Hello! I’m a resident in counseling who’s been lurking around on Lemmy for a while and I want to use this lovely community to both uplift myself and others. I had a period of time in graduate school where I was able to maintain daily meditation sessions, but with the stress of entering the workforce a lot of my good habits fell by the wayside.
It’s time to fix that.
For my first exercise today I spent some time this afternoon in my yard listening to birdsong - I could hear 5 different birds, even though I’m not sure what species they were other than whippoorwills and cardinals! I love feeling like these cute little guys are my neighbors, maybe I should put out some seed for them.
How do you use mindfulness in your own life? Would this community be interested in daily mindfulness check-ins? How else can we uphold each other as a community?
I try to do at least two of the following every day: journaling, walking, art, yoga, meditation, therapy, breath work, gratitude practice.
Recently, I’ve been working on being my own witness and that being enough. When my nervous system starts to react, I try to pause, take a breath, thank whatever protection program is trying its best to serve me, remind myself that I am safe and that I see myself, and then try and respond rather than react. It takes patience, curiosity, and a ton of self-compassion. The more I turn inward, the easier it is for me to turn outward.
Your post reminded me of my favorite Viktor Frankl quote! “Between stimulus and response there is space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”