TRANSITION GRACEFULLY

from Holiday time to New Year

Photo of a squirrel eating a potato chip from Amandeep Chaudhary on Unsplash

​Hi good folks, I’m currently doing less work than usual (yes, part of my own reset) so I offer you two things I created in December of 2016! These will serve you well through the rest of the Holidays and into a conscious New Year.

6 tips for CONSCIOUS EATING

1. Eat more slowly. Every rule that follows will support you in this, and eating slowly will support your experience of the following rules. If you're concerned with amounts you eat or number of calories, think of needing to eat for a certain amount of time to feel satisfied. If you're shoveling it in at high velocity during that whole window, yikes—lots more food going down.
   
   
2. Engage with the food more sensually. Most important, really taste it. Experience the varying flavors and textures; look for the subtleties. Beyond that, you probably have something in the vicinity of four other magical senses you can check in with as part of your mealtime experience. Note that you're always more present when you're connected to your senses and what they're registering here and now.
   
   
3. Chew thoroughly. Keep chewing when you think you're done. A bit more chewing before you swallow? Always good.
   
   
4. Put down your fork (spoon, chopsticks, whatever) between bites. I found this to be a serious discipline at first! Who puts their fork down between each and every bite? Who even wants to? What I found I love about doing this is that the act of constantly putting down and picking up the eating utensil keeps me conscious more than anything else, thus allowing me to recall and stay with (or keep coming back to) the other conscious-eating tips.
   
   
5. Don't talk while you eat. Let others talk. If there's food in your mouth, it's time to chew, maybe swallow—not talk. (Hey, no one else needs to monitor your chewing.) Stop eating for a while if you want to insert yourself in the conversation.
   
   
6. Monitor your feeling states while you eat, and respond to them appropriately. If you notice the conversation (or anything in the room) is creating an anxious response in your body, stop eating, or slow way down. You'll enjoy the food more and digest it much better if there's no anxiety in the mix, or any clunky feeling of any flavor. Also, you're likely to lose track of all conscious eating if you eat while the pain body is activate. So pause, or creatively stall, and mind the pain body. Short-version of how to do this: breathe into the feeling wherever it registers in the body. Just breathe normally, directing the breath consciously—no one will know what you're up to.

The full post with conscious-eating points has only a bit more than the above. Find it here.

​11 ways to HIT THE RESET BUTTON during the Holidays
Invitation not to let bad sensations accrue, not to allow untended thoughts to take you down the rabbit hole! Prioritize feeling good: this will connect you to your guidance system and let in the inspiration of the moment to keep moving toward love.

1. Take a breath. Take several conscious breaths. Watch the breath go in and out. Get absorbed by the breath.

2. Go outside and breathe there. Look into the sky. Experience what's out there with all the senses you can engage.

3. Exercise. Stretch. Run up & down the stairs. Go around the block. Do anything to move your body and focus your attention off the mind and onto your marvelous capacity to feel, move, inhabit a human body. Find someone on YouTube to guide you through some qigong or yoga or whatever. (Here's my favorite simple qigong sequence with Mimi Kuo-Deemer.)

4. Stay away from work, even mentally. Leave it alone and see what seeds sprout later. You've already given it great attention. Celebrate that. Let it go.

5. Feasting for the holidays? Chew more, taste more, give yourself full permission to eat whatever you choose to eat. Take long breaks between times of food intake—not to be righteous, but to enjoy the contrast and to be hungry again when you eat more. (Hydrate between meals!)

6. Do the unexpected, have an adventure, go somewhere you've never been, do something appealing that scares you or goes against how you see yourself.

7. Meditate, even for 5 minutes. You could even exit (physically or mentally) during a conversation you don't want to take part in and just watch your breath go all the way in, watch it go all the way out. Until you decide you’re done, keep coming back to the breath when you stray from that focus.

8. Call someone you almost never talk to, or haven't talked to in a while, or even the one you've believed is too far from the last contact to justify any lasting connection: you connect if you're drawn to. (Follow the inspired impulse, not the thoughts about it.)

9. Feeling challenged? Tell yourself or another or write down all the reasons why this hard thing you're going through is perfect, the best training ground for what you know you need to develop in yourself. This is a moment to keep applying your own belief system and to take further whatever you've been experimenting with to live more consciously and be healthier and truer to yourself.

10. Unplug for a day (or days) from any computer activity, phone apps, social media. Include news in the exclusion. Walk away from political conversations if that feels better.

11. Sleep. Nap (30 minutes or less to stay out of deep sleep, 90 minutes for a whole sleep cycle). For naps and nighttime rest, be sure you go to sleep with a consciousness of RESET, of all things new/all things possible when you wake up.

(The writeup of 11 resets above comprises the whole post, and here’s the link to see it on my website if you like.)
Love & blessings, Jaya