Today, I felt like I got nothing done. It’s only because my way of measuring progress is kind of broken. Because I’m in the slow lane to Camp Happy Times, I forget what I’ve accomplished. The needle on the scale did move, I told myself, because I’m getting through another semester of grad school, for one thing. Plus, my kids are finding tremendous success at moving toward their goals, and that’s another tick forward for me, because I raised them and placed them on the path. This counts!
Even though I was finding it impossible to stay awake and keep my head upright, I was thankful all day. Thankful that I haven’t given up, thankful for my stupid old car, thankful for the basics being met, thankful for the vintage Armani jacket gifted to me by a friend that adds actual fire to my day. Yes, XOXO to her!
But my body ached from not only plain sleep deficiency, but also the effects of emotional and mental stress.
While we are striving to get our lives back on track, to do better for our kids or for ourselves, our pets, whomever we want to do better by…we have to look out for health pitfalls.
You are on this journey with me, so you have the same body unit I do. Your nerves, your stomach, your heart, your lungs, your blood pressure, your immune system – we put them at risk every day as we feel worry, chaos or even outright hostility from the situations we are working on getting away from. You might also get the same anxiety I do when we admit that the stress we experience with our slow journey – not an impossible journey, but just not a fast enough one – could be harming our health.
It’s crazy CRUCIAL to offset these attacks on our health in any tiny way we can.
Your mind and your imagination are powerful. For instance, instead of spending every moment in distress, I only spend most of them like that! Really, though, I often visualize being in a familiar and peaceful place…alone! LOL. It’s actually rare for me to be alone, unless I’m stone-cold asleep (and even then, people want to wake me up for stuff), but when I am alone, I stop my screentime on my phone and put on some super relaxing music with NO lyrics to put myself on a virtual vacation…alone. It removes myself in my mind from my immediate stress.
Remove yourself from the place of stress for a few minutes, and don’t think. At all. Close your eyes, or stare out into space, but take yourself somewhere nice. For me, sometimes I imagine myself at the end of a pier on a quiet lake in Wisconsin from my childhood, and I do a 360 in my mind. I listen to the sounds, and I put myself right there. And I’m not imagining a pile of money or a castle, but I imagining,, well actually, at that moment I AM fine. At that moment, I AM the version of myself I want to be, I’m free and happy and breathing easy.
If you’re at work, and you don’t have private space, take a bathroom break. When I was a young college undergrad, I tended bar in an upscale place to pay the tuition, and I did this on the busiest nights (and mainly, we were just too busy to go on official “break”, but six or seven straight hours of high volume business was insane). I’d go to the ladies room’s largest stall, lock the door, and stretch my arms as high as they would go, and breathe deeply and slowly: pull it in a little, pause, then in again to fill up my lungs all the way, then pause and then out, ten times. TEN. Babes, it’s literally ALL we can do sometimes, and it’s really good. We really can make a difference in our daily patterns and stress levels by doing this.
Yoga Mat. If you are lucky enough to have a private space at work for laying one of these out, do it. Have one at home. It can be just a cheap one, because aside from making a bit of floor more clean and comfortable, there is the mental aspect of literally creating a space, your own rectangular space. I really did this today. I was hit with that slightly despairing sense that I could be “stuck here”, “everyone else has made it but me”…you know, I forgotten the progress I’d made. I’m so serious when I tell you that this helped.
Roll it out. No special yoga required. What stretch do you like? This isn’t a workout session; this is a reminding yourself that you are alive, breathing and still you session. So, pick a stretch that feels good, or more probably, feels bad-good because you are sore from working hard to stay afloat. Get into that stretch, maybe you even put some music or timer on your phone. Just a few minutes.
Now, think about nothing. It’s hard, I know. Sounds counterintuitive, like I should be telling you to be writing down your next business plan or something. No. This time is for you, and you can only move forward if you take care of you. Just relax on the mat, or a space you’ve found. Slow your heart rate, calm your nerves.
If you’re really wild, you will say it out loud, “I’m ok.”
You are ok.
If you can take one step to keeping your health intact this week, it counts. You’re still moving forward.
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The Slow Sojourn 