I consider myself a mild-mannered, even-tempered, relatively well-balanced mother of two teens. However yesterday my son asked me why I had turned into a screaming banshee who seemed intent on ruining his life. I was. He had a day off from school and I couldn’t rip him from the cesspit that is his bed. It drove me mad and consequently I was simply rolling that bad mood downhill ( or up the stairs, depending on how you look at it).
There were many moments of self-awareness, usually, after I had barged into his bedroom and demanded he does some task or other, empty the dishwasher, bring in the bins, on and on. I would scream, react, then note, hmmm I am actually a tad insane today, I hope he doesn’t run away!!! Or do I???
What was going on, I do not know. I can only assume it was the effects of the full moon. An event that historically has been known to turn even the most mild-mannered mammy into a deranged psychopath.
Was it the full moon, was it tiredness, was it work overload, who knows? I have decided that it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that I don’t berate myself for being a weenchy bit mental yesterday. It was emotions that had a hold of me and I am not my emotions. Therefore I am not a horrible person, or on the edge of a breakdown, I was simply experiencing a wave of whatever that was and that’s ok. Far too often in this life, we equate who we are with what we are feeling. And that is not true. We are not our thoughts, we are not our emotions, we experience them but we are not them. So to that end, I lay down after dinner and napped for half an hour as exhaustion overtook me. I got up and took care of whatever needed doing there and then. I retreated to my ‘office/my writing room/no kids allowed room/yoga room/ sanity-saving room’ and busted out some yoga moves.
I felt better. I allowed myself to be whatever I was. I spoke to the kids and explained how I was feeling, apologized for any unintentional nearly killing of either of them and sat with myself.
I noticed I was sad, I noticed I was angry, I noticed I was overwhelmed. Why I was any of these things I don’t know but I decided I didn’t need to know. All that matters was I allowed whatever it was to be. Just be. Breathing helps. Literally just deep breaths. Far too often this process can be made way more complicated than it needs to be. So to that end:
Yoga moves to calm the nervous system:
I started with constructive rest, I simply wasn’t able for anything more energetic. Lie on your back, legs bent, feet on the floor hip-distance apart.
Supine twist, Cat/cow, Plank pose, Down dog into Warrior 11, Triangle pose into tree, then back to rest or Shavasana.
Breathing:
When we slow down our breathing and exhale longer than we inhale, it sends signals to the brain to switch the sympathetic nervous system to the parasympathetic nervous system and we calm down.
Then I just sat, perhaps it could be called meditation, I’m not sure if that’s what I was doing but I just allowed myself to be for a few minutes. And whenever my thoughts rambled in my head to the washing up, Brad Pitt or is the world going to explode, I would return to my breath. This is mindfulness. Non-judgemental awareness of each moment.
Crystals:
I have a rather fabulous rose quartz crystal alien skull. He’s very cool: very Alexander Mc Queen meets Dia de Los Muertos (Mexican Day of the dead). I sat with him and meditated. Rose quartz has a very calming loving vibration and is connected with the heart chakra. By the time I had sat for a few minutes I was less inclined to exercise my hand chakra to go to the fridge chakra and sample the vino chakra.
Maya Angelou – ‘If I am not good to myself, how can I expect anyone else to be”