I lost a little of the joy this past weekend. A little traveling, a little franticness, and no time to myself knocked me off balance a little. I've realized that when I'm around a lot of people in a constant sort of way, with no time to ground, to return to center, to quiet my mind and re-focus, I get knocked off balance. Some of the ways I know I'm knocked out of the center of my joy are:
-fatigue/drinking too much coffee
-feeling overly sensitive to the people around me
-feeling overwhelmed, breathless
-feeling scattered, making a lot of mistakes
-feeling very externally focused, which also goes with being overly sensitive
So Monday morning, I re-focused on my joy. It turned out to be amazingly simple.
First of all, while Bella was eating her oatmeal, before we left for school, I sat in front of my altar. And the reason that I felt called to sit in front of it was that while visiting family this weekend in Pennsylvania I made a real effort to visit the town of Media, which is America's FIRST declared fair-trade town. Most of the stores has committed to carrying only items which are certified to be fair-trade.
I always visit two stores there: Ten Thousand Villages (http://www.tenthousandvillages.com/) which carries stuff from all over the world (most of it supporting women in small cooperatives in other countries) and my all-time favorite store, Earth and State (http://earthandstate.com/aboutus/aboutus.htm) which is FILLED with art, pottery, and other items hand-made by local and non-local American artists. For real: I spend MONEY in this store, and there are things all over my room that come from that store that I've had for YEARS and still make me smile whenever my eyes pass over them. It's a heaven for people who are easily amused by bright, sparkly things, as I am.
Anyway, at Earth and State I treated myself and Bella to two hand-made circle pillows just for sitting in front of our altar with, and that's what caught my eye Monday morning as Bella was eating breakfast. The new, beautiful pillows reminded me that one way of connecting with my joy is sitting in front of my altar. So I spent just 5 minutes meditating on a few things there, chanting a few repetitions of two different affirmations I'm working with, and doing some hand mudras from the book "Healing Mudras" (http://www.amazon.com/Healing-Mudras-Yoga-Your-Hands/dp/0345437586/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1269449377&sr=1-3).
After I dropped Bella at school, I took the laptop to "my" coffee shop and sat to re-write a letter to my friends and family about In Arms Coaching and my visions for it that I had been struggling to write for two weeks. It had become a real bang-my-head-against-the-wall exercise, and I had hit so many dead ends so far -- in a way that is really unfamiliar to me.
But that day, being back in my coffee shop with at least two hours just for me, with a cup of hot coffee, the rain coming down outside, my laptop, and the connection to myself that I had nurtured just half an hour ago, all of a sudden the letter just wrote itself. Effortlessly. And it was perfect -- it was JUST what I had been trying to say for two weeks.
Finding my joy this week is about making 5 minutes to connect with myself in front of my altar (or outside somewhere in the sun, up against a tree or sitting in the grass) and WRITING. More specifically, writing as a means to communicating with others about my joy. Writing as a way of CONNECTING with others about my joy.
How are you finding joy this week? I can't wait to hear.....
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