May 26th - Every Day in May
It was so hot today. Like Hawaii hot! The skies were deep blue and it was still out. Everyone in my house was back to work and school after a three day weekend, so I was back to my normal daily mom antics. My life really is quite simple these days. I’m quite impressed that overwhelm really isn’t something I have to deal with on a daily basis like I used to. Nice awareness on that today.
Health is Physical:
It was hot hot hot today in Osos and after taking care of some work stuff I headed out to MDO for a run to try to find and catch my friend Amy who started earlier. I never found her as she reversed the loop direction she told me and so I ended up behind her by a few miles unknowingly, which meant I got in almost 10 miles of sweaty solo trail bliss, not even a snake in sight.
I had a cool spiritual meditative experience in the last three miles of my run. I was on a double wide path and I could feel my eyesight getting a little blurry. I trotted along and enjoyed the numbing of all sensation in my body. Just numb floating along the trail. Not euphoric, just numb. It lasted a couple miles and I was like “Right on Sonja.”
When I got back to the car I was so thirsty and hot that I drove straight to the corner store and bought two Gatorades and 20 pounds of ice for an ice bath. Then when Annie got home from her tempo run I made her take an ice bath too!
Health is Mental/Emotional:
At the suggestion of my friend Joaquin I have been inhaling the Rewired series with Joe Dispenza on Gaia today. I have read most of his book Magical Thinking and thought this format might be nice to consume. It’s pretty darn hippie stuff, which I personally eat up. I am so interested in memory and how we form memories and retain information. I found it interesting when he said:
Research says 50% of what you talk about in the past isn’t even the truth
Memory is creative because you don’t have the same brain as you had 30 years ago when the memory took place
— Joe Dispenza, Rewired
I hadn’t thought of things in that context previously. As we grow and learn and age our brain goes through changes and yet the memories way back there seem fixed even when they aren’t. I have noticed recently that things aren’t as sharp way back when, that my mind does get creative to fill in the holes or it uses assumptions about me. “Well I must have XYZ, because that’s how I would have reacted,” things like that.
People embellish the memories of the experience to reaffirm the emotion that they are identifying with that keeps them in the past
When you use feelings as barometer for change you’ll always talk yourself out of possibility.
- Joe Dispenza, Rewired
I find myself doing this with good memories and bad. Breaking this habit has been something I really only can do with a shift in paradigm about the original memory. I have to come up with new information to fight the old information. I’m curious to keep diving into this series, just to see where he is headed.
Health is Spiritual
20 minutes of sitting meditation this afternoon was so helpful and calming. I was oddly bored + restless today, a word I rarely ever use, but it’s the truth. I had no problem with getting into meditation and just following my breath. It was a rare thoughtless day, I think I just needed one of those.
But you know, even more spiritual today than my meditation was climbing up into the top of a tree and watching the sunset with Annie tonight. I would like to say that I haven’t been up in that tree for months, but that would be a lie. I’m a little kid sometimes and I do still climb trees. This is one of my favorites (also a favorite by the middle school kids) by the beach. It has a piece of wood built in to sit on way at the tippy top and it has the best view!
Insights
Three healthy things during the month of May is changing me. I’ve never doubled down so hard on health every darn day and it’s providing so much insight that I didn’t expect. I’m a little sad May is winding down, it’s been such a healing month. My friend Kelly (who I used to coach in triathlon) sent me the link to an Online Monthly Practices Workshop that she is doing the last day of the month that sounds like the perfect end to my Every Day in May adventure. I think I will sign up as an emotional treat to myself.
Until tomorrow… in good health.