An extra beautiful bouquet that Cat Daddy brought home a couple of weeks ago.
My new morning routine is to NOT lie in bed and drown in news, but instead, I listen to a Chani meditation or teaching (I have the paid app and it's super worth it, FYI), and then I get up, put on my damn leggings, and do a Japanese slow jog on my treadmill while I watch a podcast. (A little something about that technique.)
Here's the thing: I only do this for 10 minutes. It's all I can convince myself to do at this point. (And I do the jog thing because I have learned from SO LONG of trying that my body does not want to be creative first thing... it takes me a while to really wake up. I’ve tried waking and dancing first thing and it only leads to frustration.)
Here's the other thing: IT IS DOING THINGS TO MY BRAIN.
I've always preached that it can be as simple as one song. But the part that's left out with that is the sweat.
You have to sweat. One song can be enough to alter your brain chemistry a bit but you have to dance vigorously and get a bit of a sweat on. (And the more minutes, the better over time... that's just reality.)
OR you can dance to one song and SING LOUDLY and that will affect your brain without you needing to really sweat. That's why car singing on the way to work can make such a difference for people.
Why? THE BREATH. It's pretty much all about the breath and getting those lungs pumping -- sweating and/or singing will both do that.
And doing this first thing in the morning is, of course, setting me up for a bit of a better day.
It's not enough to totally deal with the intensity of my depression but it gives me the bit of chemistry to make better decisions later in the day. If I start my day with movement, I’m more likely to move more throughout the day. And then over time, cumulatively, my brain will get better and better.
But for now, ten minutes can have a domino effect. You can surely find ten minutes. We do all kinds of mind numbing things for ten minutes… watch TV, just sit and rot, scroll on our phones.
It’s hard, though, to make different choices. And it’s a bit of pain in the ass that making better choices leads to making more better choices. ((sigh))
As I’ve said before, there’s no magicks but in