This living cleanly and thinking cleanly, with ‘no junk added’ is such a good exercise in developing attention to the choices I make. What I consume, via eating/drinking or via listening/watching has a profound and subtle effect on my state. I really need to admit that I can’t hope to experience a consistently settled state of recovery, wellbeing and noiseless peace if I’m going to continue putting junk in the system. Just watching this phenomenon in me helps. And then building a list of junk and non-junk sources reminds me that I can flick from one to the either if I simply remember that I have the choice.
‘No Junk Added’- sources:
Thinking Cleanly:
- Waking up app, by Sam Harris (meditation and lessons)
- Insight Timer app (ditto)
- Books which uplift the soulCarefully-curated blogs/feeds (eg HD/Brainpickings/TED)
Living Cleanly:
- Nature
- Riverford boxes / organic food
- GF vegan cleanse
- More green and clean food
- Early nights
‘Junk Added’- my ‘preferred’ sources:
Thinking:
- News in general
- BBC Radio4 news
- Facebook/YouTube videos
Living:
- Processed food
- Alcohol
- Excess carbs and meat
- Skipping exercise
Your further thoughts on this? How can I increase my non-junk choosing?
By relaxing more, dear soul. It’s easier to shimmy towards high-frequency sources when you’re already in the relaxed, open, receptive mode. The taut, stressed, pointed, executive mode is mirrored in, for example, a non-specific spin through Twitter. Start soft.
Is this my route to moderation? I feel these days that my Aspie brain is sometimes become more turbo-charged, more like an impulsive creature, than less so.
You can be reassured, you are simply becoming more conscious of the impulses.
Sometimes, no, often… I simply bear witness ‘too late’ to my hand darting out, to take food, or pick up my phone. Where is my self-control? My self-regulation? I don’t enjoy the consequences of my impulsiveness. I have plenty of plans and intentions around self-moderation. Why the continued over-eating, over-distracting, numbing of thoughts by junk sources? Why do my emotions or impulses govern my weight and state?
You have been paddling at the shoreline of relaxation, stillness, collectedness, inner peace. It is not until you experience full immersion in the sea of deep peace that your spontaneous impulses start to ebb away. After full immersion in deep peace, not once but several times, your nervous system experiences full non-stimulation, full unravelling, full calm… and it recalibrates at last, replacing impulsiveness with steady, considered choice.
The impulsiveness is learnt behaviour borne out of a long-term experience of an ‘overstimulated nervous system’ (see Whatever Arises Love That by Matt Kahn). It’s hard simply to locate an internal ‘override’ button to press when knee-jerk reaction has (for good reason, precious soul) been the default response behaviour for a long time.
Full, deep, regular unwinding is what it takes to retrain the nervous system.
Oh heavens. How?!
Ha! What sweet lamentation! It is as if you’d been asked to climb a mountain, instead of stop climbing mountains! You have all the means at your disposal, dear friend. It’s about little and often at first, and planning some real stoppage time intermittently.
Retreat?
If you like.
‘Little and often’ unwinding, I think I know:
- Daily meditation
- QT (and this writing)
- Qigong
- TRE
- Nature walks
- Nothing days at home with my love
- Making a list and resting in it
- Early nights (without social media)
‘Real stoppage time’ – some ideas:
- Visits to the sea / hills
- Guided retreats
- Alpine holidays
- Quarterly holiday weeks
- Annual fortnight holiday
Let it come to you. The key is this: to make a commitment to learning how to unwind completely. Imagine a week of 8 hour sleeps. Imagine! How restorative for your body and mind! What would it take for that to happen? What amount of bodywork and breath work and meditation would you be looking at to discombobulate the body and mind?
I definitely want to start by booking some TRE retreat days with Deborah Maddison / Healing Space. Ooh, what about the Secret Garden?
Poco a poco, tia.
Ok, but, this: I hereby commit to discovering how to unwind and get immersion in the sea of deep peace. I commit to making a regular practice of this, and to allowing my working life and personal lifestyle to be informed and moulded by these practices. I release all old stress-dependent practices and habits, acknowledging that they foment my impulsiveness and an automatic, self-sabotaging, self-soothing response pattern. I invite deep inner peace to rise up in me and in my life, for the benefit of all. I commit here, now, to inviting deep, settled, balanced, harmonious, relaxed, receptive, unwound Inner Peace into my life.
Lovely.
I am inviting inner peace into my life
PS. Key word: ‘unwind’