How to reconnect your mind, body and spirit

In many of my Stress Relief articles I advise doing ‘absolutely nothing’ ie deep breathing and a simple 5 minute meditation. The purpose isn’t only to de-stress, although it does a great job of relaxing you, but it is also to reconnect us with our bodies and our energy, something that we often lose in our busy, stressful lives. When we are doing; watching, listening, talking or touching, we are concentrating on everything except ourselves. When was the last time that you walking into a room and didn’t switch on the tv, radio, computer, use the phone or read a newspaper? Do you ever just sit, have a quick cup of tea or coffee, and think? We do it when we need to do a shopping list or a ‘to do’ list, but we hardly ever do this process to think about ourselves, our ambitions, our job or a relationship. In fact, we probably spend more time organising our shopping list than we spend organising our life! Getting back in touch with your needs If you often ignore or suppress your daily needs, which we often do when we have families that we are responsible for, you will find that this is a simple way of getting you back in touch with your emotions and needs. Try this 5 minute simple exercise once a week, or once a month if you prefer, which will reconnect your mind body and spirit; Sit quietly at the kitchen table, have a cup of tea or coffee if you like but just sit and think. Think about what you want to do, either now or at some point in the near future. It could be that you think ‘I would love to go for a walk in the country this weekend’ or it could be ‘I really want to do that OU course next year’. It doesn’t really matter what you think about, as long as you are thinking about you and your needs. If you haven’t done this before and don’t know where to start, you could start by answering these 3 simple questions rnI want ____________ I really wish I could _______________ I would love to ________________ rnNotice that I have purposely kept the tone positive, this is a time for figuring out your needs and this should be based on positive things, not the things that you don’t want. For example; if you hate your job, think about positive ways that you can change it and find a more suitable job or you may even want to consider starting a whole new career and what you need to do to achieve that. Once you start doing this exercise on a regular basis, you will find that the more you practice, the easier it will become and ideas will pop into your head much easier – a sure sign that you are back in touch with your needs and your mind body and spirit is reconnected. Be sure to keep the focus of these sessions on you and your life – we spend more than enough time worrying about everyone else during our daily lives, this is time to spend focusing on your needs.