Today is going to require a LOT of deep breathing.

Which inspired me to relish some lovely breathing space of my own for a few moments.   Ah…….

Which further inspired me to record a  musical Meditation on Breathing by Sarah Dan Jones :  BreatheIn-BreatheOut **

It’s actually a musical round with 3 parts (except I sang/recorded each line separately–someday, maybe I’ll record a trio with myself !)

1. a simple single-pitched “drone” part of “breathe in….breathe out”
2. the melody line – “when I breathe in, I breathe in peace….when I breathe out, I breathe out love.”
3. the descant line – same text as the melody

 I invite you to listen…..and breathe…….and maybe even sing along – choosing which part you feel most comfortable singing.  And, if you’re willing – let me know how that feels inside……

* I found a lovely, related composition/recording by Sarah Dan Jones online, entitled When I Breathe In  that uses this melody as the chorus.

** Interesting how popular the theme of “breathing in, breathing out” is.  A quick google search included the following:

• Matt Kearney’s Breathe In, Breathe Out [actually, I kinda liked this song!]
• Chris Cagle’s I Breathe In, I Breathe Out [country]
• St. Lunatics (Ali), Breathe in, Breathe Out [rap]

And here’s another invitation - as you listen to any/all of the songs, notice if (and/or how) each one resonates differently inside you.

Dear Mary Elaine: 

HeartMath founder Doc Childre has written a new booklet, The State of Ease – it’s available for free – to help recreate flow in our daily lives and maintain coherent alignment between our heart, mind and emotions. We invite and encourage you to read The State of Ease.

Click here to view or get a free download.

We want to make this helpful booklet, which includes the new Inner-Ease™ technique, available to as many people as possible, so we are asking you to please help distribute The State of Ease to others at this time of change. Feel free to post The State of Ease link or PDF file on your Web site. E-mail it to friends and family, send it to other Web sites and blogs or refer people to http://heartmath.org/state-of-ease.

With care,

Sara Childre,
President, Institute of HeartMath

Forward to a friend

In Parts One through Three of this series, you have begun to recognize and explore your own inner experience of the holidays, as a prelude to sorting through those aspects of the season that bring added/unwanted stress to your life.  Part One  enabled you to identify an overall sense of the holidays, while Part Two invited you to look a little more deeply at individual components that result in either/both a positive or negative response within you.  Part Three introduced the restorative power of Quick Coherence, that can help you celebrate those holiday-related activities and events that bring you some joy and also provide some resilience to protect you from added stress.  

Clearing the Holiday “Clutter-Buts”

In the final installment in this “Healing Your Holiday Spirit” series, I draw on an “emotional clutter-busting” approach to dealing with holiday stress to offer a way to gently explore those “But’s…..” you identified in Part Two.  These often stem from “should’s” and “ought’s” that have gradually crept into your holiday traditions, yet do not necessarily add to your enjoyment of the season.  It is as though these “clutter-but’s” have become tangled strings of Christmas tree lights that take a bit of sorting out prior to becoming part of the celebratory mood.

 This approach offers four basic clutter-control questions that can serve as helpful guides for choosing which holiday “Buts…..” we decide to keep intact, alter or perhaps, discard:

1.  How meaningful is it for me? - How much of an impact does this tradition have on my life? Is it important to me? Can I let it go?
2. Do I love it? – Is this something that brings me joy? Or is it something I simply tolerate? Or does it create added stress in my life?
3. Do I want this? – Is this something I need or want as part of my life? How important is it to keep this “intact” or is there a way I can reduce the “clutter” effect?
4. Does this need me? – If it is not important to me personally, is it important to someone I care about? Is there something else that I need to consider (or do) about or with this?

 And, (in keeping with this series’ theme of “Gifts Within a Gift”), I have created another Guided (11 minute Audio) Exercise that invites you explore these questions within your whole body-mind, accompanied by a welcoming spirit of interested curiosity.  You can access it here.

 As we bring this series of messages to a close, I hope that you have been able to find a bit of gentle spaciousness that enables you to embrace the richness of those holiday traditions that provide the most meaning to your life and your relationships, even as you free yourself from the constraints of those that have kept you from being able to enjoy the holiday season. 

Stay tuned for 2010, as I am planning additional opportunities to help you continue to access the wisdom of your body-mind.  In the meantime, I welcome your comments, questions and suggestions.  And may you have a blessed Holiday Season!

Image credits:  tangled lights by shoothead  (Flickr (cc) Some Rights Reserved)

In Part One of this series, you began to explore the role that “choice” plays in determining an outcome of “Yippee!” or “Yuck!” to your general experience of the Holidays.  In Part Two, you took a “Yea-But” approach to explore more deeply your overall sense of the Holidays.  In Part Four, you will have an opportunity to concentrate more on the But… side of the scale.

First,  let us take a moment to quietly appreciate those parts of the holiday season that give you pleasure, and for which you are grateful.  These are all the things that showed up on you Yea! side of the scale.  These are the parts of the holiday season that are important to you, and which you most likely want to keep as part of your holiday season activities.

This time, my “Gift Within a Gift – A Stresswell™ Holiday Truffle” consists of a lovely exercise from HeartMath called Quick Coherence.  You can find the written instructions here.  I have also included a Guided (6 minute audio) version of this exercise, especially tailored for the holidays.

This wonderful exercise offers a delicious tool for helping you to remember what holds positive meaning in your life.  However, its real power comes from the creation of more coherent heart rhythms, which leads to a more harmonic balance between thoughts and emotions.  In other words, you simply begin to feel better–with more energy, mental clarity and resilience.  That way, you are more equipped to deal with the inevitable hassles that daily life (let alone the holidays!) drops at your doorstep.

Stay tuned for Part Four, the final installment in this “Healing Your Holiday Spirit” series – where I’ll offer you another Guided Exercise – which draws on a great “clearing the emotional clutter” approach to dealing with holiday stress.

In the meantime – your questions and comments are always welcomed!

In Part One of this series, we began to explore the role that “choice” plays in determining an outcome of “Yippee!” or “Yuck!” to a given experience (in this case, “holidays”). 

Now, let’s consider a variation of the Yippee-Yuck© Scale.  I call it the Yea-But© scale.  It’s particularly useful for allowing us to look more deeply at an event or experience that might involve more than one reaction. 

In this scale, each word (or concept or experience) will receive TWO types of rankings (one for “Yeah!” and one for “But….” -each on a scale of 0-3, in which 0 means “none” and 3 means “a great deal”).

 For example, we can use the same word we used  in Part One:  “snow.”   

Maybe you sort of like the sparkle of snow in the moonlight and seeing trees covered with snow.  So, then maybe you would score the “Yea!” side as a “1″.  BUT, you hate having to shovel the stuff, scraping your car, how dirty the snow gets, plus you just hate the cold weather and having to get bundled up during winter weather.  So, you might score the “But….” side as a 3.  Got it?

Now, we can look at the holiday season more specifically, using the Yeah-But© Scale (below) to jot down some notes.

And, to help enrich this process (and in keeping with the initial “Gift within a gift – Stresswell Holiday Truffle” concept), I have also included a lovely, brief Guided AudioExercise.  (It’s about 9 minutes long.)

So, (whether you used the Guided Exercise or not) how did that go for you?  What did you begin to notice?  Were you able to identify some things on both sides of the scale?

I hope so, because in Part Three of this series, I will share a brief exercise that will help you remember and quietly appreciate those parts of the holidays that give you pleasure (those things that show up on the “Yea!” side of the scale).  And, in Part Four, I will conclude with an exercise that will help you to clear some of the ”emotional clutter”  from the “But….” side of the scale.

As always, I welcome your comments and questions!

Today’s lesson came in the form of my monthly telephone bill. As I briefly scanned the bill, I felt (and then heard) the sudden gasp escape from my throat: the amount due was TRIPLE its usual cost!

As I looked further, I discovered that the additional charges stemmed from a business call I had placed last month to the Bahamas. My colleague and I had experienced several delays in making scheduled appointments–due in part to interruptions in her internet-based telephone service, plus we had dismissed her cell phone option as too cost-prohibitive. So, when she gave me a new land-line number to use, I didn’t even think twice. I made the call and we had a productive 60-minute conversation. What I didn’t know at the time was that the call was being billed at my phone company’s “primetime overseas rate.”

Yikes! But also, DUH! I’m so spoiled with my unlimited long distance service plan that I didn’t stop to think that it only covers the US. Plus her phone number “looks” like a regular US number (that is, it doesn’t have any international code prefix to the number).

Once upon a time, I probably would have reacted with anger, frustration and tears, punctuated with feelings of blame and self-loathing for having made such a “stupid” and costly mistake. I might have then railed against the telephone company for what I believed to be exorbitant rates, and/or harbored a lingering, unspoken sense of bitterness toward my colleague for not having “protected” me from my ignorance.

Instead, this morning, I chose to take a deep breath and quietly pay the bill. And, without shame or blame, acknowledged my simple (albeit costly) error in judgment, that was based merely on my not knowing that which I didn’t already know. And then pondered some lessons to be learned from my experience–to help me and others not make a similar mistake in the future.

There are days in life in which we learn costly lessons. And some days in which our lessons simply cost us money.

Learning how to avoid the first type altogether while also minimizing the second is perhaps one of our most important lessons in life.

(note: image from Patrick Q on Flickr)