Permission To Do Less

This month's recording is from September 2020 and touches on how difficult the transition back to the school year can be. The thoughts here apply to any moment of transition in life, when it is important we be extra-gentle with ourselves and give ourselves permission to DO LESS. May it be of benefit.

Kristin

Transcript

Hey there everybody,

This is Kristen from Teaching Balance and I'm here with you with this week's mindfulness meditation practice.

And we are now in the month of September and the theme for September is self-compassion.

And there's so many different things that we can explore relating to this and I'm excited to do so.

But before we get started we do have some brand new mindfulness members.

So I just want to put a very warm welcome out to all of our new folks.

And when we get to the part of the video where we're going to be doing some meditation,

I am for this month just going to be doing a little bit of back to basics type of stuff when it comes to breath and anchors and posture and all of that.

So it never hurts for all of those of us who are a little bit more experienced to be reminded of this and it's also useful for folks that might not be as practiced in doing these meditations that we're going to do.

But before we get to that I would like to share with you my invitation for this week.

So the idea behind these weekly invitations and one of the reasons why even if you don't have the time to do the meditation itself I always encourage people just to listen to the beginning of these as soon as it feels viable for you to do so either when you're getting ready in the morning or even on your drive in to work if you're going in whatever it might be.

I encourage you to just listen to the intros because they typically will have some sort of food for thought something for you to reflect on and potentially even an invitation to take some sort of an action.

And so in this month of self-compassion it really feels appropriate for me particularly in light of not only the theme but the fact that now most of us are already back in school or about to go back or they're in some sort of a variation on remote or hybrid or whatever it might be.

The point is we're probably pretty close to being in it.

And so the value of self-compassion at this time in light of these incredibly extreme circumstances if going back to school wasn't hard enough I mean yeah you know it's tricky and the more compassion we can extend to ourselves the better.

So the very specific invitation that I would like to share with you this week is around the idea of giving yourself permission to do less.

Now that's up to you.

I think how you want to interpret that one way to interpret it would be to realize that under the circumstances it might be unrealistic for you to think that you can be back at school back at work and still be able to have your same routine of maybe exercise or the same routine of what however you were doing your meals or whatever it might be those things that we think we might be able to keep going at this time of transition are actually I think really difficult to keep going and we have to just cut ourselves some slack.

So giving yourself permission to do less might look like that.

Again it's just temporary until you find your new rhythm and your new equilibrium but we don't need to put all this pressure on ourselves to feel like we have to do it all and then feel bad about it when we can't do it because it was unrealistic in the first place.

This permission to do less can also be in the form of what you're doing in your actual work day and so what I mean by that is maybe when it comes to the work that you are grading when it comes to the ideal of how a lesson would go and what all the things you would do to prepare for it versus a more realistic truth of what's attainable and yet still good of course it's not like we're dropping all of our standards here but the point I want to make is as we're in this transitional period of going back and everything is weird and it's hard and everything else is going on in the world you don't have to craft the perfect lesson.

You don't have to have the same expectations of yourselves and honestly even of your students because things are crazy and so it's up to you how you want to interpret that but the point around it is giving yourself permission to not hold yourself to quite as high of a standard as you typically would.

I have a feeling that I don't have to worry about you letting everything just sort of like you know skit out into not ever getting anything done and not being effective.

I know that's not going to happen so maybe just bringing in a little bit of compassion for yourself a little bit of grace and a little bit of softness and allowing yourself to just know that you might not be able to do as much and that you can give yourself permission to do less.

So that is my invitation for you this week something for you to think about and reflect on and of course we are going to do our self-care which in this case is in the form of meditation.

So I've got my timer all set up for 10 minutes.

Let's go ahead and find our seats.

Again in the interest of getting back to this idea of some back to basics let's just talk a little bit about posture today.

So if you haven't already allowing yourself to just settle into your seat if you're on a cushion that's great just making sure you feel very stable and grounded and if you're sitting on a chair which is more likely making sure that both feet are flat on the ground if you'd like to open your stance slightly to have even more stability I encourage you to do that and sitting in a posture that's upright but not rigid thinking of your vertebrae as being like coins if the coin stack goes too much to one side or too forward or back it'll collapse so allow gravity to help to support you by allowing yourself to stack those coins.

You can rest your hands wherever they're comfortable and I also encourage you to roll your shoulders back.

It might feel a little weird like you're sticking your chest out but we're so hunched over our work and our computers and our tasks that it's nice opportunity just to get a little bit more of that upright posture and a little more openness in the chest area.

You can either close your eyes or lower your gaze and you can go back and forth it's fine and if you haven't already slipped into that first thing I encourage you to do which is deep breathing then let's go ahead and do that now.

Don't worry too much about the correct way to breathe or how it should be done just breathe in whatever way feels comfortable to you.

It feels a little harder for you today to do some of that deeper breathing that's totally fine just do the best that you can and if not deeper maybe just a little slower.

Elongating the inhale and the exhale.

So for those of you who are more experienced you can go ahead and just go right into resting your awareness on whatever anchor you prefer and that course could be breath or the body or sounds or just open awareness but if this is newer for you I'm going to invite you for today to just focus on the breath that's what I'll be talking a little bit about.

If you haven't already allowing your breathing to resume its natural rhythm.

First thing I'll have you tune into is where do you feel your body breathing?

You know you're breathing of course because you would notice immediately if you stopped breathing but other than the fact that conceptually you know you're breathing what are some physical indicators some sensations that you can feel associated with the fact that you're breathing?

You might feel an expansion of the chest abdomen or even the back.

That sensation is one option for you to rest your awareness on.

You might also notice sensation in and around the nose or even the mouth.

The coolness of the air as it goes in,

The fact that it feels warmer as it exits.

If you can't decide just pick one it doesn't matter.

Let's go ahead and just notice that sensation for a bit.

Okay.

And one of the things that's probably occurred,

And if it hasn't yet,

It certainly will soon,

Is your mind is going to wander to other things,

To plans and ideas and thoughts of all kinds.

And I want to remind you that that's not a problem.

It's inevitable.

It's a common misconception that we're trying to cease thinking.

You're not trying to push thoughts away or stop thinking or quiet your mind.

In this type of mindfulness meditation,

You're just choosing to focus your awareness on an anchor,

Which in this case is the breath,

As a way to give yourself a rest from following your thoughts all the time.

So every time you notice that your mind has gotten lost in thought,

That's actually useful,

Because that moment of noticing is the mindfulness bicep curl,

So to speak.

As we keep our attention on the breath,

If it's helpful,

You might want to pay special attention to the moment at the top of the inhale,

Just before the exhale,

And that moment at the bottom of the exhale,

Just before the next inhale.

And if it's interesting to you,

You can even elongate those pauses,

Just as a little bit of a tiny hack to keep your attention here.

And if that doesn't appeal to you,

That's fine.

So in the time that remains,

I think it's about two minutes or so,

I'm going to give us the opportunity to sit mostly in silence.

I'll do a quick check-in one last time.

Just holding your attention and coming back over and over again to the breath until our final bow.

Other thoughts,

Questions?

Noticing where the mind is and if it's wandered,

That's fine.

Just bring it back one more time.

See if you can hold your attention here for these last few moments.

Have fun with it.

Don't put pressure on yourself.

Um That's our 10 minutes.

So happy September,

My dear friends,

And happy month of self-compassion,

Which is often a lot easier said than done.

And once again,

Just cutting yourself some slack this week,

Some permission to do a little bit less,

To be a little bit less perfect.

And I think you'll find that it'll spare you a lot of being hard on yourself unnecessarily at a time when the last thing you need is to make things more difficult than they already are.

So as always,

Thank you so much for taking this time for yourself.

And thank you for allowing me to accompany you on this journey.

And I will see you next week.

Take care.

Bye bye.