D is for Daily Practice
Part 4 of healing acronym heaDache
Part 4 follows on from
H for Health First
E for Eating Anti-inflammatory Foods
A for Altruistic Behaviours
A few years ago I recorded a mini podcast on Daily Practices, you can listen to that here.
What does daily practice mean to you?
Over the years for me, it has come to mean having an early morning practice, getting an early night, incorporating rituals like breathwork, meditation, movement and journaling alongside eating nutrient rich foods throughout the day.
Looking at them altogether in this way can feel overwhelming. Especially if, like me when I first began, our days are consisting of very little radical self-care practices.
Where is the time, energy and resources to make all this happen?
I remember talking about my early attempts with yoga to the spiritual teacher who recommended the book Balance Your Hormones Balance Your Life to me. To which she responded, “and that’s why we call it a practice”.
I can’t even recall what I was saying but her words in response really landed. I hadn’t realised up until that point that all these teeny tiny changes I was beginning to imbed into my days and life were all a practice. And that I didn’t have to get them perfectly right.
The year after, I bought some ‘perfectly imperfect’ strawberries and received this as a message. Introducing a new daily practice in adopting the ‘perfectly imperfect’ approach.
This one daily practice, even on its own, helps to ease some of the pressure and stress we face throughout the day.
What is one of your go to practices that helps ease the pressure and stress of the day to day?
When it came to starting any one of these practices, particularly meditation, breathwork and journaling, they each started off as once or twice a week at most.
It was only over time and with practice that they became every other day. Even as weekly practices, they were a big part of me improving my mental health and turning chronic pain and chronic fatigue around. Always meeting myself where I was at and doing what I could when I could. Arguably practices of their own.
Unexpectedly, during the first UK lockdown I found myself living alone. Losing my income for a second time in as many years and being unable to work for an unknown duration left me with big decisions to make around where and how I continued to live. It also freed up space to ramp up my practices which were enough to hold me during so much uncertainty. Increasing meditation to daily and even multiple times daily not only deepened my healing experiences but also helped me continue making decisions that were in alignment with what I truly wanted. Ensuring my needs were met and manifesting desired outcomes simultaneously.
One day I went to lie down to meditate on the big predicament of not having somewhere to live. I wanted to move to the country and live in someone else’s house to give me a bit of breathing space. I needed a large room and space to house all my furniture and store some of my belongings. I settled into a meditation, was very clear on all this and flung it out to the universe in the way that I had learned to do. The next day, I was introduced to someone who wasn’t even looking for a lodger and arranged to move in the following month.
A few months into the pandemic, I entered my first relapse. Kick-started by cluster headache. I was introduced to more practices during this time, such as reminding myself “it’ll pass” during each relentless attack. Each one following on from the other without any space for recovery between over a period of 6 months. At this stage I was unaware that a ‘relapse is all part of the journey’. I had no idea what was happening at the time, it felt like the end of the world. I had little other choice than to continue on doing what I had been learning to do. Doing what I could when I could, forever starting where I was and working with what I had.
In the end, what initially felt like a 24-7 job, in respect of learning to take care of myself mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually and financially, ended up becoming my way of life. Each relapse reducing in intensity and severity every time and to 3 months each in duration.
At first, the art of daily practice was formed to help support me through unimaginable and enduring illness. The initial intention behind it, to reduce inflammation in my body and then formed part of learning to rebalance my hormones. Inadvertently, becoming a way to anchor myself during such times of turbulence.
Nowadays, daily practice is something I see as a big part of my wellness.
I didn’t start out where I am now and it didn’t happen overnight. The beauty in that is that you don’t need to master all these practices in a day, a week or even a month. In a year’s time you will thank yourself for making a start. Like my good friend shared with me near the beginning of this journey, “a lot can change in a year”. That’s exactly what I’ve found.
For all it can be a wonder where you might get the time, energy and resources from to do it, the time it gives you back in space, mental clarity and peace makes up for the time invested.
As an example of how a practice needn’t be all-consuming, with breathwork I started with timing my pause count which is how long you can pause your breathing for before taking the next breath. I was only able to pause for 6 seconds the first few times. Now its consistently over 20 seconds. The whole practice takes less than a minute.
Another example is writing a ta-da list in my notebook. It takes a couple of minutes to grab my notepad and pen and write 3 small things down that I’ve achieved today. A practice that makes me feel better about what I’ve done when my mind is telling me all the things I haven’t done.
This is how it starts. This is where it started for me. Give a daily practice a try. See how you feel this time next week, next month.
When it comes to a regular practice, it can be easy to be told that you should do this one or that one, you should do it at a certain time of day. But that doesn’t often support where we’re at. If you were to choose one to start today what is one practice you’d like to begin with? At what point in the day would you like to dedicate to practicing it?
Consider it to be as simple as drinking a glass of water first thing on a morning to start the day or any one of the range of practices mentioned above.
This is the 5th instalment of
12 Chapters Club on With each one its becoming increasingly clear to me that these need updating, perhaps even rewriting. I’m still yet to work out where they will go in the book. Though for the first time, I understand that healing acronym headache will form the tactical action framework that teaches you how to take the next small step, day by day. How are you finding them to digest so far? I’m trusting it’ll all make much more sense once its presented within the context of the 4 Phase Healing & Growth Model this forms part of.