Pause button.

Stop what you are doing right now. Breathe. Feel your belly rise, supporting your soul.

What do you see?

What do you hear?

What do you smell?

What do you feel?

What do you taste?

Take this second to embrace your mind and body. This moment will soon be gone. Did you enjoy it? Did you engage all of your senses to feel connected to the Universe and the grounding force inside your core. Stop, breathe, repeat.

Love and light

Drinking tea is my favorite way to escape into a moment of mindfulness. Cheers!

Balance.

Life is like riding a bicycle.

To keep your balance,

you must keep moving.

-Albert Einstein

Maintaining balance between life, love, jobs, friends, family, etc can be a delicate act. The feminist side of me embraces the fact that women wear so many hats. We have the ability to serve many roles, while maintaining a fierce sense of individualism. However, life is not a perfect balance. Certain roles will pull at your heart strings with a ferocious energy. A lot of my roles have shifted over the past few weeks. We officially announced our engagement, my future mother-in-law was hospitalized, and I started as a nurse practitioner student at a new clinic. During the past few weeks, the delicate balance of my roles shifted. My anxiety loves these scenarios. Anxiety feeds off of external chaos.

Here are my pearls of wisdom from the past month (not sure I’m qualified for that, but we are going for it!) :

Life will never be perfectly balanced. You can not control everything. When you are spinning all of your plates eloquently above your head, you will get an arm cramp and they will crash down. AND THAT’S OK. Or, you might maintain the balance but you will become physically and mentally exhausted. It is ok. It is always ok.

Scene: Kemp’s dad called us panicked on a Sunday morning. Kemp’s mom couldn’t breathe and was rushed to the ER. Kemp hangs up. He looks at me and I know it is time to shift my balance from 50/50 partnership to 100/0 partnership. It is time to carry him in this moment. Guess what happens when you shift your mindset from panic brain to compassion brain. Anxiety dissipates. Everything is better with his mom and I did not let anxiety dictate the situation. In that moment, I led with love, not fear. As a healthcare provider and anxiety goddess, I found the balance.

As someone who journeys with anxiety in my passenger seat, I feel compelled to tell you (and myself/ego/id/superego/all those other undergraduate psych vocab words) that it all will be ok. Balance is possible. You might have anxiety and it might debilitate your spirit. But, you might find moments of relief throughout the day. Maybe that is your balance right now. Life is not black and white. It is a journey of greys that seep into some mixture that we call life. You will never simply be an anxious person. You are a balance of a beautiful soul who has an occasional dark cloud. Keep moving forward through the stress and the change. Do hard things. Find a healing balance. Stressful situations are just opportunities for you to show yourself strength.

I intended for this piece to be fluid and encapsulate the concept of balance. I’m not sure I ended up there. I guess that’s what I get for writing a piece after eating nothing but sugar and sitting at a carwash in 30 degree weather. Eh, I’ll take it.

Love and light

Life is not black and white. Except, I guess it kind of is if you look at my meditation corner. AWKWARD.

Yoga for gangly folk.

I am a relatively large human. I believe the actual height is somewhere between 5’9″-5’11” depending on how much I can drop my hip. Being tall has been a blessing and a curse. People often ask me to reach things on shelves which gives me fulfillment and a sense of purpose in the world. It also gives me tired arms. Let me take you back a bit in the imaginary time machine that I am creating right now. Impressive, huh? Ready-go!

The year was 2000 and I was in elementary school. I was a staggering 5’7″ and all of the boys were about 3’6″. Dramatic, but you catch my drift. My body elongated and stretched out aggressively in a period of about 3 months. Add that to chin acne and bangs and you have hit the Holy Grail of awkwardness.

Fast forward to high school. I never really grew into my body. I played sports and was decent. I was never super fast or super strong etc. At least I didn’t trip over my feet anymore.

Fast forward AGAIN to present day. Welcome. As an adult, I still feel somewhat out of place in my own skin. Anxiety and panic have created this weird energy between my mind and my body. Sometimes I feel like a stranger in my own skin. I still am slightly clumsy and gangly. Anxiety makes your brain feel so odd that you don’t even feel at home in your own skin. This feeling is not ideal so I started exploring ways to connect to my body. Over the years, I attended free yoga classes at the college gym or tried an online video. I was never serious about my practice. I’m still not serious about it, but I love where my journey is headed.

Yoga makes me feel connected, grounded, strong, calm, healthy, and happy. The practice has strengthened my mind and body connection. My height is a strength in yoga. I might stumble on my way to the mat, but I am strong and graceful in my practice. I fall over in the occasional pose and lose my balance. It is a good reminder that life might make us feel awkward in our own skin, but we have the ability to cultivate strength and become grounded. Yoga teaches me about myself physically, mentally, and emotionally…and for that, I am grateful.

Mellow out with mindfulness.

Our society craves speed, instant gratification, and intensity. You wake up early, get dressed, hop in the car, and roll into the rat race. My (old) typical morning before a shift looks a little something like this:

• wake up suddenly to a loud alarm at 4:30am
• jump out of bed in a panicked and frazzled state
• hop in the shower
• throw on some mascara/hair in a pony tail
• scramble to find clean scrubs
• chow down on breakfast, normally in 2-3 minutes
• make coffee and chug it as I’m headed out the door
• get in the car and immediately turn on the radio
• start/stop through traffic
• arrive at 6am
• rush to my unit and throw my bag down
• get report

Ok. Whoa. I’m stressed just reading that and reflecting back on how I used to greet the day. It felt more like a fall into the chaos of the day, rather than gently greet it. I’m assuming a lot of you wake up with a similar routine. Rush, rush, rush. It creates a hectic energy and starts the day with a heavy mind.

I read a book on mindfulness. It was a 10 week course that teaches you how to incorporate a mindful practice in every part of life. It was a process, but I started to integrate the strategies into my daily routine. This is what my morning looks like now:

• wake up to a waterfall themed alarm at 4:15 am
• take 3 deep belly breaths before I sit up
• feel my feet hit the floor and embrace the blessing of waking up
• take a hot shower, feeling the water trickle down my skin
• use dim light to finish getting dressed
• make a cup of loose leaf tea and breakfast, enjoying the taste of each bite for 15 minutes
  • I’ve made my breakfast a meditative experience
• sit for 5 minutes, setting my intention for the day
• 10 sun salutations to bring heat and energy into my body
• walk to the car and drive to work
• listen to an insightful/funny podcast to learn something on my commute
• arrive at work
• use aromatherapy (peppermint oil) to energize and a short meditation to clear the mind before the shift

You have 24 hours in a day. You choose to make them chaotic or calm. Things will happen that shift your experience, but YOU control how you feel.

Slow down. Be mindful. Be present. Do all things with love.