Last week, the GGTG Collective met to discuss the GGTG Daily Practices. We discussed the why and how of each so that participants feel more empowered to select GGTG Daily Practices that work for them. This will support our daily commitment to ourselves, empowering us to embody our Goddess more of the time. The replay is available on the GGTG online community for GGTG Collective members.
The GGTG Program asks participants to commit to at least one GGTG Daily Practice. Over time, this daily commitment to oneself establishes a foundation onto which you can build more in service to the path from Good Girl to Goddess, coming into more authenticity, joy and peace.
In our most recent GGTG Collective discussion, we focused onthe why and how of our Daily Practices, which are:
- Meditation
- Coming back into the body
- Taking time for yourself
- Daily self-love
- Journaling
- Creation, imagination, and play!
These Daily Practices reflect a menu of options that each GGTG participant can select from to commit to giving back to themselves each and every day.
In this article, we discuss the purpose behind each of these Daily Practices and the different ways they can be approached. This will allow participants to fit them into their schedule, their own sense of joy, and their unique sense of authenticity developed over time.
Starting with meditation, in this series of blog posts wewill explore the why and how of the GGTG Daily Practices.
Meditation – Why?
Meditation is a powerful tool that allows us to strengthen our ability to observe our thoughts rather than getting carried away with them into reactivity and upset.
As we learn to observe rather than engage, we avoid being swept away into the river of our thoughts and can stand calmly on the bank and watch the stream of thoughts go by. We are unaffected by the emotions and reactions that often will lead to inharmonious situations if we act on them unnecessarily.
Instead, the thoughts can tell a story about what is going on inside so that we can create and feel into the space inside of our bodies. By coming out of our minds and back into the body (more on this in the next blog),we come to know the quality of being “me”, which is a beautiful sensation that becomes the place we want to be.
The next “why” is a real superpower – we extend the time between our triggers and our reactions. This allows us to notice that we are upset (this also couples beautifully with coming back into the body), wrangle ourthoughts in service of self-enquiry and use them to our benefit.
We can ask:
- What happened?
- Why am I upset?
- What am I feeling right now?
- When can I remember feeling this before?
- What needs to be healed so that this trigger can be less intense in the future or not come up again?
This is a superpower because over time we become capable of engaging in our own lives without being caught in reaction, we can be mindful about how we engage with certain situations, and we move out of victim mentality and become empowered in our own lives.
Meditation – How?
First of all, we must correct a misconception – we are NOT trying to stop the thoughts. Thoughts come and go – using the stream metaphor above, you can erect a dam but eventually the momentum will break it down and the thoughts will come crashing in again, more forcefully than before.
We use a simple instruction that I learned from my meditation teacher, Sunny Sharma. Focus on the hands – and if you don’t have hands, focus on another part of the body – and whenever the thoughts arise and you catch yourself engaging with them, come back to feeling of having hands.
Do this over and over and over until the neuroplasticity has rewired your brain so that you have more control over where you put your attention. We then become less engaged with our thoughts and more engaged with what’s going on in our bodies. You can start with as little as 10 minutes aday, focusing on the hands.
If focusing on the hands doesn’t resonate with you, our breath is another powerful tool to focus our attention. This also has the added benefit of allowing us to notice our breathing more of the time, which for those of us who sit at a desk a lot will find helpful as we typically only breathe into the top half of our chest, rather than all of the way down into our bellies.
This shallow breath can have a detrimental impact on our overall health, energy levels, and lifespan over time! It is well worth the effort to shift this habit.
Crystal Ball
Flash forward six weeks or so, and you will find that a daily meditation practice has become your favorite activity of the day. Along the way, you might find that emotions arise, senstations in the body arise, surprising thoughts appear - let it all happen, don't judge, and just observe. You are building your attention muscle - refining your ability to remain in control of where your attention goes. This will empower you to live in greater peace, with less reactivity and more joy.
We will add the “why” and “how” for our other GGTG Daily Practices over the coming weeks!