August is National Wellness month! Live Love Spa proclaimed August as National Wellness Month in 2018 and the folks at National Day Calendar have accepted it’s registration and so now here we are, focusing on wellness (in case you wondered how that happens)! And I think it’s fantastic idea – especially right now, in the middle of a pandemic and all sorts of other social and political crisis. We can’t MAKE big changes if we’re falling apart at the same time, so let’s keep up on that maintenance and get stuff done!
Each week, I’m going to focus on a different aspect of wellness that is a personal favorite of MINE, and part of why I’m focusing on these aspects is because they are personal challenges FOR ME to get my own wellness together and so I’m sharing that here, too, for anyone who wants to join in. Of course, you’re also encouraged to do your own thing, to improvise, to expand, expound, and evolve in whatever way makes you… well and happy!
So for this first week, I’m going to focus on my meditation practice. Meditation is the foundation for most things that I do and the foundation of my mental and emotional health as well and I have definitely be negligent in this aspect and wanting to tackle it for months now, so this is the first thing I want to address for me. So from Monday to Sunday, August 3rd through the 9th, this is going to be the habit I want to start establishing.
The goal here is NOT to leap into 2 hour long meditation sessions! I’m aiming to get in 5-10 minutes a day for the next week – nice, easy to achieve goals. Anymore, I do best with positive feedback and reassurance that things are accomplishable, and meditation is NOT complicated! So making it harder and more challenging for myself is counter-productive and unfriendly. If you want to join me in this habit-development, think about how to make YOUR goals kind and achievable, too!
And I am only focusing on one thing a week in order to keep things healthy, achievable, and not overwhelming because the gods know things are stressful enough right now without trying to take on a daily challenge at the moment – but there are plenty of daily challenges out there for National Wellness Month if that thing is more your pace – to each our own, but please know that gentleness and accommodation is ABSOLUTELY part of wellness!
They say it takes two weeks to establish a habit, so my plan is to continue my meditation practice beyond this first week, but this first week is to focus and work out the kinks before I add a new focus next week while still continuing my now issue-free meditation practice. At least, that’s the idea!
I have a lot of meditation resources! If you’re new to meditation, I promise, it’s not complicated, the hardest part is just calming down and relaxing. I have written about how to simplify, de-mystify, and make meditation easy a few times now and you can check out those articles here:
Meditation Made Easy [Website Article]
Introduction to Meditation (plus two easy exercises) [YouTube video]
Easy Meditation (How to) [YouTube video]
Quickie Meditation Tips! [Website Article]
Put Some Movement in Your Meditation [Website Article]
Simple Grounding [Website Article]
I have these meditations I created that you might find useful (not so much for me because I can’t stand the sound of my own voice, but I know them well enough I can do them without a recording):
And here are some guided meditations from YouTube:
And here is some meditation music, also from YouTube, that you may enjoy in the background. Some of these have binaural beats, some have isochronic tones, and some are just instrumental or ambient sound pieces:
So, I hope you find this helpful, I hope some of you will join me on this journey, and whatever it is that YOU want to focus on for this month (if you want to participate), I would absolutely LOVE to hear about it! Comment below, hit me up on social media, or shoot me a message on the contact form! I’ll see you back here next week to talk about my next goal (yes, I already picked it out, too!).
