Month: September 2018

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Welcome to The M.E.D.S. Project

Two years ago, I swapped my mental health meds for what I came to call my M.E.D.S…

In order to support my mental health recovery and ongoing wellbeing, I committed to a regime of daily self-care involving the four components I found to be key to remain well and flourishing:

M is for Meditation or Mindfulness (seated, usually with a guided recording on headphones)

E is for Exercise (Qigong, Walking & Swimming especially)

D is for Diet (a ‘low carb high fat diet’ seems to work best)

S is for Sleep (it’s got to be early enough for me to sleep on melatonin – ie soon after 10pm)

For a while, I got a bit slack about the practice, partly because of returning to work, and partly because of falling in love – so all for good reasons. But I’m keen to see what happens if I really give this regime a proper go again, within normal life, for a good period of time. It’s a special window at this time, requiring a good deal of healthy focus, as my last fledgling just flew the nest. After I dropped her at her new home, I made a promise to myself that I would take good care of myself in the next phase of adjustment. So, this new project, the MEDS Project, will involve my focussing on and tracking a thorough practice of this amazing formula for well-being: Meditation, Exercise, Diet and Sleep – and reflecting on my learning through inner Dialogues of Discernment here on the page. I plan to run this through the final quarter of 2018, in other words for Oct, Nov and Dec.

What outcomes do I anticipate?

  • Calling my energy back to myself (a phrase of Dr Joe Dispenza’s when discussing the effects of meditation)
  • Plenty of processing of emotions
  • Some weight loss
  • Learning about myself and about what really works for me
  • Developing a new post-child-rearing routine for myself
  • Settling a little
  • More energy for work (in the afternoons)
  • Temptations to ditch the practice (which requires t i m e and discipline) to fulfil work demands
  • A sense of diligence, competence, mastery and rhythm
  • The opportunity to go out into the working world with more ‘inner peace’ to share