Welcome to the first blog at Mindfulness and Motion! With January and the new year beginning, my email inbox has been inundated with numerous opportunities and suggestions about how I might be healthier, happier, and better in 2023. From “Nutrition Tips for a Healthy 2023”, “Healthy Brain Games”, the “#1 Exercise To Do as You Get Older”, “A Fool Proof Guide for Self-improvement”, and “The Hack for Making Your Resolutions Stick”, I am unsure where to begin. Frankly, if I paid attention to all of the suggestions, tips, and offers, I am sure that not only would it be overwhelming, I anticipate that I would end up unhappy and unsatisfied; less content with myself and my choices. This is a good lesson in practicing present moment awareness. If I’m not mindful, I could easily develop a predominantly negative view of myself, highlighting all the ways in which I am not enough. I choose NOT to begin 2023 in that mindset. Exploring alternatives, expanding options, and creating intentions that make sense for me seems imperative. I encourage readers to do the same.
The Wellness Industry can assist us in many ways. However, if we are not careful, aware, and attentive to how the information we are exposed to impacts us (e.g., our thoughts, perspective, judgement of self or others) and how we engage with it, we can be significantly, negatively impacted. When we are stuck in negative judgement mode, we are losing out on any benefits of attending to our well-being. During a day long silent retreat I led over the weekend, I heard myself quoting from Jon Kabat-Zinn's book, Full Catastrophe Living: “As long as you are breathing, there is more right with you than there is wrong, no matter how ill or how hopeless you may feel.” This is the mindset that resonates with me and one that I will continue to meditate on throughout the year. Through the practice of mindfulness--formal and informal meditation and seamless awareness of what’s showing up in my thoughts, emotions, and physical states, I am more equipped to listen to my mind and body and make skillful choices around my health and well-being. When we practice broadening our perspective to include pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral tones, we are better equipped to make reasonable choices for what will be supportive of our physical, cognitive, and emotional states.
As I engage in new opportunities, shifts and changes in 2023, I am managing the numerous thoughts and emotions showing up by coming back to the practice of mindfulness regularly. I use daily practice to re-set, re-center and prepare for each day. I use informal awareness of what’s arising within me and around me throughout the day to assist with making choices that support the goals I have set for myself during this transition year to part time clinical work and this new endeavor on my own. It is exciting and scary all at once. Thinking about potential outcomes and opportunities keeps me motivated. Potential outcomes and opportunities are also what I come back to when I find myself loosing focus and/or being off-track.
With this initial blog, I am highlighting some particularly meaningful podcasts I listened to in December that have been useful to me as I prepared for the new endeavors of 2023. Ron Purser provides an interesting perspective about mindfulness. His podcast reminds me to be discerning and to use my own personal mindfulness practice to sit with myself and my own needs, perspective, and internal wisdom to determine what my next, informed choices will be.
Episode 41 - Rina Rapahel: The Gospel Of Wellness from his Mindful Cranks podcast was humorous and helpful: http://www.mindfulcranks.com/podcast-episodes.
I am an avid listener of the Being Well Podcast from Forrest and Rick Hanson. I hope you find their January 1st episode about “Why Don’t We Get Better?” helpful as you consider what is ahead for you in 2023: https://www.rickhanson.net/being-well-podcast-why-dont-we-get-better/.
Wishing you well at the start of 2023 and throughout the year,
Karen
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