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The Interdisciplinary Work of Lyss Warmland.

Posts tagged mindfulness

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I recently began “Integral Coaching” sessions with an absolutely delightful woman named Rae Kess. This process started with a conversation about where I’m at personally and with my creative work. It then moved to world-building and goal-setting. Then, Rae created a rad outline for our work (it’s very based on metaphors, super cool stuff) that provided a one-sentence focus for my work over the next 5 months. The topic she identified after our conversation was:

“To be more able to set clear boundaries so I can focus my energy on structuring and monetizing the creative work that I care about.”

To get there, one thing we discussed a current way of being and a new way of being. For me, the current way of being involves attending to other people’s needs and pushing aside my own creative projects because my energy has been spent elsewhere. Moving in to the new way of being will, theoretically, involve setting up structures that support my work so that I can be more intentional with where I spend my energy.

The thing that I’m intentionally maintaining is keeping a lot on my plate. I love to be busy, it keeps me well. The key is where I am prioritizing and focusing my energy. In order to re-set my energy throughout the day, Rae suggested a 5-minute-a-day exercise she calls “Tiny Explosions” (LOVE IT). The idea is that our bodies need to be engaged in the transition towards a new way of being. If I am emotionally/mentally/spiritually in a state of transition, it makes sense that my body ought to be as well- even if it’s just in a small way.

As a disabled person, I recognize the importance of connecting with my body and tuning in to it. This makes a lot of sense to me. So, I reached out on social media to crowd source strategies people in my community that people use to refocus their energy during their workday.
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Not surprisingly, people came up with a ton of great strategies. Here they are all in one place (with links to what they’re talking about):

Jasmine-June Cabanaw – Sun salutations

Ron Hyatt – Short walks, meditation

Amy Anderson-Macarthur – Exercise ball vs chair, Resistance bands

Jenni Burke – Spinal Flex: inhale forward and exhale back.

Heather Harrison – Kundalini

Cailey McCormack a cuddle with my pupper – no joke. She sits on my lap and stares at me and I stare back and it makes me laugh, and then I put her down on the ground and take a few deep breaths. I also drink an entire glass of water. It’s one of my strategies for helping me get out of a panic attack. Something about it that works.

Amber Dawn Vibert Eating food and drinking water is the only thing that makes me feel okay

Paul Devlin – I just take a moment to be happy I’m at work and not in the hospital or jail. Positive thinking for a min to keep me moving

Ariel Patricia – Jumping jacks

Craig Martin I leave work early. Takes 5ish minutes. When I get home and jump into the pool it totally re-energizes me.

Richard D. Quodomine – Feng Shui health and exercise balls

Danielle Hobbs – I run my hands under really cold water, like ice cold.

Dayna Lepofsky – Go for a short walk, cold water on the wrists or face, a quick stretch in the sun if possible, stretch out my limbs in the chair if I can’t leave my desk, crack my back, blink really really hard a few times but this one kind of just makes me dizzy sometimes lol

Sarah Jean Kennedy – I wash my hands and splash my face with cold water a few times. Fix my makeup and hair then back at it!

Tom Keefer – My fitness program consists only of doing one set of as many push-ups I can do once a day. It works pretty good and is real quick.

Andrew Charles Weed – pen

Monique Melanson  – Do a breathing exercise

Kim Doolittle – Sleep and naps

Jesse Watts – I do a couple 5 minute meditations a day. Helps me with my anxiety and helps me get “grounded”/relax. Not really physical but helps with body connections.

Jeff Wheeldon – Pushups. Start small, but do it many times per day. Amazing how fast your strength can improve from incremental gains, and it wakes me up like nothing else.

Anne-Marie Bouthillette – 5minute meditation/deep breathing/body scan

Effie Dice – Wim Hof breathing

To summarize, the most common suggestions were:

  • Push ups or jumping jacks
  • Meditation
  • Washing hands or face with cold water
  • Drinking a glass of water
  • Stretching

 

It’s powerful what happens when we ask for what we need. Try some of these strategies if you’re looking for a “tiny explosion” to refocus during your work day. Or, better yet, ask your community what strategies they use!

(Thanks for the inspiration, Rae!)

 

If  you don’t allow yourself
To sit with your grief
And to hold it with you
(Not forever, just for now)

It’s like taking a deep breath
And holding it
Until you suffocate your
Present self.

Maybe that’s the thing
About grief is it is something
Firmly situated in a painful
Present self.

And it may be more comfortable
To stay in the present with
The one I (past me)
Loved.

Because life without you,
Sometimes it seems like it echoes
Through dimensions beyond
My mortal comprehension

But my present self and I
Hold you deeply in
Every cell in my body
And that curve where my leg meets my hip
And the roots of Japanese Maple trees.

So maybe I don’t really need to be without you at all.

Welcome to The Nothing Exists Radio Hour where nothing exists except you, in this moment, right here, right now.

In this pilot episode, Lyss interviews Nikki (@eatks / www.eatks.net) from Everything and the Kitchen Sink about independent podcasting, being a woman in the podcasting/radio/music communities, and riot grrrl.

Playlist: “Lyss and Nikki don’t care what men have to say”

Content includes: women-fronted punk bands, discussion relating to feminism, sexism, podcasting, radio, healing after assault, DIY culture

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I’ve been making lists of things that feel good. There is literally no qualifier for making the list except that the thing felt good. There are no rules, I don’t post these statuses with any real consistency, they just happen when I feel like I need them. I started posting “things that feel good” statuses when I was about six months into a violent (but, as always, functional) depression because I noticed that my thought patterns focused in on negative things that didn’t feel good at all, and that I was focusing all of my energy on those feelings that didn’t feel good. I was looking for a way to train my brain to notice things that felt good instead, and one day I decided to post a list of things that had felt good that day as a Facebook status.The response I got kind of blew my mind. A ton of people liked it or otherwise “reacted” to it. People commented that they thought it was a cool concept. People approached me in the street to tell me they had loved that status.

It was just a status on Facebook, and I hadn’t posted it in hope of receiving any type of response as much as to hold myself publicly accountable for this paradigm shift I was attempting to create for myself. It is an easy way to keep a record. That being said, I’m never one to turn down validation, and the reminders every time I would receive a notification to look at that status were helpful in re-training my brain, because I kept re-reading these things that I was intentionally acknowledging as feeling good. It became a mantra, these Things That Felt Good.

I started posting them more often. As my depression lessened, the posts began to feel more celebratory and less like another thing I put myself through the motions of in hope of feeling better. People continued engaging with the concept of them both on and offline, and even began posting their own. Being mindful of things that feel good was a concept that made sense to a lot of people. And I felt as though it really was contributing to a meaningful change for me.

As a person who is fascinated by performance, I have always felt drawn to public displays of self-discovery and change. I think that expressions of authentic processes of self-discovery are the highest form of art, and that it follows naturally for that art form to bleed into the public sphere. With presentation of this wild display of vulnerability comes the opportunity for those witnessing it to reflect, relate, connect with the artist, and with one another. It creates space for discussion. It also creates space for accountability and the continuation of the process of reflection for the artist.

There’s also something to be said for the intentional self-objectification that comes with using the self as a medium for artistic expression. The process of exposing ones self has been, for me, a way of looking at myself from outside of myself. A way of taking space from my body, and then being very much in my body. Objectifying my Self, and my experiences on my terms. Making my Self a display in a way that I consent to, intentionally.

I didn’t intend for Things That Felt Good Today posts to be an art project when I started to do it, but upon reflection, that is a large component of what it is and what has been healing about it. 

Things That Felt Good Today posts are an art form because they are vulnerable displays of mindfulness that is related to the authentic self and are performed publicly. They are full of transformative potential for the artist, and for those who witness them. For those who choose to engage with them, those who create their own, those who think about them.They are a performance piece that feels good.