Hello and welcome to mindful moments.
This is Susan and I have been asked by people to start to do things on audio versus video so that you can listen to it wherever you are in the car or whatever without having to worry about watching me.
So,
Today I wanted to share with you some thinking I had about our time right now at home during this pandemic and how what I've seen a lot of is a lot of fitness stuff going around,
You know,
Which is great.
Wanting to build strength,
You know,
We all feel like,
Oh,
This is great time we've got so let's do something,
You know,
To strengthen our bodies and I love that right we all probably struggle with time.
So,
There's cool online things that are available to us now,
You know like Facebook pages and challenges and one of the challenges that I've been doing that I've seen as the plank challenge you know you hold the plank,
And then you just try to hold it for longer and longer as the days progress and it's cool because you really do see a change you know you see yourself being able to hold it longer,
Maybe struggling a little less,
At least for me in the beginning.
And I love that you know that kind of that core building the core.
And it made me realize that another thing that I've been working on is my,
My meditation and mindfulness and,
Which I have for a while but I've been trying to take this time to do more and more,
And it really occurred to me that it's the same kind of thing.
You know,
It's not necessarily the outer strength but it's the inner strength.
So what's within us.
You know we talk a lot about.
I feel like if you're into kind of movement and and working out and things we talked about the core right building the core the core is central to how the body is working,
Even just day to day movement,
You know we we need our core and it's exactly the same thing when you turn it on the inside.
You know the core on the inside.
It's very important right now.
It always is,
But in times of challenge and difficulty.
It really becomes something that we need to fall back on and that that's called resilience you know the ability to be able to respond to what's happening in the moment and again you probably have a great reference for this in your own body.
You know if you fall or if you need to do certain movements,
You have to have that solid core it's the same thing with inner strength with our inner cells.
And one way to do that is through mindfulness through meditation.
These ways of learning to be with ourselves in a different way.
So,
Mindfulness.
It's really about coming into this present moment,
You know,
Being aware of where you are right now,
Inside of yourself and outside of yourself.
So you do that on purpose.
And then doing that with great generosity and kindness.
That's really what mindfulness is we've all experienced it.
So it's learning and teaching ourselves to continually come back to ourselves that's really what it is you know this body that houses us,
So to speak,
Coming back home to ourselves and meditation is the practice of that.
That's all it is it's just a way,
Literally to train the mind,
You're training your brain and the brain is trainable.
It can create new pathways,
And it can get rid of old pathways it's an incredible Oregon that we're learning more and more about.
So meditation,
You know when you sit down and meditate and here's the thing it's not doesn't have to be this big mysterious,
You know you got to have a special place and it's got to be a special time and you got to be wearing something special.
It really isn't that.
You know we meditate we practice mindfulness we meditate in these ways,
In order to have a better life.
That's really all it is just so we can be more awake in our lives.
So we have that inner strength to pull from when we need it to be in as we need it.
We don't meditate to get better meditating.
We better we meditate to better ourselves.
So that's something to think about,
Is we have lots of time now maybe not lots of time maybe you know some of us don't have much time.
If you have children at home or other things that now you're having to deal with at home,
You don't have a lot of time.
And yet we can still find or make the time by bringing our awareness to what's happening right now.
And so even right now.
Where's your mind.
Is it on my voice and what we're talking about right now or do you find that it wanders away and just kind of thinks about other things.
It does that it's going to do that.
But right now where's your mind.
Did it wander off for a moment.
And then you can you bring it back.
Just the wandering of the mind is the piece that that we want to become more aware of.
It's not judging ourselves because we were gone for a minute.
It's bringing us back.
So bring it back right now.
To our conversation to where you are.
And just in this few seconds.
Notice what's around you look around.
With curiosity.
Maybe see things differently.
And then listen what are you hearing.
Beyond you far away from you.
Just coming into those senses.
Our senses are our gateway.
To mindfulness.
And even in those few seconds.
Did you kind of reflect back.
How do you feel.
You know your nervous system starts to calm down a little bit.
Maybe things slow down even for just a moment.
That's an essence mindfulness.
And the more you can do that bring yourself back to where you are.
You know the mind and the body are so typically not in the same place.
I'm sure you can relate.
How many times have you driven somewhere home and you didn't even know how you got there.
It becomes automatic.
You become on autopilot and there's some wonderful things with that.
The brain is incredible that it can store that and direct your body to what to do.
But I would say that there's a lot of opportunity in there to live your life.
That maybe we're missing because we are on autopilot.
And it's bringing yourself back every time that you remember that's a practice in itself.
That's an informal practice and everyone has the ability to do that.
We'll talk a little bit more about formal practice and I will make available some guided meditations for that.
But I wanted to just very quickly talk to you about that inner strength,
The inner resilience that you already have.
And continue to nourish and can cultivate even more of.
One way to do that is informal practice.
It's by bringing yourself right to the moment.
So right now where's your mind?
Check in.
Bring it back.
Sometimes it helps to have an anchor like sounds.
What you're seeing in front of you and sometimes it's your breath.
As a powerful tool you can always take a deep breath.
One deep breath sometimes is enough.
The next time that you are taking a walk or you're stepping outside,
Just use your senses as a gateway to come back into the moment.
And the more you do that,
The more that your inner strength is developed and awakened because you already have it.
So come back to that.
Come back to that resource within you.
So powerful.
And the more that each of us does that,
The more that we all get stronger together.
So good luck with your strength training,
Your workouts,
Your outside body.
But maybe try a little bit more as we go forward with your inner strength.
May peace be within you and may you have peace with others.
Take care.
