head to the beach, pool, or even your backyard and get in a retreat-state-of-mind.  Put on some SPF, sunglasses, and just lounge like (even if it is only for an hour or an afternoon) you are on vacation.

3. Create some sacred space in your home & spend some time there in silence. What we create in our home space says  a lot about our personality and our motivations at home.  If you take just a small corner of a room or room in your house and create a space for meditation, silence, or prayer you give yourself the incentive to spend some time at home in silence, meditation, or prayer.

4.  Follow your bliss. We each have things we love and things that bring us into a state of bliss, peace, and calm.  What is that thing for you?  Art, writing, yoga postures, dance, horseback riding, motorcycle riding–the sky is limit (literally, cause’ it could be airplane flying).  When I ask clients what brings them calm they have named all of the above and more.  Whatever your bliss is can be the yoga in your life.  Do something you love–find your bliss and follow it to a state of calm.

5.  Shut down your devices. Live a day unplugged. Yeah, this is a hard one!  As I write this on a blog I realize the hypocrisy in this moment .  But not indefinitely, not forever, just for an hour or a day log off, sign off, and shut off!  It is so crucial and I do it far to infrequently.  Turn off the phone, shut off the computer, unplug the T.V. and just be in the silence.  It can be very uncomfortable and the more discomfort you feel the more it is a warning sign that you need to do it more often.  The white noise takes us over and we have to remember to get back to ourselves, unplugged.

Have you neglected your own self-care and room to breathe in your life?  Any ways you can think of infusing your summer with some non-literal or literal yoga?  Below are a few I have been salivating over.  If you are interested in investing in some self-care you can also still sign up for my “Room to Breathe: Summer Soulstice Soul Care” Virtual Workshop starting June 20, 2010!  However you do it, summer is a great time to take some time and focus on taking care of you!

At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person.
Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.

Albert Schweitzer

Hello All & An Early Happy Weekend!  Between being sick with a sinus infection since this past weekend and back to the doctor for a second time this afternoon for a nebulizer treatment of albuterol due to serious bronchial issues from a secondary infection I have been a bit of a sick-ful mess this week.  I was, as well as the rest of the sick staff at my job, pretty much ordered to go home and get well which I hope to do!

I have been left with little time, energy, and unfevered brainspace with which to write this week and I missed it.  I really relish the reflective moments on this blog and love to share in the community of the blogosphere!  Next week promises to be HEALTHFUL and BLOGFUL if I can get myself back on track internally and externally to do so.

I had my clients in group today end the week with a statement of gratitude to begin their weekend and I would like to do the same and go back to my enjoyable past time of a Friday LIST! Yay!  Fevers make me a bit punchy and jubilant–when not coughy and curmudgenly (also aliteration inspired apparently).  And I think ESPECIALLY when we feel low and depleted it is important to reflect on the metaphorical food that feeds us.  The literal food that feeds me today is pizza and sinus medication.

10 THINGS I AM GRATEFUL FOR RIGHT NOW ARE….

1. …A husband that will bring me soup on a tray and a seltzer in bed when I am hacking up my lungs.

2. …A wonderful holistic community in South Florida that continues to amaze me with the passionate professionals in mental health and beyond that are working to bring care to people : mind, body, and spirit.

3. …Sunshine.  I don’t think I even want to take for granted to wonders of sunshine and the plentiful sun of South Florida.  To be able to take a therapy group outside and by the beach is an amazing blessing.

4. …To be able to teach what I love to those who want to hear about it.  The other day I mentioned to a co-worker that when I was a child I wanted to be a teacher and a detective.  She replied, “So you sort of did that then didn’t you?”  I laughed and thought that is true–as therapist alone I am sort of an investigator of the psyche and teacher of coping skills.  It is even more rewarding that I get to be part of an academic sphere even beyond that–giving back what I learn as therapist-detective-teacher with my clients to other passionate professionals.

5. …Family.  I have an immediate and extended family and circle of friends that, especially hearing so much about the painful family histories of my clients, I know how lucky I am to have a system of support, caring, and mutual respect that many people struggle long and hard to find one tenth of the same.

6. …Yoga.  Especially lately with changing jobs and getting sick and having almost 3 WEEKS now yoga-less I am reminded again of how much yoga is at the core of my own grounding, self-care, and centering.  I gave a Self Care workshop last Friday (right before getting sick) in Delray Beach and I found myself leaving rejuvenated by the energy of the collective of women giving back a little peace to themselves–and found myself hungry for more moments of the same for myself.  I am so thankful for my yoga practice and cannot wait to stop hacking up my lungs and start down-dogging myself and my  limbs back to limber bliss.

7. …Virtual Communities & Live Communities.  There is so much power in the intimacy of a collective–whether in cyberspace or in physical presence–the healing power of communities and sharing constantly astounds me.  There is such a profoundness in group therapy–I love leading groups in collective healing and love any form of collective healing–community acupuncture, community EMDR (both which are done at my current job for patients), group equine facilitated psychotherapy programs, group creative arts workshops (like are being explored at the WISH STUDIO), and all avenues of sharing life experience and the journeys with others.

8. …The beautiful ANGEL SMILE FARMS in Loxahatchee where I cannot wait to begin presenting PRANA EQUUS workshops for self-care through yoga, creative arts, mindfulness, and equine relational activities!

9. …What I learn daily from others.  My clients are so profound–and often most profound when they don’t even intend it.  I love being able to take their journeys with them and in the process move forward on my own path with the richness of their experiences and their own revelations about life, self, and happiness.

10. Being asked to present at the 2010 National NARHA Conference in Denver!  I just found out today & I cannot wait.  Both because I always miss Colorado since I moved away in 2003 and because I cannot wait to talk with a national audience of equine mental health professionals about this integrative programming I am so passionate for–bringing yoga, horses, and mental health together in a creative package.  Check out this link for more information on the conference (I will also be speaking with Maurette Hanson at the Region 5 NARHA Conference in Alabama in August): http://www.narha.org/Conference/2010/Conference2010Home.asp

“ They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.”

Confucius

Iguanas are everywhere in Florida.  Outside my office window on any given day I can hear the tapping of iguana lips on a glass door, heavy thuds of thick scales, beckoning to be noticed and not so subtly asking, “Food Please Humans Who Sometimes Feed Me!”  Sometimes they even make squawking sounds when they become furious at being ignored–they are persistent and insistent creatures with never-ending bellies.  I have also learned that in a chill, yes they occasionally occur in South Florida, an iguana will freeze and then thaw again when in warm sunlight, completely unfazed by the experience.  How Zen of them.

Sometimes in life we become frozen in our lives, stagnated by circumstances, complacency, or just comfort.  I have spoken about this before and my own experience with this phenomenon.  I realize more every day, as I feel my life flower and bloom in exciting new ways, how much I was in such a iguana-like freeze prior to leaving New Jersey.  I was in desperate need of sunlight and a thaw and I didn’t even know it.  Surrounded by the coziness of a place I had always known, friends I had for a long time, family that surrounded me I had to try very little to effect anything in my life and as a result I effected very little. 

In moving into the sunlight and out of the freeze–both literal and metaphoric–I have shifted something, shaken up the mix, and out came all this blossoms of change that have been wonderfully rich.  I have met amazing people, adventured on many new projects, and stretched my own imagination of what might be possible.  I think we all need these moments from time to time to push us forward into the new–it is a spiritual invigoration. 

Amid all of this thawing and stretching in the sunlight (and I cannot stress how much I feel emotionally revived by sunlight and warmth in the Holiday Season) I have decided to commit fully to writing the book that has been on my mind and in my heart for quite some time.  It will be a labor of love and adjectives and it may take me the better part of a year to fully bring to paper (well to laptop virtual paper that is) but I have decided that it is something I must stop procrastinating on and start literarily enacting.  It will encompass all of this journey of complementary medicine, yoga, equine facilitated therapies, and my personal exploration of each into a memoir-like account.  I am excited and intimidated by the challenge.

I now throw out this thawing momentum to everyone to push your limits, step out of your box, and thaw a little in the sunlight.  Breathe out your inner iguana-like metamorphosis, updog into the sunlight (like the iguana in the picture above), and find how far you can stretch yourself.  Be uncomfortable, be intimidated, but be invigorated and alive by the prospect.  Dream big, think tall, and screech out loud like any impatient and persistent iguana would. 

“Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.”

Kahlil Gibran