Hi, welcome back to your friendly week-end memo to press pause. Taking time to unplug can be a luxury and the way our modern lives are designed hinders our capacity to know when to give our brains a break. Despite all that may be going on in the world and in your life right now, I want you to remember that it is vital to dedicate time and energy to your wellbeing and healing in order to show up for yourself and others. I’m telling you this the same pressing way I tell my friends.
I’m sure many of you already meditate regularly or maybe you’ve never given it a try. I go through phases, sometimes I am more strict with myself, some other, more groundless, times my brain feels like a plate of cold, semi-burnt scrambled eggs and I simply give up. Anyway, if there’s one thing I’ve learnt in the past few years is that holding compassion for ourselves is the highest form of self-love, and we need a lot of that right now.
A while ago I saw that Reset—a coaching company based in NYC— released a free 7-day meditation course and I can positively attest to the fact that it has inspired me to start meditating again. The course is well-structured and the daily practices include a 15-20 minutes guided meditation, a journaling exercise and a prompt for your daily focus. You can do it in the morning, or evening, or whenever you feel like it. Try the journaling and skip the rest. Turn inward, listen to what your body and soul need, let go and hit pause.
I want to leave you with the words of Pema Chödrön. I am slowly reading through When Things Fall Apart (which I wholeheartedly recommend) and I think this passage bares the essence of what meditation can be for each of us:
“meditation is an invitation to notice when we reach our limit and to not get carried away by hope and fear. Through meditation, we’re able to see clearly what’s going on with our thoughts and emotions, and we can also let them go.”
Like Pema’s teacher Sogyal Rinpoche says, let’s bring our minds back home.
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