Affirmation of the Week

 

GROUNDING PROMPTS 

How often do you feel joy in your life?

Is it enough for you?

Do you feel worthy of feeling joy? In what ways?

What would make you feel worthy?

What do you feel joy about?

What does joy feel to you in these experiences? In your body? In your mind? In your soul?

What blueprint can you create to make you feel joy any time you want? Paint it, draw it, write it, photograph it, record it, sculpt it… to have with you at hand. It is your own chosen permission to feel it 💜💜💜

The Time Is Always Now

Fast-paced lives, looking towards the future, making plans for a better tomorrow, or dwelling on the past, reliving your life's worst traumatic events or most uncomfortable and embarrassing experiences, wishing we could turn back time and do things differently. If only... that's often what we live by. If only I could get a bonus next month, if only I hadn't said that, if only I could win the lottery then I would.

While reliving our life or wishing it away, we totally miss what actually happens to us, right now, in the Present moment.

Have you ever noticed that when your mind is racing with past experiences and preferred alternative outcomes, or you are busy thinking about future plans filled with excitement or dread, you barely breathe? Enough to be alive, for sure, but not deeply, in a restorative manner and purposefully. It is also true when we are stressed, by the way. Breathe...

The Present moment is actually all we have, it is who we are. What we were in the past is gone and what we will be or do in the future hasn't happened yet, some part of it at least out of our control, and, for many various reasons, it might never happen.

It is not to discard the amazing value of the past, learning from our experiences and growing, and the future, making plans and working towards worthy goals to better yourself, your environment and/or your community, but to refocus our attention to the fact that, by forgetting the Present moment, a beautiful piece of the puzzle, we do not live our life fully, enjoying even the little things, consciously. We let it slide and give the power to external sources to lead our life for us.

Focusing on the present moment can be as simple as focusing on your breathing and body response, on your sensations when walking outside - the breeze on your skin, the ground below your feet, the energy in your body when in motion, or stillness, the sun shining in your eyes, the birds singing in the trees, or the dogs barking! Or observing people and surroundings on the bus. When you start focusing on the present moment, you will immediately notice that you automatically slow down. You are not judgmental, you are but an observer of yourself, your inner space, as well as everything around you. Everything and everyone is part of a whole. You feel more alive as you've ever been. It is a beautiful experience.

In a previous article, I presented the Wake Up Your Senses exercise. If you're not sure where to start and you feel that only focusing on your breath will be boring, this is a great exercise to start fully being in the Present moment. For the Present moment is where you truly exist. You know the famous saying, "There is no time like the Present", really, there truly isn't. All our fully lived experiences and sensations happened there - or should I say, here.

The present moment not only opens doors to your fully conscious living, experiencing every sensation possible, but also to opportunities in your relationships to others. The Perfect Time is always now to let a colleague or a loved one know how grateful you are to have them in your life and how much you appreciate them, or notice something amazing or brave they have done.
I fully understand that now that both my parents have died and, despite our complicated relationship, I never told them how much I loved them, even if I wanted to on many occasions while they were still alive, but felt too embarrassed to do so.

Taking the present moment as is and experiencing it as is helps you fight the inner struggle and the barriers you put on yourself that prevent you from moving forward, because we always move forward, in the end - into the next Present moment.

Keeping our gaze on the Present moment opens up your mind and intuition, makes you more open to possibilities and solutions, more compassionate towards yourself and others, and is the best remedy I know against regrets and missed opportunities.

Live your life fully and enjoy it NOW - Carpe Diem, seize the day - fully and consciously.

Wake Up Your Senses

This is a simple exercise that I have included in my meditation practice, but can be done any time really - even at work when your stress levels are hitting the roof. It only takes a minute or 2, so your colleagues won't think you've fallen asleep!

I have found this practice to be very calming and grounding, and it also develops your senses to become more attentive and receptive to what is going on around you.

We have 5 recognised senses - sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch - but most of us will mainly rely on 2 or 3 to navigate through life. Senses are like muscles, the less you engage them, the less responsive they will become in time.

The technique:

• Sit down comfortably but straight with your back supported (you can also lie down if you want to do this exercise in bed or at the end of your yoga practice, for instance). You do not need to be in a quiet place;
  
• Close your eyes and relax - breathe slowly and deeply for 4-5 breaths;
  
• Focus on what you can hear close to you (or inside you) - it can be your breathing, your heart beating, often I can hear internal buzzing - whatever comes to you. Don't force it and do not think about what you should hear. Just listen and pick it up;
  
• Focus on what you can hear further away - kids playing near you, cars outside;
  
• Then switch to what you can see with your eyes closed - I know it sounds pretty contradictory, but even with your eyes closed, light does go through your eyelids, so you are still able to see specks of light, or maybe colours. I very often can see the blood vessels in my eyeballs, the same way I do when I have an eye test; at the beginning, it really freaked me out but I have now learnt to make my peace with it;
  
• Next, focus on what you can smell - it can be a fragrance or the smell of cold, rain, warm... That is the one sense that I personally struggle the most with in this exercise, even though I can always smell someone's perfume on the bus, even if they are at the very back;
  
• Then, focus on what you can taste - from your bad morning breath to the delicious chocolates you've just gobbled up!
  
• After this, focus on what you can touch, what you can feel - your bum sitting on the chair, your clothes on your skin, your hair falling on your neck or your forehead, your watch around your wrist - anything. Again, as for all the other senses, stay with it, observe it internally, enjoy it;
  
• Finally, repeat all the steps briefly but, instead on focusing on each sense individually, layer them up one by one to eventually feel all your 5 senses fully active. Hold them and enjoy the experience of what it feels like to be fully human;
  
• Finish by a few deep breaths and slowly open your eyes to come back to where you are.

The order in which you go through the senses, both individually and in the last phase, doesn't really matter. You can go with the order that you feel most comfortable or natural for you. It will not alter the effects.

Have a try and let me know how your experience was, either by commenting below, or on the Facebook page HERE. I'd love to hear what you thought of this exercise.

Enjoy x