Spring Cleaning for your mind & Spirit—how to get more spring in your step with less effort!It’s happening again. Every year around the start of spring, patients start reporting that their energy has tanked and they feel blah for no reason. Since I am in the lucky position of hearing how people are really doing, I’ll tell you that while most people are optimistic in their casual grocery store conversations about gardening and getting outside between the rains, a lot of folks in Sonoma county are feeling a little blah right now.
Spring is all about the spirit of renewal, creativity, and vision. It’s a time for sprouting and new growth. So why aren’t we feeling it? Because we didn’t take the time to rest and rejuvenate in winter. Our culture in the bay area (even in the far north bay) focuses on productivity. Hyper-productivity is the baseline. So during our mild winter this year, we kept going and doing. We didn’t allow enough time for rest and reflection. How are the seeds going to sprout if the soil was not prepared and the seeds given time to germinate?
The good news is that the most important part of resting is that you go deep, not long. Just a bit of true rest for your mind will have you bouncing back and connecting to your springy spirit in no time.
Mind Experiment: Over the next week, do a little spring cleaning of your mind. Give yourself permission to drop your unwanted habitual thoughts to make room for fresh thinking. You know the stale thoughts you’ve already gone over a million times? Gather them up and take them to goodwill. If you’re not so good at minimizing, you can put them in a box in the garage for the week. That way if you want your old thoughts back when the week is over, you can pull them out again. Cute metaphors aside, what does this look like?
First notice what thought habits you have. Do you future trip? Spending a lot of time going over how different scenarios will play out? Do you complain a lot? Maybe even just to yourself? Do you awfulize? Constantly preparing for the worst to happen? Or do you review and compare? Replaying the scenes of what happened and how it could have been different?
Then give yourself permission to let go of these stale thoughts. You might have to repeat this part of the spring cleaning process several times. But I’m confident (from doing this experiment many times myself) that it will be worth it.
What are you gonna do with all the free time in your mind? With less stale habitual thinking taking up your mental space, you’ll experience a mental rest that will allow fresh thinking in. From rest and fresh thinking you’ll be able to re-connect to your spirit and vision. And before you know it you’ll be feeling the aliveness of spring.
Upcoming Events:Come join us at one of the upcoming state of mind workshops over the next 2 weeks. It’s the best way I know how to help you do a spring cleaning of your mind. With a deeper understanding of how thinking, moods, and behavior work, it becomes easier to drop your chronic stressful thinking so you can reconnect with your true nature of wellbeing and resiliency.
Resiliency 101, The Art and Science of Thriving
Pick a date and click the the link below to get more information and save your seat now, or drop us an email or a phone call and we’ll register you!
Tuesday, April 17th, 6-7 PM OR Tuesday, April 24th 9:30-10:30 AM
I believe in the power of this understanding so much that the first class is free for patients. It’s normally just $25. And if you pay for yourself, you can bring a friend for free.
Happy Experimenting!
Christina Ness-Hawks, LAc
