Hey there everybody this is Kristen from Teaching Balance and I am here with you with this week's mindfulness meditation practice.
We are in the month of New Year,
New Know,
Which is all about letting things go and burdening yourself,
Establishing boundaries.
I mean it's it's a beautiful catch-all really and when I was thinking about this theme I think when one year I made you know the word know in everything but I'm not really feeling that this year.
I was thinking about a phrase that I recently read in a book I didn't bring it with me but it's a pretty fun book because of course it's January and we're in the depths of winter and it's a book about Hygge which you've probably heard of before it's spelled H-Y-G-G-E I think and it is this you know my understanding is it originated in Denmark and it's this idea of creating excuse me warmth and coziness but it's not just physical warmth and physical coziness but it has this sort of like you know energetic quality to it so it's been a fun kind of fun book to read and the phrase that I really enjoyed seeing that I underlined was around this idea of allowing yourself from time to time to temporarily set down your burdens.
So I mean you could use a lot of phrases here but like putting things down for a while,
Setting down your burdens,
Giving yourself a break you know your burden and whatever I'm like gesturing this way but you know you can think of it like off your shoulder and this can be something where you just you know maybe give yourself a pass for a certain amount of time on whatever thing you think you could use a break on whether it's being particularly efficient with your chores or maybe the pressure that you put on yourself to like be there for everyone all the time or whatever it might be.
I think that you know this is certainly not about just you know tossing up your hands and saying to hell with it all you know it's not like that but it's more like yeah taking breaks is helpful and it's healthy and it helps us to have a little bit more stamina where we take those breaks from time to time to kind of build ourselves back up if you're into any kind of athletics those ideas of like a rest day whether you're training for some sort of a run or weights or whatever it might be the point is it's good to take those days to give yourself those breaks and to continue the metaphor into what I'm describing today to give yourself the opportunity just to set something down for a while.
Now I've given a few examples but the other thing I actually just popped into my head that feels worth mentioning is you could also even view this as a worry like a worry that it's not necessarily as though it's not a worthwhile worry there's a great deal to be concerned about in the world as well as in our own small worlds individually but sometimes it's just exhausting to to to feed that worry and to let it keep going again doesn't mean it's not valid but there's a point where it's like a subroutine in a computer running it just drains you know the RAM or like the energy you know the ability for the computer to run and of course to continue that metaphor to continue for you to run at maximum you know potential or at least you know to be functioning well so feel free to just reflect on what that might look for you look like for you it could be this idea of setting down a worry that's been on your mind maybe just say I'm gonna give myself a break for a week and every time I think of that I'll say I'm not gonna worry about that until whatever I mean you can even pick a date and of course this idea of setting down the other things in our lives the other burdens tasks responsibilities even if you're passing them off to someone else or you're just letting them ride for a while if that's something that is possible so just play with that and to come back to the hookah theme one I think the context of it if I recall correctly was this idea of you know it's really important to take breaks and to you know not only that but I think the context was specifically about gathering with others and the sense of like friendship community all of those types of things and you know when you come into that space to be more fully present then it's easier if you allow yourself to leave your burdens by the door when you come in for this gathering to share and be open with and present to others so do with that what you will now of course one of the things that makes presence more accessible in them in any moment is where our mindfulness practice because we become more aware of our internal experience we become more metacognitive we tend to notice our stress levels or whatever our emotional escalation going up before it gets quite as far as we might have without being meditators and so I say this is a wonderful way for us just to keep that ability to be self-aware in good working order so that it's easier is to do these practices and of course there's also something really nice about taking a break for 10 minutes so let's go ahead and do that I'm gonna ask you to either close your eyes or lower your gaze find that posture that feels supportive to you you've heard me talk about it before that one way to allow a seated posture to feel even more supportive is to think of your vertebrae as coins stacked one upon the other so they are self supporting and perhaps it would require a little less effort on your part to hold this posture and if you're lying down perhaps tweaking how you're lying bringing into it a little bit just a little bit more of a sense of formality you're not just lying there you're not trying to sleep instead you are meditating in a lying down position so what might that look like for you if you haven't already taking some of those long slow deep breaths in whatever way feels right to you and then as you continue to settle in noticing what anchor for your attention do you feel most drawn to today in this moment could be the breath could be the body in its entirety or one part of the body it could also be sounds I'm feeling drawn to sounds right now but ironically there isn't really much sound in this room a slight settling of the house what I hear more than anything else is just that ringing in my ears that so many of us have when things go completely silent now hearing a plane flying overhead I think there's something interesting about choosing an external anchor like sounds as opposed to something more internal like the breath or the body it really depends on your mood and your preference but for me the unpredictability of it is interesting and my job is just to stay present to it and then when my mind inevitably wanders which of course it will as well yours just noticing that my mind has wandered and then bringing it back and I feel like this can happen when there's a lot of sounds and when there's very few kind of doesn't seem to make much of a difference for me so whichever anchor you choose let's go ahead and sit in relative silence for a while and I'll check back in a few noticing where the mind is now if it's wandered into thought or imagination remembering that's all part of the experience then you've heard me say before that the noticing that our mind has wandered is the sweet spot that is how we the vehicle through which we strengthen our self-awareness our mindfulness so it's never a problem each wandering is an opportunity to do that mindfulness bicep curl so to speak so for the time that remains allowing ourselves just to settle in reconnect to our anchor or object of our awareness and allow ourselves to rest there until you hear the final bell that's our ten minutes so in this month of new year new know giving ourselves the opportunity to set down our worries our burdens our pressures at least for a little while and just to reflect on like I said at the beginning first of all what might be something that sounds like it would be the perfect thing to choose and also if you're finding yourself feeling resistance to that in any way maybe reflecting on why that might be and either choosing something else or really just allowing it to be an opportunity for self-reflection 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 I will see you next week take care bye
