Oh Hello.
How have you been?
Oh, Good.
Yeah, I have been super busy trying to get back into the routine since I got back from vacation on tuesday. It ended up being a great trip, but it made me realize a couple things;
1.) I need a much longer vacation.
2) Driving TO vacation is fun. Driving back, sucks a big fat one.
I ended up staying an extra day up at the cabin with my family, which was much needed as I would have only been up there for half a day if I followed my original plan. In the mornings, my family joined me for qigong outside in the mountain air. I have two nieces, ages 6 and 1, and let me tell you it is the most adorable thing in the world seeing a 1 year old flop around trying to qigong :). One of the highlights of my trip for sure, I only hope my sister ended up getting some video of that little golden nugget.
The week back has been interesting, tuesday I got back into the city at 7 AM after driving all night long and consuming enough caffeine to kill a small horse. I got home and just passed out immediately only waking up for some dim sum before going right back to sleep until tai chi class later that night. The dim sum was a major mistake. It had a nice little food poisoning surprise for me that destroyed my digestive system and I am still (5 days later) dealing with it. Won’t be ordering from there anymore.
Despite the stomach problems, it has been a full week of practice, hitting my regular scheduled times and meditation. Just was never quite centered enough to sit down and write, still feeling a little off, but I felt the pull to get some stuff on to the digital paper.
There is a subject I wanted to at least touch on today, energy vampires.
The things in our lives that eat up our mental energy. These things exist in our heads and in our environment. More often than not hardly even noticed or just absorbed in to our daily operations.
As I was leaving the cabin, my sister mentioned something off hand. She reminded me she had bought a new car and she was really enjoying it. She realized after buying it how stressed out she had been about her old car, always wondering if it would break down, just super tense about going anywhere for fear she wouldn’t make it.
I had some time to ponder this on the car ride; that comment seems like such a little thing. An almost off the cuff realization about just feeling a considerably less stressed. But think about it, that stress was something she was unconsciously living with everyday. A little piece of her mind and energy was being devoted to spinning up the possible misadventures that her car would take her on at any possible moment. How often did that fear prevented her from going out and doing something she may have wanted to do? How often did it affect her schedule? She just lived with it for quite some time. Learned to embody it in to her daily life but was it a conscious decision?
How many of things like that do you have? Stresses that have just creeped into your life that you now live with needlessly?
I have plenty, in fact, I recently just removed one I had.
I needed a haircut. I was long overdue for one in fact, but I just couldn’t get myself out to get one. I was worried the way it would make me look, the time had to find to get one, the instructions I would need to give the barber…etc. Finally, I was ready to get it done, I was at my family home and I was sick of it. Just one snafu, there were no barbers open!
I was done worrying about it, it was currently 105 degrees out and I wanted this hair out of my face. So I grabbed my moms trimmers and shaved it.
After I did, I felt relieved, I didn’t have to waste anymore thought on it. I had been spending so much time worrying about it that there was actually a weight lifted off me. I realize now that weight had been slowing getting heavier as the weeks went by without a haircut, the maintenance was getting harder, the hats weren’t quite fitting as well…just one thing after another adding to the self consciousness of what was on my own head.
I realize that this is a completely ridiculous example. There are much bigger things to worry about and obviously the solution is to just get a haircut more often….but it’s just a minor example of how easy it is for stresses to pile up on our lives. How many of them are needed? How many of them are conscious stresses?
What if every week, we actively removed an unneeded stress? Would that allow ourselves to be more fulfilled? Would we utilize that extra energy for something productive or beneficial to ourselves?
I have no idea, but it’s food for thought. I for one am going out to buy a pair of clippers.
Todays Practice:
- 1.5 hours Primordial Qigong
- 1.5 hours beginning tai chi
- 2 hours nap (Totally Counts)
The Restless Raven 