Mama Needs a Refill

I appreciate this week’s weekly question proposed in The Prosperous Writer, an e-zine, by Christina Katz. (www.christinakatz.com)

She asks, How do you stay healthy? Have you always been healthy or is good health something that you have had to cultivate?

For the most part, yes I have always been healthy but as a mom I have had to cultivate new habits to replace the unhealthy ones I had created from the stress of parenting.  As a parent we empty our cup daily and it is up to us to be creative and listen to what we need in order to refill.  To fill my cup physically, I have a new focus, Bikram yoga.  I started going two years ago on my 40^th birthday.  But it was only this past September when I committed myself to going four times a week.  This activity feeds my soul in so many ways.

My original excuses were time and money.  The classes aren’t cheap and they last 90 minutes.  But because I have put myself first I’ve made it work.  I said no to guilt, shame, and excuses.  By saying yes to self-care and refilling my cup I have become stronger, healthier, calmer and on many days more balanced.  Bikram Hot Yoga is a 90 minute moving meditation connecting with my body, mind and soul.  The results are lasting, life giving, healing.

As a former runner my body was ready for something different.  As a mother I needed to clear my head and as a woman my soul was thirsting for a deeper connection.

With yoga I see my body reshaping, getting stronger but most importantly I am learning the very best health lesson…remembering to breathe.  No matter how great all the sweating makes me feel, if I’m not breathing I’m not refilling my cup.

This lesson to breathe comes home with me from the yoga studio and gets an opportunity to be practiced in my daily life.

When I hold my breath through the parenting drama I cut off all hope, energy, and love.  Remembering to breathe calms me, centers me and keeps me from losing it.  And isn’t that what good health is all about?

by J.G. McGlothern

Many years ago my step-dad built a cabin in the woods on a cliff overlooking the water.  Driving down the dirt road you could only hear the tires on the gravel and the wind rustling through the trees.  Anyone who slept there would claim it as the best night of sleep and would sleep in later than normal. The silence of the woods had the most amazing calming effect, boosting everyone’s spirit.

When I lived in Tokyo, I would take a train to the country on my days off, escaping the noise, pollution and people.  Seeing the green trees would transport me to a place of calm, an awareness of how stressed I was living in a crowded city miles and miles away from my native Pacific Northwest.

This morning a mom offered to take my son, and the two boys I watch every Thursday for a couple of hours.  She drove off with a car full of five boys, leaving me with a new plan.  I would absorb the silence, fill my cup with self-care, instead of emptying my cup with housework.  The house is unusually quiet and I feel myself settling into this gift, aware of how much I need silence.

Sometimes all we need to re-charge is a cup of silence.  We may not be able to drive to the woods, hop on a train to the country or send our children away, but we may get five minutes to sit in silence.  Let me re-phrase, we may get the opportunity to create five minutes of silence.  I could have ignored the gift and filled this time with stuff that doesn’t replenish my soul.

What would happen if you turned off the radio, I-pod, television, telephone ringer and just sat in the silence?

Would you feel guilty?  Want to quickly fill that void with noise?

You may very well have difficulty embracing the silence at first.  You may feel completely weird and uncomfortable.  On the flip side you may eat it up and be transformed to a state of calm.

You won’t know until you try now will you?

by J.G. McGlothern

In yoga the other day the instructor said to us as we lay on our backs in the resting pose, Now just receive…lots of benefits from this resting place.  They make it sound so simple, so natural.  Just receive.

Instead of just receiving we as parents, women, human beings fix, control, analyze, doubt, agonize over, get all guilty and make it oh so complicated.

When was the last time you received a compliment without going into a long excuse or explanation instead of just saying thank you?

I see these little gifts as moments of opportunity for a free re-fill.

When my husband says, You look good or a friend says, I like that idea I am going to practice simply saying thank you and receiving the benefits of being acknowledged and appreciated.

When was the last time you received the gift of time and filled it with busyness?

I also see these moments of opportunity, a time to hold out your cup for a free re-fill.

When my kids are sleeping, like now, I am going to seize the moment and exercise, write, breathe, rest and reap the benefits, standing strong with a full cup.