The challenge of the ZZZs

So if you're like me and go into energy save during the winter... well you can avoid total hibernation!
Here's a few good tricks to keep your energy up and help you stay on track:

Join challenges
No matter what your practise is it's always good to join a challenge and motivate yourself by keeping the day count and just sticking to it. I'm currently doing the Yoga Camp challenge with yoga with Adriene. A Hatha yoga experience, and this one has a bit more elements of mental wellness than her previous "30 days of yoga" challenge (which I also highly recommend!)

Get by with a little help from your friends

When it gets tough it might feel like a failure (IT IS NEVER) to ask your friends for help. Actually it is a very strong thing to do and when your friends know where you're at and what's going on it will be much easier for them to help you. We don't have to be so goddamned independent all the time! So ask for advice, ask for support, ask for a bit of cheerleading or gentle reminders. Or better yet... why not join a challenge together?

Seize the day

Carpe diem might sound like a massive cliché, yet as the days become shorter it becomes all the more important to get outside and gather as much sun as you can. Even when it's cloudy it's still brighter outside than indoors. Also the fresh air will do you good. In our family the outdoor minimum limit is at least 30 minutes per day, something I am grateful for today.

Recharge

During the wintertime it's easy to be *yawn* a chronic sleepy head. So one way to go about it is of course to sleep more. This however does not work for me, in fact it makes me more sleepy. A bunch of other options might be

Cold showers. Yep you heard me. A brilliant way to wake the body up and although it might not feel too inviting on cold days it actually gets your circulation up and you will be less cold afterwards. I've written a little more about hydrotherapy in a previous post.

Power naps. If you're feeling sleepy, set your alarm and give yourself a good powernap. I usually feel better and more alert if I'm surrendering to a couple of zzz rather than forcing myself to stay awake.

Keep doing what energises you! When winter comes (and it will, as Snow so eagerly points out) it might be tempting to cancel everything and stay under a blanket. I advice you not to. By keep going you will let your body (and brain) know who's the boss. And by doing what you set out to do you will get a kick of "YES I DID IT" and coming home afterwards to a cup of tea and the blanket will be all the more rewarding.

Play. Ok, I'm sure some of you are feeling a bit of resistance with thoughts of playing being just for kids but I assure you that getting your sillies and giggles up will boost you in so many ways. So invest time and energy in having fun, because it will give so much back.

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When it's evening, weekend or you just feel like watching something there's a brilliant korean film I saw yesterday. It was both visually and emotionally beautiful as well as fun and the right kind of weird (for me atleast.) 

Kimssi Pyoryugi (2009)

in english known as The castaway on the moon.

That's all I had for now, but I'm sure you will find your way to power up during the winter. 

Get out there. 

Do good. 

Reward yourself. 

And see you later!

The full breath

We come with a lot of built in mechanisms. One of them is the breath. Our lives are depending on it. We're born with the breath and we will surely depart together with it. We think we know what we're doing but most of us are actually taking shallow breaths, only using the very top of our lungs. This results in quick breathing, less emotional and physical resilience and not getting as much air as we actually could... and should! By using the full potential of our breath we get more oxygen, better blood circulation, immune system and we also become more present. Our mind follows our breath and our body follows our mind.

Why should we breathe through the nose? As he air goes through the nasal passage the temperature and moisture of the air is adjusted to suit our bodies. When you breathe through the mouth it doesn't have a filter like the nose so we're exposed to more bacteria and the mouth becomes dry with an increased bad breath, risk of cavities and gum disease. It is also not possible to breathe as slow and take up the oxygen properly when using the mouth.

So we can reduce stress and boost energy instantly by just adding awareness into what we're already doing? You don't need to sit in a lotus with your hands in mudras (certain powerful hand gestures) and focus on the third eye, but if you can you're welcome to. What you really need is just a moment and focus. Do you want to enhance yourself? The breath is up to you!

The winner & perfect mindset.

To succeed one has to have the right set of mind. Just like the Swedish ord "lagom", which means "just right" your perfect mindset is something individual. There are a few things however that I find work for me and if you'd like you can try them and see if it works for you too.

- Staying truly positive. This also means no complaining, although constructive criticism is sometimes in order! Complaining brings your energy down, focusing on negative things and usually making others do it too.

- Eyes on the prize. All the little stupid or painful or hard things that happen throughout the day are just little obstacles or distractions. They're so small it's really nothing. Solve them if you can. Let them go, it's not worth your time or energy. Keep your eyes on the goal at all times!

- Tap into the infinity within. Ok, this one might sound like spiritual humbug to some, but I find that I can achieve and even stretch past my limits if I use an affirmation that "unlocks" my infinite resources. One of my favorite sentances to bring me into the moment and gain immediate strength is

I'm more than human, 

I'm an infinate being of power &

anything is possible.

- Make it a game.  This is the secret I wanted to share yesterday. It won't be a secret anymore, but it's too good to keep for myself. Be the change you want to see in the world, right Mahatma Gandhi?

So you have a challenging task before you. It could be anything from paying bills, to responding to emails or just something quite repetative which for a creative person like me... isn't that motivating. I found a way to love basically doing anything. Let me tell you about yesteday when I tried it out for real...

So as some of you might know I'm working as a "cleaning lady" at a hotel at the moment. It's a tough job because you have to make it look perfect. I can do perfect, I love it, but when time is limited... That's difficult for me. The two previous days of working 5am to 4pm I had been so tired after work I just thought I was going to die on the third, but on the third I decided I was going to win.

What, there's A CLEANING LADY GAME? Yes, in my head. The good thing about visualizing it as a game is that you're kind of stepping out of yourself, taking control, gaining distance towards the tasks and a good overview. I wasn't working. I was playing a game for 11 hours. 

I imagined it like this: This game is of course time based, you have to clean the rooms on a certain ammount of time, most important are the rooms which we are expecting arrival, then the rooms of the staying guests and lastly the departure rooms. Then there are some "bonus levels" which are the spa area, corridors and helping team players on their levels. You unlock the bonus levels by finishing your levels on time or beating your own high score. 

On the side of your screen there are three different bars which are energy, social and mood.

The energy is refilled when you drink water, get positive feedback and eat.

The social is when you interact with the collegues, the boss and the guests.

The mood is when things are going well.

There are more things to do than just clean the rooms. You have to make it look nice. This is when bed making technique, paper folding and arrangement comes in to the picture which allows you to earn style points. Style points are collected at the finish of each room and level when it is overviewed and valued in time, cleanliness and presentation. I always like to gather as much style points as possible, because I find they affect the energy bar as well as the mood. Then the boss comes and gives you a compliment on your speed or room presentation? Then that's more on the social and mood. Style points are also gained when all three bars are aligned at their fullest and when you smile out of joy and gratitude.

It's always a competition with yourself. Only you make the high score. If you want to play and win it's entirely up to you. Me? I'm a winner.
What's your challenge right now? What game would you be playing?

I managed to do more than I thought I could, more than my boss thought I could and beat the high score big time yesterday with two bonus levels.

Also, don't forget to reward yourself. No matter how it goes. It's actually especially important if it's not going so well. Give yourself a break from time to time. You deserve it.

Today is my day off. Ahhhh.... 

Monkey mind - mindfulness refill, please!

Worn out. Got up early and did a few yoga moves. Then tried to invent a bicycle meditation on the way to work. The attitude was there, the physical energy too, but the mind adrift as it tends to do when one is mentally exhausted. If there's a parallell universe I was surely there today. In this universe everything was going right and in the real one where everyone else seemed to be... not so much. Some days are like that, especially for us dreamers with the imagination intense enough to be confused with reality. This makes it easier to fall back into old patterns like the clumsy, monkey minded girl whose thoughts are "jumping from tree to tree with no destination"... It's like this too with unwanted thoughts while meditating. They're usually only distractions without any deeper meaning. Echoes of another time. Sometimes we fall back into old ways of thinking, one doesn't simply change habits over a night.
It takes practise. Stay calm.
Forgive yourself. You are still learning.

You need focus for meditation. The mind goes elswhere? Take note, but don't take it in. Let go. Bring yourself back to the moment. Welcome yourself and be happy that you noticed and returned back into your body. Be patient. Determined. Repeat it as long as it takes. After a while the mind will learn its place is here with you. The present moment. I imagine it's something like breaking in a wild horse. There are different ways of doing it. I prefer a gentle way.

To avoid monkey mind you need set up goals and work to reach them. If it's to perform on a occasion then it's important to be as prepared as possible and always see the best outcome. Really imagine it with all senses. See yourself where you want to be. Then when the moment comes. Be there.

Tomorrow is my first 5 o clock (YES IN THE MORNING!) shift of three in a row. Bingo?
Determined to do it and do it well!
How to prepare?
- Pack the day before
- Sleep well
- Cleansing lemon water and morning yoga
- Cold shower, bring breakfast to work (no biking while digesting)
- Bicycle meditation
- Be on time. Do your best. Always.
DO WHAT YOU DO WHEN YOU DO IT

Already set up goals for work... and the yoga? Next time, Inspector Yogi... Next time.

My grandfather's style - Hatha yoga

There are six main branches of yoga and there's constantly fresh twigs sprouting out. If you haven't decided which style of yoga suits you the best it might be overwhelming even to decide WHERE TO BEGIN? My dad once mentioned that my grandfather did yoga. The other day I found out it was Hatha yoga... maybe you're thinking "Ha whaa?" and frankly it wasn't that clear for me either, even though the word wasn't new to me.

Like Einstein said (or it is said he said, you never know with internet quotes)
The only thing you really need to know is the location of the library... unless you have wifi, which I in most cases do not. So I went there and found Hathayoga by Ulrica Norberg. Beautiful.

ABOUT HATHA

Where's it from? It is the youngest of the six main branches of yoga and like the others it originates from the oldest form of yoga - Tantra yoga, which the Indian philosophy about energy.

What's it about? The name Hatha means powerful and comes from the sanskrit words "Ha" meaning sun and "Tha" meaning moon. Well isn't that kind of the same as jinyang? Yes, exactly! It's about balance between the power of the sun and the moon: feminine/masculine, closed/open, light/darkness and so on. 

That's so Hatha! What's typical for this yoga style is the physical focus, joined together with the emphasis on the breath (pranayama) in harmony with the movements (asanas). This sets it apart from most other of the major yoga branches since it it's more like a workout, which I think is a perfect transit for the westerners to go from regular gym sessions to yoga lessons, without being overwhelmed by all the spiritual talk, chants and visualisations. It's about being present. Welcome!

What can it do for you? The breathing technique (pranayama) is said to have a cleansing effect as well as building up your immune system while the movements (asanas) help to build strength, flexibility and balance. If you want to feel like you've really done a workout after the yoga then this is the style for you. You will also find this is a perfect way to exercise self control of the mind and body which is beneficial for you in all stages and pages of life.