Raise your hand if you watched the Social Dilemma on Netflix. Keep your hand up if you’re still reeling, terrified, and overwhelmed about your own tech addiction.
I know it’s not just me! I see you, and you are so not alone.
That’s why I created these simple journal sheets to help you – once and for all – break up with your tech! Don’t worry, I won’t make you give it up completely. All I know is – I have felt more spacious, more productive, and more happy and energized ever since I set my own tech limits.
Raise your hand if you watched the Social Dilemma on Netflix. Keep your hand up if you’re still reeling, terrified, and overwhelmed about your own tech addiction.
I know it’s not just me! I see you, and you are so not alone.
That’s why I created these simple journal sheets to help you – once and for all – break up with your tech!
Don’t worry, I won’t make you give it up completely.
All I know is – I have felt more spacious, more productive, and more happy and energized ever since I set my own tech limits.
Here are just a few of my tech hacks:
Early on in the Pandemic, I started limiting my TV intake. It’s far too easy to just veg out mindlessly on another night in, and suddenly realize – 5 hours have gone by!
I’ve also been personally trying to me more mindful of how many open tabs I have at one time (I’m the Tab Queen), to ensure I’m uber-focused on the task at hand while working on my desktop.
My latest hack is the phone schedule – did you know you can actually make a schedule for where your phone will be at all times? I show you how in the journal sheets! Phones have a way of sneaking back into our living rooms, bedrooms, dinner tables, and hands. They say that, simply having a phone in your eyeline is enough to break down social connection and productivity. These are some powerful dark magic devices! We would all be wise to be as proactive as possible when it comes to how we relate to them, especially if we don’t want them unconsciously running our lives.
Immediately after watching The Social Dilemma, I purchased a real alarm clock so I can – once and for all – keep the phone out of the bedroom! Some day I might go so far as to purchase a little charging bed for her, a la Arianna Huffington. 😉
Now I’d love to hear from you, Dear Ones – what are your fav hacks for limiting your tech usage? How has it impacted your mental and emotional wellness? Tell us in the comments below!
If you enjoyed setting boundaries as an act of self-love, why not sign up for my FREE 7-Day Challenge, RESILIENT? It all starts November 9th! Save your seat!
Dear Ones! I’m thrilled to share today a piece I wrote for Ekhart Yoga, my fav online yoga studio. I recommend becoming a monthly subscriber to my coaching clients, and I would also recommend it to you! Start your free trial here. This piece originally was published to Ekhart Yoga on August 19, 2020 here.
Since COVID-19 became a household term, many of us are trying to delicately balance staying safe and saving lives with maintaining our own mental, physical and spiritual wellness. Like many people, the pandemic has given me the opportunity to examine my self-care rituals and routines, and pushed me to solidify an at-home yoga practice.
Practicing yoga at home doesn’t just meet your needs of staying healthy and balanced – it also uniquely facilitates a self-love practice! Self-love underpins every genuine attempt at self-care – whether it’s a yoga practice, a desire to eat healthier foods, training for a marathon, or spending the day relaxing. When you drill down to the core desire of wellness, it’s to love yourself more. Sometimes, just reconnecting with this intention is enough to shift our priorities and mindset when it comes to self-care.
As a self-care coach, I hold my clients’ hands as they journey inward to meet themselves, know themselves, and love themselves more. So how do we love ourselves more? By becoming aware of our own needs, holding them with compassion and non-judgment, and skilfully meeting them. This requires, above all, the space to be vulnerable, empowered, and at home in our experience. Without feeling pressure to perform, keep up, or get it perfect, we just might experience self-acceptance and self-love. That’s where a home yoga practice comes in.
Without feeling pressure to perform, keep up, or get it perfect, we just might experience self-acceptance and self-love.
Be more vulnerable
From the privacy of your home, you don’t have to worry about anyone seeing you fall out of a pose, your underwear sticking out of your yoga pants, or that moment you need to stay in child’s pose a little longer. By being alone and totally open to all you are experiencing in each asana, you’re training yourself to be more in tune with your own needs. You can wear whatever you want (or nothing at all!), you can pause, rewind, and fast-forward to adjust the lesson to your needs. You may sacrifice the accountability of signing up for an in-person class, but – with an at home practice – you are in control.
On our self-love journey, control over when and where we are vulnerable is deeply empowering. We all need safe spaces to be fully honest without the perceived fear of social repercussions. For many people – especially people who fall outside of the oppressive body standards and beauty norms of society – traditional yoga studios can feel exclusive and even harmful. Feel empowered to push your boundaries by trying a completely new style of yoga (Budokon, Yamuna, Iyengar are all styles I had never even heard of before EkhartYoga!).
Be empowered
Speaking of vulnerability, you can feel free to modify those poses as you wish! While many teachers offer modification in class, it can be hard to give ourselves permission to modify while others are watching. Although we sometimes benefit from this accountability challenge, we may feel pressure to prioritize social belonging (i.e. trying to match the teacher and fellow students in the class) over listening to our own bodies.
Yoga is about balance – but why is there more emphasis than ever on the Yang practices of power yoga, core yoga, and hot yoga springing up in studios all over the world? Where are the Yin Yoga studios specializing in restoration, integration, and embodiment? While it may prove difficult to find such balance always in the yoga industrial complex, find it instead within your own at-home practice. Allow yourself to modify and truly listen to your body, as needed. Now you don’t have to wait until your studio’s Friday night candle-lit restorative yoga class to find these experiences. Light some candles, search for a “Yin Yoga” class on EkhartYoga and start unwinding and unraveling immediately.
Set the moodfor your home practice
When you practice at home, you have the chance to create those yoga studio/retreat vibes within your sacred space! Light a few candles, burn some incense, play relaxing music. Some people dedicate entire rooms in their homes to yoga and meditation! Even if that’s not accessible for you, consider how you can set the tone in a corner or your backyard for regular practice. Hanging a plant or piece of art that puts you in a state of mindfulness will help set the tone. Keep your yoga mat, bolster, blocks and straps in view. Design the space so that, when you see it, you automatically desire to drop everything and practice yoga! Setting the mood not only helps ensure we practice, it also signals to our brain that there is a container, a safe space, in which to practice self-love.
Meet your own needs
Perhaps the best reason to practice on-demand yoga is schedule flexibility. You can seamlessly incorporate your practice into a larger self-care routine any time of day. Stumble out of bed, and right onto the yoga mat in the morning. If you work from home do some gentle stretching on your lunch break. At the end of the day, after Savasana, you can simply roll over and go to sleep! Let your home yoga practice hold you in moments of sudden desperation, anxiety, or pain. Yoga can become an automatic self-compassion response to life’s unscheduled pain.
Yoga can become an automatic self-compassion response to life’s unscheduled pain.
Simply hop onto your EkhartYoga dashboard and filter classes based on the length of time you have. Whether it’s five minutes or an hour, there’s something to fit every time window. The customization doesn’t end there – you can also filter by level, specific use, teacher or style based on what your body, mind, spirit is telling you it needs. Feeling like going slow and staying low to the ground? Try a search with terms like “slow” or “gentle”. Want something specifically for upping your depleted energy? Look for Vinyasas, or search the term “energizing”. When you actively search for the class, the thing that suits your unique needs at that moment, you are telling yourself that you can have your own back.
Listen to your body’s wisdom
In an at-home practice, you may feel safer to go deeper, close your eyes if your balance allows, and feel what each pose has to offer you. Consider yourself a body-wisdom channel. This means you trust the natural intelligence of your body, and actively seek to translate those messages for yourself.
You can practice this by paying attention with each pose – how does it feel? What muscles are being activated? What is being stretched? Do things feel worse, better, or the same as the last time you practiced? How quiet was your mind after the practice? Were you able to sit for longer in your post-yoga meditation?
Once you’re finished, take out your journal. Write about what showed up for you. You can even write a letter from a specific body part – my feet, psoas, and hips always have a lot to say. Sometimes these parts just want our attention and care. Other times, they have intuition contained within them about something that’s been on our minds. The point is to develop a relationship with your body as a source of guidance that you can lean on at any time.
Your journey begins
While many of us are missing the community, accountability and energy of an in-person yoga experience during COVID-19, an at-home yoga practice can facilitate new experiences of self-love. The freedom to be more vulnerable, modify poses and classes as you see fit, set the mood for yourself, and practice whenever you want opens up room for knowing and loving yourself more. You can also find the space to lean into your body’s intuitive wisdom and guidance through witnessing and journaling after an at-home yoga experience. Let your at-home yoga ritual super-charge your self-love journey!
Relax your heart until you are actually face-to-face with the exact place where it hurts. Stay open and receptive so you can be present right where the tension is. You must be willing to be present right at the place of the tightness and pain, and then relax and go even deeper. This is very deep growth and transformation. But you will not want to do this. You will feel tremendous resistance to doing this, and that’s what makes it so powerful.As you relax and feel the resistance, the heart will want to pull away, to close, to protect, and to defend itself. Keep relaxing. Relax your shoulders and relax your heart. Let go and give room for the pain to pass through you. It’s just energy. Just see it as energy and let it go.
― Michael A. Singer,The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself
If I know one cure-all for life’s many ailments, whether it’s stress, heartache, fear, or exhaustion – it’s presence. Why is it so powerful to pull us back to what is true? Because it’s the only thing that’s true.
Think about it – when you can trace your suffering back to your thoughts or a story in your mind, you’ve got your answer: suffering is a delusion. When we aren’t present with what’s really going on, we suffer! When we squish it down, cover it over, we shut our hearts off. When we turn our hearts off to pain, we also turn them off to love.
The quality of presence is love. So turning toward presence – especially when we’re suffering and identifying with the suffering (e.g. “This is my fault. I feel bad, therefore I am bad. I did something wrong, and I deserve this.”), is a radical act of self-compassion.
And that’s why it’s so effing hard!
So let’s hack it. 5 shortcuts to presence have proven super helpful to me whenever I’m stuck in a shame spiral, feeling completely disconnected from my higher self, or for when I can recognize I’m in a delusion.
Recognizing we’re in a delusion can be the hardest part. But if you’re suffering – take a step back and ask yourself:
What is the story I’m believing right now?
Could it be possible that my thoughts are real but not true?
Whose voice is it that I’m hearing in my head?
Am I resisting presence, wisdom, or some higher truth in this moment?
Once you recognize you’re in a delusion, choose to consciously turn towards presence with these 5 simple hacks:
1.Breath Games
Breath games are my absolute favorite way to return to presence. You could call it “breathing”, but how boring is that? We’re always breathing – the key is to do it consciously.
Breathing is accessible as long as there is breath in your lungs – no one can take it from you. That simple power can help embolden you to take control of the rest of your experience.
Breathing deeply signals to your brain that it’s time to relax, as when you are sleeping. You can reverse-engineer this sensation in the body at any time through the power and control of your breath.
Begin by noticing the quality of your breath. Is it long or short? Deep or shallow? Painful, pleasurable, or neutral? Where do you notice it in the body – is it in your lungs, chest, throat, belly, or under the nostrils?
Take a deep breath in, filling your lungs completely. Imagine you are filling them top to bottom, left to right, backwards and forwards. Now, notice the space between inhaling and exhaling. Finally, exhale the breath completely noticing your lungs emptying, the way you noticed them filling.
Repeat this deep breathing 3 more times, then let your breath return to normal. What do you notice already?
Next, practice 4-7-8 breathing. Breathe in to the count of four, hold to the count of seven, and extend your exhale to the count of eight. According to Dr. Andrew Weil, this breath technique may help with reducing anxiety, falling asleep, managing cravings, and controlling or reducing anger responses (source).
Sometimes, when I can’t remember the exact counts for each, I simply make my exhale twice as long as my inhale with a gap in between. This breath always helps me come back to presence. When my mind is focused on the count, everything else just falls away.
Another technique I adore is alternate nostril breathing. Make your hand into a “hang loose” gesture, with your thumb and pinky extended. Sitting in a meditative pose with your eyes closed, begin breathing deeply in and out. Place your thumb on your right nostril and breathe in through your left. Now, remove your thumb and plug your left nostril with your pinky. Exhale. Inhale again through your left nostril, then switch so that your thumb is plugging your right nostril again. You will always inhale through the same nostril which you just exhaled through before switching fingers, keeping your hand in the “hang loose” pose throughout.
This breathing technique slows the amount of air coming in and out of the lungs, which can help you naturally extend the breath. Plus, you’re very intensely focused on the technique, which can help quiet all other mental noise.
2. Aromatherapy
Another instantaneous way to hack into the present moment is your olfactory senses! Did you know that your olfactory glands in your brain are tied to your central nervous system in such a special, ancient way? This is why smell is the strongest sense associated with memory.
How it works: Our olfactory bulb sensors are actually part of the brain, and send messages directly to the most primitive brain centers where they influence emotions and memories, and “Higher” centers where they can affect conscious thought. In fact, this is the only place where our central nervous system is directly exposed to our environment (source). Pretty cool, huh?
I love keeping essential oils in my bag, so I can take a whiff of lavender or rosemary when I’m feeling anxious. I also keep peppermint on hand for its anti-inflammatory powers in case anyone is feeling muscle aches or cramps.
Lighting a candle instantly sanctifies a space, don’t you think?
Sometimes I simply brew some herbs or spices on my stove top to add some much needed humidity and aromatherapy to my desert home.
Beyond the day-to-day functional aromatherapy, burning incense is a beautiful way to step into sacred self-care ritual. Whether you’re meditating, doing at-home yoga, or chanting a kirtan, light some incense beforehand and see how it anchors and grounds your ritual!
3. Mantra
Mantra comes and goes for me. There are times in my life I can trace back to a specific mantra, and there are seasons where this just wasn’t in my practice. It is currently a part of my morning ritual – just after finishing my meditation, I sit on my yoga mat with my half-cold coffee in hand and ask myself, “What wisdom will I need to be reminded of today, that I can access right now?”
When I’m still halfway in that quiet and Divine space of meditation, mantras have a way of just coming to me. Yet another example of how the power of intention and receptive energy can be all it takes to manifest what we seek.
I find my mantra throughout the day, nourishing me, anchoring me and protecting me from some pretty dark delusions. It’s not always the sole solution, but usually it’s enough to bring me back to earth. For example, I had an embodied experience of primal fear the other day. Because of my mantra practice, my impulse was to place my hand on my heart and say to myself, “I am safe. I am loved. I am safe. I am loved.” Just like that. Over and over.
Let me tell you – my felt experience instantly shifted from one of fight or flight to a more present, receptive, calm state (hello, parasympathetic nervous system!).
It may sound corny or woo woo, but being able to tell yourself what you most need to hear is the incredibly powerful. It instantly transports you back to presence. You tend to believe the things you tell yourself (inner critic, anyone?). And – like the breath – it’s always accessible to you.
Think about that: Whatever you most need to hear is always just a mantra away. Adopt a mantra for your hour, day, week, year, and/or your entire life. Say it in your head or say it aloud – it makes no difference. Write it down and stick it on your mirror, your steering wheel, your cat. Play with mantra, and see how your relationship to presence and to yourself begins to shift.
4. Routine Hooks
Routine hooks are my new favorite thing! My sister reminded me that Eckhart Tolle writes about how brushing our teeth can be a good container for presence. We do it everyday, hopefully a couple times a day, but how quickly do we check out during this routine activity!
“Most people treat the present moment as if it were an obstacle that they need to overcome. Since the present moment is Life itself, it is an insane way to live.”
– Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth
This got me thinking about the subreddit, “Shower Thoughts”. The basic premise is that people have their best thoughts in the shower. It’s a magical, mystical place where we spend 5 or 20 minutes each day, and we do it so robotically that our brains can be entirely devoted to “more productive things.”
Oh, doesn’t our ego just love that?! The instant transport from the present moment to some place where we feel we are really needed – solving some problem, practicing for some inevitable conflict, or planning some ideal fantasy.
But, like Eckhart says, the present moment is literally all we have. It’s all we’re guaranteed. So let’s start using routine activity to jar us back to the present moment. You can do it in the shower, when you’re driving, brushing your teeth, watering your plants, going up or down the stairs, riding the elevator, waiting in the checkout line – anywhere!
You don’t have to try and be perfectly present 24/7, but it can be helpful to associate one of these everyday activities as a trigger for presence. I’m committing to breathing and anchoring in presence while I brush my teeth. At least my toothbrush has a two-minute timer, so this should be relatively simple!
5. Body Scan
Who is our constant companion, no matter where we go or how much time passes? Who can guarantee they will be there when all others fail us? Our beautiful bodies!
I believe the body is a portal to a Divine experience of love, presence, gratitude, ease, and even pleasure.
My go-to falling asleep trick is to do a body scan. It also works wonders for shaking me back into the present moment whenever I notice my attention wandering.
Simply start with your feet on the floor. Close your eyes if possible. Breathe. Feel your feet, and the supportive ground beneath them. Let that energy travel upward into your ankles, calves, knees, thighs, buttocks, low back, belly, solar plexus, chest, upper back, shoulders, neck, upper arms, forearms, wrists, hands, fingers, face, crown of the head.
Learning to inhabit each body part on its own and as part of a connected whole is a skill you can develop. It will help you immensely with anxiety attacks, insomnia, fear and depression.
Another technique is to find a space that feels neutral in your body and focus on it. After some time, find a place that feels pleasurable and focus on it. Whether neutral or pleasurable, imagine the sensation growing and expanding throughout your whole body. Allow this process several minutes.
Ever-Present Presence
Presence is SO important in the fight against overwhelm, anxiety and even attention deficiency. It is all too easy for me to flip on a podcast and zone out at the end of a long day. Our brains love the feeling of learning something new! But presence benefits us in everlasting ways, it’s just harder to cultivate and feel the immediate benefits, at first.
This work gets easier, I promise. For me, it ebbs and flows. It is a lifelong journey. There are seasons where I’m completely feeling my presence – vibing with the shimmery sensations during a body scan or tearing up with wordless wisdom emanating from within.
The good news is – Presence is always available to you. You just have to consciously decide to turn toward it. Luckily, these 5 hacks have got you covered!
I’d love to hear from you, Dear One! What is your favorite way to connect with presence? Have you tried any of these 5 hacks, and which one worked best for you?
Be well & take gentle self-care, my loves! And enjoy Valentine’s Day Week – don’t forget to be your own Valentine & soul mate first. If you need help, I’ve created a 12-week program to coach you through just that.
Today, I’m talking about something SUPER VULNERABLE and scary: I’m putting my relationship with alcohol under the microscope. You may have seen my Instagram posts from my 30-day journey without alcohol. On Day 1, I woke up and started writing this post.
Only, I didn’t know it was a post, I thought it was just some diary ramblings never to be seen by anyone else. But, the thing is, we need to be brave enough to show people our mistakes, our challenges.. Our ugly. I believe with all my heart this is the only path to create authentic community. And that’s so what I desire for Luminous Leanings! If you’re reading this, you’re a part of it and I am so grateful. I hope my story serves your awakening journey, as always.
When I was in my early twenties, I used to have pretty crazy experiences from drinking on a regular basis. *RAISE YOUR HAND IF YOU CAN RELATE!* At least one night a week, it seems, I would get drunk and experience hangovers, extreme embarrassment and sometimes even black outs or “brown outs” – where some things were clear from the night before but with some memory gaps.
Now it fascinates me that I ever used to justify and even normalize these experiences. Society and my culture taught me the “okayness” of binge drinking. My peers mirrored it and would praise and defend my behavior right alongside their own.
I think looking back, the most painful part of it all is that I ever felt alcohol was the necessary cloak I had to don to shield myself from uncomfortable feelings, the topmost one being social anxiety.
And I don’t even consider myself a socially anxious person. I mean – I’ve always made friends easily and have always been able to maintain high energy levels in the throes of intense conversations and social performances. I am comfortable in the roles of Extrovert, Social Butterfly, even Social Organizer.
And yet… when I look back on some of my heaviest drinking episodes, I can feel that old familiar fear of, “What will they think of me?” It comes out unexpectedly, and I think we all experience it. I hadn’t felt it in eons until now. Not since I lived in DC and especially New York. My grad school days in New York are quite cringe-worthy when I remember all of the insecure fights my now-husband and I would have, 99% of which were alcohol-fueled.
No good came of drinking as far as our relationship was concerned, ever. And yet… we identified with the drinking so much because we met in Ireland (some might call it the drinking capital of the world), we bonded over a shared love of craft beer and whiskey, and co-created a dream of starting a brewery one day. We even brewed all of the beer for our wedding.
I am looking at my drinking past with a new perspective, one that doesn’t readily drum up feelings of self-compassion and forgiveness, but rather disbelief and bewilderment. I recognize that I didn’t have the tools in my early twenties to put limits around my drinking. At least not the kinds of limits I’ve adopted in the past 4 years. I didn’t yet have body awareness, mindfulness habits, or a sense of my mind-body connection. I hadn’t yet started practicing meditation or yoga (at least not in any meaningful, consistent ways).
Even now I can sense the painful delusion around attaching to those not-so-glamorous drinking memories. I can feel it in my ego – a desire for things to be different, for me to have been different. But this is not the way things are.
But now I have the opportunity to do things differently.I decided to take a month’s break from alcohol. I’m going to reevaluate my relationship to it. Maybe afterwards, I’ll have more limits on the number or types of drinks. Maybe I simply won’t put myself in social settings where I feel such a need/attachment to alcohol as a defense mechanism.
I’ve seen the way alcohol affects different people differently. Sure, lots of my friends can drink to the point of drunkenness and just become cute, silly, maybe a bit sloppy. No one gets hurt. And yet, I know I contain a different kind of fire within me. I have a family history of alcoholism – it’s in my genes. So why would I play with that fire?
Our culture relies on alcohol as a crutch for creating connection. We have been herded into isolation by capitalism and the patriarchy, and desperately feel inadequate to foster meaningful community without it. I’m struck by how many times I’ve defended alcohol as a connector, a social grease for unsticking the awkward places in all of us as we come out of our shells.
But I struggle to think of a time when alcohol made me more myself, or made my conversations with others more meaningful or profound. Perhaps it made me slightly more forthcoming with strangers, but too easily could I slip down the slope toward belligerence and poor judgment. How many mornings have I awoken to replay every conversation and action from the night before with overwhelming embarrassment? It’s not just ego at play in those moments, it’s a deep sorrow that I was not true to myself.
When I identify with a buzzed version of myself, I’m identifying with someone who needs a drink to feel confident, beautiful, social and free. But I am already all of those things.
Alcohol has meant different things to me at different times of my life: liquid courage for taking the stage at an amateur open mic, armed with nothing but my guitar and a beer. Liquid love for numbing a broken heart after feeling the sting of rejection from a boy. Liquid comfort, time and time again, for making my night feel meaningful or special. Liquid escape for moments of fear or boredom.
It hasn’t always taken one of these forms – and on the massive scale, my drinking has been limited, contained and responsible. But when I look back on the most shameful nights of my life, alcohol was always involved. The worst fights I’ve had with people close to me were alcohol-induced. The times I’ve questioned my own character and ethics were always related to bouts with alcohol.
These are just a few of the questions I started asking myself on day one of my journey without alcohol:
What role do I want alcohol to play in my life?
Do I feel more like myself or less like myself during or after a night of heavy drinking?
Do I want to numb or escape from any part of my life, as someone who is seeking to practice mindfulness?
How is drinking consistent or inconsistent with my spiritual practice?
I’ve always been a proponent of, “Live your life. Don’t harm anyone or anything.” and I thought alcohol fell within the scope of that. But working in the alcohol service industry has flipped a switch for me. In my current state of New Mexico, we have the fourth-highest rate of impaired driving deaths. If I over serve a customer at the brewery, I could go to jail. Alcohol is never a solo decision – especially if you’re out in public, on the road, or even have your phone in hand. We need to face the uncomfortable music that drinking is poison and can very easily and quickly become emotionally and physically dangerous.
Putting my relationship with alcohol under the microscope has revealed to me so much about my coping mechanisms, escape tendencies, addictive behaviors, and my own suffering. It’s made me take a harder look at all things I consume. I’m making a declaration that I long to stop mindless consumption within my control. Whether it’s shopping, Netflix, insta-scrolling, drinking, or eating – how can we bring mindfulness into these autopilot activities?By stopping, considering, checking in with our bodies and minds before moving forward. By setting intentions and holding ourselves accountable.
I’m noticing I don’t even crave alcohol like I thought I would. What I truly crave is social connection and rest, both of which culture conflates with alcohol. I’m learning how isolating it can feel to not drink. There is a desire to reach out to friends, but without the buffer of happy hour or checking out a new brewery, it feels particularly vulnerable. It’s divisive and polarizing to question alcohol use in your life. You hear stories about pregnant women being social outcasts because they don’t get invited to parties or happy hours where there will be drinking. There is a deep fear of severed belonging that comes with sobriety.
I’ve had to face that, in new and scary social situations where drinking is central, I’m much more likely to disrespect my limits out of vulnerability. It’s also been interesting to realize that I feel a distinct pressure to be the *life of the party* around certain folks who seem even more introverted and afraid than I am. As though, in an effort to put everyone at ease, I choose to over consume and really put myself out there. But what I really want, in all social interactions, is deep, meaningful connection.
As a community, we need to rally around those who choose not to drink. Feel free to start a conversation with them about why, and don’t make it all about you. I get that it’s uncomfortable to have to reflect on your relationship with something as central and unexamined in many of our lives as alcohol. But getting underneath why it’s uncomfortable can open up a world of self-knowledge and self-control you never dreamed possible.
Four days into my 30-day sobriety journey, my grandmother passed away. Not having the elixir of booze on the table made my grief process much smoother and less complicated. Even while dealing with certain triggers while back home for her funeral, it wasn’t hard to say no to alcohol. I felt more sensitive and raw, but I reminded myself that numbing it is never a sustainable solution.
Choosing not to drink for 30 days has been a refreshing wake-up call. It’s created a mindset shift that I don’t have to drink to socialize, to relax, or to reward myself. I don’t have to escape life’s uncomfortable or boring moments. I can instead sit with them, get underneath them, and figure out what it is I truly want. Only then, can I find a more healthy, lasting solution to that desire.
Yes, this takes work. Yes, it might create some initial discomfort. But it is so worth it!
Perhaps more than anything, this journey has expanded my creative choice-making skills. Filling the guilt void with self-care, like a home yoga practice. Filling the bored void with reading or going for a walk. Filling the social void by calling a friend or meeting someone for coffee instead of beer.
It’s also reconfigured my relationship to time. Before, I would have a drink and be down for the count for the rest of the night (i.e. my productivity went out the window.. including self-care productivity). Now, I can mindfully decide whether or not I want to “shut down operations” in favor of grabbing that 1 post-work drink with friends.
When I drink again, I will be bringing with me the wisdom I’ve gained along the way. I will strive to never sip booze unconsciously again. My personal limits have shifted, as has my awareness and understanding of what alcohol can mean to me and my day.
I look forward to foregoing alcohol for one month every year in the future! This has been an incredible challenge, and the lessons I’ve learned about myself have been INVALUABLE. I highly recommend challenging yourself by giving up something with which you have a complicated, possibly addictive relationship. Choose something you find yourself using as an escape. Even if it’s only for 1 week or 1 day, see what shifts occur! Be prepared for discomfort, growth, and probably some truths you can’t ignore. What I’m looking at next: my phone & Netflix habits.
After all, I believe we’re all here to know ourselves more deeply and live more consciously in order to better the world. I’m writing things here that I never thought I would say. It’s not a judgment or act of blame. It’s simply that I’m seeing my relationship with alcohol in a new light. I’ve experienced a radical shift, and I don’t think I’ll ever be the same.
I’d love to hear from YOU, Dear Ones!Have you examined your relationship with alcohol lately? Or with other addictive behaviors or patterns? What self-care tools did you lean on? What did you learn about yourself? I can’t wait to read in the comments below! You never know whose journey your helping to impact through your courageous vulnerability.
*Note: This blog post originally appeared in the October Letter that went out to Luminous Leanings subscribers. I rarely share these insights on the blog, but I felt this one was important. To get the Letter in your inbox monthly, sign up here!
Oh, Dear Ones, I’m in it right now. Grieving the loss of a precious grandmother. Juggling flights home, funeral plans, and death logistics with pre-planned visits from friends, and no paid time-off from either of my jobs. All the while, trying to carve out time for stillness and healing.
When I first learned of her death, it was in the quiet of the early morning before Jon rises. Just me and Tucker (our cat) and the sunrise. I sat on the couch with my coffee and let the tears come. It dawned on me, my self-care practice has prepared me for tragedy. My body and spirit simply knew what to do, as I had been carving these self-compassionate neural pathways for quite some time.
I listened to my sobs and felt them deep within me. I set an intention to clear my day and really feel the grief wash over me. And that’s what I did. After sending an email to my boss, and sending a chat to my fellow bartenders to see about getting my shifts covered at the brewery, I sat on my meditation cushion and called my family. Then I lit some candles and burned some incense at my altars, rolled out my yoga mat, and practiced yoga (this Yoga for Grief practice from Yoga for Adriene). I talked to her directly, and felt her spirit’s love and freedom.
As I blew out the candles, it came to me to say aloud, “We come from love and we return to love.” Life and death are a mystery, but I know this to be true.
I watched the leaves fall from the trees and reminded myself that tears are medicine. I took a walk to a park filled with cottonwood trees near my house, sat on the ground and read poetry. As the sun waned, I drove to the grocery and bought ingredients for the comfort food I was craving: ramen and pad thai. I came home and prepared the ramen with coconut milk, soft boiled eggs, and spicy sriracha. Definitely not the food of my ancestors, but a dish that always serves to soothe and warm my soul.
In the days since, I’ve carried this gentle reminder with me – there is wisdom in the dying time. Internalized capitalism transmits the beliefs that productivity should never cease and we should DO until we die. The Celtic tradition of my ancestors, on the other hand, called the fall the “dying time” and the winter the “dreaming time.” And it seems so fitting to me. Of course we need the Yin of rest, darkness, healing, even grief to counterbalance the Yang of summer’s activity, life, and labor. The light is waning, days are shorter, and the plants perform dormancy as their energy goes downward into their roots, causing summer’s fruits and flowers to die.
We are a culture yearning for rest, for permission to pause. For the darkness of winter to cover our strained eyes and bring us relief. Grief and death are more pieces of the life cycle that our society resists, rejects and turns away from. We suffer because we know, deep down, that – to resist death is to resist nature and life itself. It’s to resist what is inevitably coming for each of us. But our ancestors knew how to die and grieve. The earth surely knows how. And there are still cultures that celebrate death as a part of life, choosing to remember those who have passed rather than pushing them out of their memory as a defense mechanism from pain (Dia de los Muertos comes to mind).
It’s really important to create meaningful ritual and ceremony with one’s community after death (as with all rites of passage in life). I did have the opportunity to write my grandmother’s eulogy, which my father will read at the funeral tomorrow. And my sister and I will sing “I’ll Be Seeing You,” as made famous by Billie Holiday. This song was on my heart and mind so strongly the days after she died. When our parents asked us to choose a song to sing, I told my sister she should have the honor since my grandmother and she shared a connection over music. The next morning I woke up singing, “I’ll Be Seeing You,” as it was still on my mind. I checked my phone and saw I had received a text from my sister with pictures of the sheet music. “I found it!” she said. Of course, it was the same song – “I’ll Be Seeing You.” So it feels very fitting, and like her wish for us.
As I sit here in the Dallas airport, between my flight from Albuquerque and my flight to Louisville, I set my intention for the days ahead surrounded by family and grief.
I intend to honor and say goodbye to my “Memaw” in the ways that feel most authentic to me.
I intend to be a beacon of light and love to members of my family, even those who are handling grief in a particularly painful way.
And I intend to care for myself and cultivate even deeper self-compassion and connection to the Divine through the process.
Grief is exhausting and expresses itself sometimes suddenly in unexpected ways. If there ever was a time for self-love, this is it. May we all rise to the challenge and be proactive in cultivating a lasting self-care practice. You don’t have to self-care by yourself. I’m here for you! Discover tangible rituals & powerful mindset shifts that lead to a genuine embodiment of self-love in Become Your Own Soul Mate, my 12-week 1-on-1 self-care program! Learn more here.
Dear Ones, have you experienced the death of a loved one? Did your culture and traditions meet your needs? If not, how did you cope? And how did you care for yourself along the way? Sending so much light and love, especially to the grieving ones today.
P.S. I have learned a lot about the death industry in the U.S. and about conscious dying through this podcast episode, from my favorite ancestral worker, Becca Piastrelli. Check it out!
Luminous Leanings 