June 7, 2024
Dear leader,
I have been beating myself up about not meditating every day this week. The Noom app came to the rescue, though, with today's encouragement. It said, “You have permission to not be perfect. You don't have to be perfect in order to be successful.” Hey, thanks, Noom.
That's another practice I just added this week, doing the cognitive behavioral therapy in Noom to build healthier eating habits so I can maintain the health I've gained through the medical weight loss program I am just about to complete.
I have a lot of practices. A lot. I wrote them all down once and I just now consulted that list. It was a pretty long list to begin with and I added a few more. It's a tad longer now.
Some of the practices in the list are things like running while doing a chakras cleansing, swimming, 5 rhythms movement, self-hypnosis audios, cord release, meditation both zazen and guided, dream yoga, yin yoga, 3-2-1 shadow process, gene keys, and the list keeps going.
I'll share the whole list at the bottom of this letter.
I originally made this list about five years ago to justify to myself that these practices are real things, have real benefits, and take real time to do. Sometimes I would get to the end of my day and feel disappointed because I didn't get enough done. But I also wasn't counting the time and energy it takes to do these practices. Significant time and energy, it turns out.
These practices are my fuel for all the other stuff I count as accomplishments in my day, although I can easily cheat myself out of them if I fall back to my previous view of these practices being extra. Like I have to somehow squeeze them in on my own non-work time. What a ridiculous carryover from the factory floor mentality, non-work time. Yet there it is, and there it was, and it is definitely still here to some degree: that mentality that taking care of oneself is somehow separate from taking care of business. That's the remnant that's still here sometimes.
I'm glad I resurrected this list. It reminds me of some practices I've forgotten about. Some of them used to be daily, well, mostly daily occurrences. Here's one that I haven't been doing in a long time and would have been useful even last week. It's cord release.
Cord release is dead simple. You listen to a guided meditation and in it you release the unhealthy cords or connections to another person, group, or event. You can reestablish a healthy chord if you wish or just let them all drop. (Here’s the audio by Marisa La Fata I have been using lately).
I really could have used this practice in the last week as I have been drawn into a number of unwanted political conversations that got my social justice blood boiling. What did the Noom app say? I have permission to not be perfect?
Well, that's a relief. It makes it more likely I'll drop the self-recrimination about not doing the practice and just do the damn practice.
There are times when I don't do any of the practices. when sleeping is much preferable to anything else. I am a champion napper, and I have no trouble sleeping nine hours a night. The problem is that I love it so much that it's sometimes hard to get out of the bed. Obviously, it's one of my escapes, along with watching untold hours of home renovation shows. But sometimes it's also a practice.
I notice I've been falling asleep during Zazen meditation this week, and also while listening to Gene Keys audios.
I theorize that some times in my life, or maybe some information that's coming in, are just too intense for full-on wakefulness. A softer entry is needed. A sliding in and out of conscious thought.
Of course, I could be kidding myself, and I really am just lazy. Whoops. There's that factory floor mentality again.
Well, I'll leave you with these fragmented thoughts about habits, practices, and what counts as accomplishment.
Love,
Lyssa
ps. Here’s the list of practices sorted by the 3 bodies: gross (physical), subtle (energetic), causal (eternal) + shadow
Gross
swimming
dance cardio class
aqua bata
logging what I eat and reprogramming eating habits
simplistic mobility method
Gross/Subtle
yin yoga
dancing with the divine (Qoya)
5 rhythms
Gross/Causal
running while doing chakras cleansing
focused intensity training
Subtle/Causal
meditation (zazen & guided)
cord release
metta chanting
432 Hz music
iAwake meditation audios
self-hypnosis audios
daily gratitude
dream yoga (dzogchen)
Shadow
3-2-1 shadow process
voice dialogue/polarities perspective taking
gene keys
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