Life As A Playful Practice

Join Krista for musings about life as a playful practice. Often the peace and ease that come through practices such as meditation or movement doesn't transfer into lived life. Notice in your life where accepting the practice of life as playful can let you off the hook for energetic leaks from self-judgment.

Transcript

Hello,

Awesome ones,

It's Krista.

I'm excited that we get to share this space together to play with the concept of edge meditations,

The idea that I focus on a particular concept that is in my consciousness from week to week,

And I invite you to do the same.

And one of those concepts that's been coming through loud and clear for me lately is the concept of life as a practice.

So I invite you into the musings of life as a practice,

And I've inserted another word there,

Life as a playful practice.

And so I invite you into that exploration for the next few minutes and the idea of life as a practice.

When I say life as a practice,

We think of the word practice as more along the lines of practice makes perfect.

That if we practice enough,

That we will have complete mastery over something.

And in fact,

We climb that mountain,

We're there at the pinnacle,

And the view is so grand and we have nowhere else to go,

And I will have to offer that I don't ever see that journey toward self-mastery or self-exploration as a destination.

And I would invite you to not think of it in that vein either.

That in fact,

Life as a practice means that we are in constant flow,

We are in constant examination of our alignment,

We are in constant,

A constant state of recognizing self as we are the experiment,

And we evolve across this construct we call time in our human life.

And the beauty of that is,

Is there isn't an end point.

There isn't a finishing line tape that we're going to break.

I suppose if you need those touchstones,

That's perfectly fine.

We can certainly break down things like skill or particular kind of mastery like cooking or learning a language,

All of those kinds of practices.

Certainly we see improvement over time.

And I would offer that as we consider life as a practice,

If we look at our self exploratory practices,

Contemplative meditation,

Straight up transcendental meditation,

Whatever your meditation looks like,

To free writing,

To any sort of other,

Even shamanic practice like aspecting or some other methods for dipping into your own inner wisdom and splashing around in there figuring things out that we can get more efficient at that practice without question.

But yet,

It's really in the content of what we discover through that practice that is infinitely varied.

It's infinitely playful.

If we want to just bring that word into it,

The idea that these contemplative practices of self exploration need to look a certain way,

That you have to do it right in order to get the results.

I mean,

Certainly there are guardrails around slowing down your breathing or giving yourself some privacy and space with your journal.

There are best practices when it comes to setting up the contemplative meditation or setting up the free writing or whatever it may be for you.

But what happens in that process will never find an end.

You're not going to find the pinnacle core of your self awareness of your inner wisdom and therefore you will be able to be done with whatever that practice is.

That's just not what we want to even be seeking.

And so this concept as life as a practice,

Especially life as a playful practice,

Can really let us off the hook.

It can let us off the hook of I need to apply this very rigid,

Linear cognitive framework to what is actually a multifaceted exploration including heart centered emotional exploration,

Energetic exploration,

Physical tuning in exploration that,

You know,

In this culture,

This patriarchal system,

We have privileged cognitive,

Logical,

Linear facts over all other wisdom.

And I'm not saying that those don't have a place because of course they do.

Thank goodness they do.

Without question,

We want that.

And when we've put that particular wisdom,

That vantage to wisdom on a pedestal over everything else,

We find ourselves out of balance.

And when we are out of balance,

We can find ourselves often feeling a competition among those different sources of wisdom.

And certainly in some cases,

Certain kinds of wisdom can have greater depth to them than others.

I think of,

You know,

In terms of medical explorations,

Of course we want medical science on our side.

And yet at the same time,

There's also a sensing and knowing that we have in our bodies and in our energy and even that our emotions can shine a light on that can inform our medical caregivers.

And if we hold that back,

They're not getting the whole picture.

So I just use that as an example that perhaps many of you have experienced where you have a knowing,

You have a sensing,

You have an awareness that comes from something other than I read it in a book and this is a fact.

And just as any other facts can be wrong,

Our awareness can also be wrong.

But I would offer that the more that we privilege all of those different sources of wisdom to create their own integration and balance,

We are better informed.

And so I offer that as part of this examination as life as a practice in that if we are only tapping into one source of wisdom,

We're missing out.

We're missing out on ways that we can inform our practice moving forward,

Whatever that practice looks like.

And when I say life as a practice,

Certainly we have practices within life as a practice.

We have meditation,

We have movement,

We have our professional work,

We have our family experiences,

We live life.

And the greater practice is noticing the interplay and flow,

That transition time between and among those other experiences and our presence within those experiences that all of those smaller practices create the whole of our life,

Our holistic life.

And when we step back away and examine how those practices fit together to create a whole,

We can notice how congruent they are.

We can notice that on one hand,

We may be doing a lot of contemplative meditation or sitting to,

For example,

Tame our temper and then notice that when we're out in the world,

That when life is a practice,

We're not as congruent between our sitting practice and our out in the world practice,

Our integrated practice.

And so this concept of life as a practice,

And especially life as a playful practice,

Can give you this vantage to take those skills,

Take those noticings from those other micro-practices or mini-practices,

If you will,

And broaden them into a more integrated,

Capital S centered self so that those practices during those times actually apply to life out in the world.

So this idea that we're developing practices within certain skill sets and then not transferring those skills into simply moving about the world is a place that we can shine our light of consciousness and improve.

And it enhances our lives.

It really is that idea of life as a practice that reminds us that just as in any of these other learnings,

That we can make missteps and that we can learn from those missteps in the moment.

And we can even step back out of that self in that we can go to the observer place or the witness place,

That metacognitive place or that meta-awareness place and say,

In this moment right now,

I'd like to step back out of the misstep I just made and realign myself with life as a practice.

So if,

For example,

That road rage moment happens and you think to yourself,

Gosh,

That's not really who I am,

That's not who I want to be,

That is not the person that sits in meditation,

That's the person who's out in the world.

And we can invite that self from meditation into that moment in the world and make that congruent,

Integrate those selves into the self who is,

In fact,

Out in the world practicing life.

So with that,

I offer these musings for you to consider around how connected you are to those moments or those times when you are learning those new self-awareness skills and how you're translating them or transferring them into the world.

It's worthy of examination and oftentimes when we have those moments where we make those missteps,

We can feel an energetic leak,

We can feel ourselves get distracted by guilt or shame or judgment of self.

Oftentimes these show up as shoulds.

I meditate,

I should be able to keep myself under control in terms of my anger.

I run every day or I move my body every day and I should be able to make decisions for my body that are life affirming in every moment rather than sitting down to some meal that you know isn't life affirming for you.

It's those times,

In those moments when we can reach into that capital S centered self who has been sitting for those practices,

Who's been doing that movement and invite them into that present moment for the moral support.

That idea as life as a practice is really a bridge from these practices of meditation,

Of movement,

Of self-examination,

Self-exploration.

When the rubber is hitting the road,

When we're out there in the world,

When we're interacting with our family,

When we're interacting with co-workers,

That we are able to access the fortitude and the mastery of the practice in the moment and integrate that into the lived experience of life as a playful practice,

Of life as a practice where we know that we're not going to be perfect.

And there's a lot of grace that we can afford ourselves and a lot of energy we can choose not to expend by noticing that guilt,

That shame,

That self-judgment and just deciding not to entertain it.

Deciding to learn from the misstep,

Bypass that energetic leak,

Reinvest all of that energy back into self and say,

Yeah,

I'm ready to do better next time.

My actions are going to be more integrated,

More congruent,

More in line with my capital S self,

More aligned with who I know I am,

Who I feel I am,

Who I am cultivating myself to be.

And I invite you into that exploration of what holds you back from that congruence,

From that integration.

For many of us,

That simply can feel like we're moving too fast through the world,

That we're not affording ourselves the pauses we need.

Make your space,

Set your pace in your own life to cultivate the space to be who you know and feel you are and who you're cultivating yourself to be in the moment.

So it's really about make your space,

Set your pace to life and allow for that bridge from those individual practices to the greater practice of life.

And lastly,

I'd leave you with this musing is noticing when it is working,

Noticing when you are beautifully capable of showing up in all of your glory.

And in noticing that,

Continue to make those scenarios happen more often.

Set up those circumstances.

Give yourself the extra 15 minutes to commute.

Give yourself the extra half an hour in the morning to be in a slower pace.

Settle into those wild toddlers trashing the living room and notice their playfulness and be okay with it for the moment.

Be an acceptance of what is in that moment and know that that is aligned with who it is that you want to be and notice what it is that sets you up for success in treating life as a playful practice.

Big love and rock on,

Awesome ones.