Meditation as Self Care
As I've been touting the last two weeks, self care is a pretty amazing thing. It makes us feel cared for, held and loved. It inspires us to be compassionate and grateful. But what if there's no time for self care? What do you do in those times? Sometimes we get stuck in a doing pattern, out of necessity or out of habit. Self care can be your escape from the vortex and a path to freedom.
If you have a particularly busy work schedule, sick loved ones, a loved but time-consuming hobby, a commitment you made, kids' schedules, volunteering, traveling, [enter your time sucker here], it can be difficult to see how the square peg of self care will fit into this round hole of doing. Take a deep breath...and exhale...this is one thing you can do to take care of yourself. Even if it's 5 breaths before getting out of the car, that's something to halt the vortex and bring you into the present. You're giving yourself much needed oxygen, a more even breath which leads to a more even mind, and attention. A little bit of freedom.
Somewhere in your day must be 5 minutes to meditate. If not, make it happen. You can do this. Meditation is a time-saver, not a time-waster. It makes you more efficient in your non-meditation time, it gets you to be realistic with your time and energy and it boils things down to what's important. You may find that when you take 5 minutes to meditate, you end up deciding to take 5 things off today's to-do list, because they are 1) unnecessary and 2) impossible to complete in one day without becoming a screaming mess, let alone how impossible they would be added to the 10 things that remain on the list, and what kind of monster would emerge from your neck after your head disconnects from your body. You may find that those 5 minutes of meditation do so much for you that you turn them into 10 minutes and eventually 20. Imagine the vortex stopping, or at least slowing, for 20 whole minutes.
This is a task, for sure - to get out of the doing pattern. Weaning yourself off of the pattern takes innovation and perserverance. It's likely you can't walk away from your commitments or shock those who depend on you with your 180. But you can dig slowly and steadily while completing your tasks, like Andy Dufresne through the Shawshank walls, and find your freedom.