Restorative Yoga

Restorative Yoga is one of my favourite practices - and often one of the only practices I can physically manage.

The Lotus Pose - pictured below - is a very light, low impact, stretch. From this pose I often stretch out my arms, reach forward or backward for for deeper back or abdomen stretches, and side to side for oblique stretches.

Simple.

My joints are consistently inflamed. This can cause the muscles to be contracted and downright ticked off. These contracted or kinked muscles doesn't help the overall pain I experience.
Sitting down and practicing restorative stretches, especially while meditating, can help some - even if it is solely to reduce the muscle kinks.
This kind of routine, when I am physically capable of doing so, is great if I am having a tough time arising in the morning or right before bedtime.

Yoga doesn't have to include the strengthening poses or the awe-inspiring stunningly visual poses.
Yoga is supposed to help me. It is supposed to help me reduce pain, reduce muscle tension, and increase strength and flexibility if I can manage that. If all I do is lie down and engage my finger and toe muscles - that is still yoga - and I am still doing something to keep my body active. That is a win!

New Years Resolutions

New Years Resolutions

I don't know about any of you, but I still enjoy writing a list of resolutions.

Well, they're not exactly resolutions per se. They are more like promises: promises to myself most of all.

While my health still continues to slowly decline, I have had much fewer emergency situations over the last year. This wonderfully exciting year.

So my health resolution is to continue as I have been doing. Continue with medications that seem to help keep my illnesses and flare-ups more predictable, continue with treatments and activities that help me build strength and keep me moving without the resulting ER visit. I will continue to advocate for myself and others and to spread awareness and information about illnesses and treatments, as well as try to slow the spread of misinformation and judgement.

My own personal resolution will be to continue finding new things and projects that I enjoy. To always continue to learn, and to listen to my body when it is telling me that I have taken on too much. I will remind myself that I should not feel guilty for oh so many things that I have no reason to feel guilty for in the first place. I will continue to try and do things by-the-book and do my best to feed my curiosity. I will put myself out there artistically regardless of fear or apprehension.

I will try to keep active. I will remind myself daily about how lucky I am. I will spend time meditating and reflecting. I will do my best to ignore those who are disrespectful. I will stand up for my friends and my family should they encounter judgement.

Honestly - my 'resolutions' are all about being grateful and doing my best.
Above all - most importantly - I will try to remain positive as much as possible and be grateful for all that I have experienced and will experience in the future, whether it be blessings or challenges.

❤

Imagery

Whenever I am able to do any meditation, or when I am feeling hopeless and need to imagine a place that I can retreat to within my mind, I have always gravitated to one particular image.
It is a small log cabin deep within the forest, on a mountain. Secluded. Calming. It has an extensive library and this nook with floor-to-ceiling windows. In my meditations, I am sitting there with a blanket, a book, and a cup of tea or hot chocolate. Sometimes the wood-burning fireplace is roaring, sometimes it's not.
I am not terribly imaginative, so if I am doing this meditation in the wintertime, with snow on the ground, then that is the weather at my imagined cabin.
Most times I am alone - spending an hour in my mind-cabin regrouping. Other times I am joined by my puppy and my husband.
Each time it is the same though. The same cabin, the same window, the same landscape.
It is the imagery I have always clung to.
And yet, I wrote a blog post a long time ago that introduced another piece of imagery. This one included a different context - one in which I feel hopeless. It was a lighthouse.
Now since writing that post, that is a second image that I gravitate towards. How odd that writing about a lighthouse can suddenly evolve into loving lighthouses. It all-of-a-sudden means something significant to me.

Lighthouses and cabins.
Those are images that give me a sense of utter calm.

It's important to find imagery that does this for you, especially if you can often feel stuck or trapped within your own body; a body that doesn't work properly.

Fresh Air

Sometimes all I need to feel just a little bit better is a bit of fresh air.
Fresh cold air at sunset with the view of a mountain peak in the distance.
Fresh cold air while putting out Halloween decorations.
Fresh cold air while I throw the ball for the pupper.
Fresh cold air and deep meditative breaths.

Aaaaahhhhhh

Meditation & Medication

Today is a very light day.
My body, although entirely restless and a wandering mind, is telling me to take it eeeeaaasy today. It is also an injection day.
But there's so much I wanna DO!
I have places I want to go and people I want to visit with and things I want to work on at home.
But today, I have to listen to what my physical body is telling me, and that is to relax.

I woke up far too early this morning with some brutal symptoms and I knew that I HAD to get back to sleep, but I could not relax.
So I put on a guided meditation for sleep.
Sure enough, within ten minutes, I was out cold and slept hard for another 3 hours! Perfect!
Then, I decided to have a bath and specifically take up a lot of time, just having a spa day. A spa day means that it was complete with spa music to help me relax into myself.

Wanna know the most successful part of today?
I did not interrupt the meditation.
I did not look at my phone until after my bath. I focused on not focusing on anything but the music. (That's also kind of difficult because with every piano song I wanted to look online and buy the sheet music so that I could learn it).
It has been a successfully restful day.
I need to continue that ... and it's not even 4pm.
Aaaahhhh.