Do I Practice What I Preach? The answer is...

Hi Friends,

I'll just start by saying thank you. Thanks for reading my emails. Thanks for staying in touch and thanks for being part of my community. I love having this space to share and connect with you. 

Besides teaching Your Brain on Mindfulness, I’m doing a video challenge this month. Every day I receive a prompt that I have to answer in a short spontaneous video and send off to my group. Today’s was, what's your guilty pleasure? I had to think about this for a while because while I have a bunch that could be categorized as “guilty pleasures”, I don’t actually feel guilty about any of them: chocolate when I’ve already had too much, a tea break to gaze out my balcony when I “should” be working, cleaning, cooking, etc., a humongous pot of popcorn on family movie night, hiding out in a coffee shop with a journal, a café con leche and a really good napolitana (a laté and the Spanish version of a chocolate croissant), a glass of wine and a tapa in the middle of the day. Guilt? ZERO!

But then I thought of one that I didn’t want to share; dead give-a-way! Netflix binge. It doesn’t happen that often but when it does, I have no self-control. Meditation? Nope. Yoga? Nope. Journalling? Nope. And can you believe the way the next episode starts just moments after the last one ends so there isn’t even a pause to help me make a good decision? Seriously, evil genius on Netflix’s part. So why is this one both guilt inducing and embarrassing? Because when I do it, I feel like I’m not practicing what I preach. Not that I’ve joined an anti-Netflix brigade by any means. I love Netflix in moderation. It’s just that as a person who teaches mindfulness I feel some shame around my own "unmindful” behavior. 

So what makes my binge unmindful (this is not a commentary on anyone else's binge!)? What’s the difference between all of the non-guilty pleasures and the guilty one? It’s in the pleasure. The chocolate and daydreaming and cafes and tapas - I love every second of them and I feel them fully. That’s mindfulness! My Netflix binge is a check-out that doesn’t bring my body, my senses or my deep satisfaction into the equation at all and it is not in fact pleasurable; maybe initially yes, but in the end, not at all. And so much good stuff gets sacrificed in the process. So if it’s all guilt and no pleasure, maybe it’s not a guilty pleasure after all?

Which brings me back to the subject of the matter. Do I practice what I preach? And the answer is: always, very often or sometimes depending on the moment, day or week. That said, teaching Your Brain on Mindfulness this year gave me just the push I needed to drop whole heartedly into my meditation practice and it feels so good! I can wax poetic about all the reasons to meditate but that doesn’t mean I always do it. That said, when I do, I can feel every benefit I go on and on about and then some. For one thing, mindfulness begets mindfulness and good practices lead to more good practices. When I Netflix binge, I don’t feel as inspired to meditate and some of my other forms of self-care can fall by the wayside as well. On the other hand, when I meditate I pay more attention to what I need throughout the day. One good practice inspires the next and pretty soon, self-care feels easier and more accessible.

In my last blog, I talked about intentionally bringing a quality into the New Year instead of a list of resolutions. This year my quality is confidence (particularly in the face of discomfort and challenge) and I have already felt that shift in ways I didn’t expect. Somehow that confidence or maybe agency is a better word for what I’m feeling lately, has helped me follow through on some shifts I’ve been trying to make, particularly around self-care. So here’s what I preach that I’m also practicing these days:
 

2020 Practice

✅20 minutes daily meditation

✅Annual Personal Retreat: 11 day Vipassana Meditation retreat March 2020

✅Spend at least 120 minutes in nature per week

✅Journal a few times a week

✅Nurture connection and community: reaching out more to friends near and far, ask for more support, join a women’s circle


When I make time to do all of that, life doesn’t feel busy, it feels full. Just sink into that difference for a moment. How often do we hear ourselves talk about being busy with an undertone of complaint, frustration or stress? Doesn’t full sound a lot more like making choices to do things that we love and that are important to us? So this year, I’m choosing to add more self-care to my list of things that make life full.

What are your self-care intentions this year? How might you take care of yourself if you weren’t busy doing x, y and z? Can I support you in committing to any of those intentions? A friend who is taking my Your Brain on Mindfulness course said this wonderful thing about her first week:  

“Because you asked us to, I stopped and checked in a bit more.  Nothing monumental - but I felt like you were this invisible accountabilabody for me!” 

This makes me so happy and I would love to be your “accountabilabody” too! So feel free to whisper your good intentions in my ear. I promise I’ll keep them secret. I’ll even place them on my altar. 

Or maybe you’re ready to give yourself the gift of regular online yoga therapy sessions (I currently have a couple of spots available)?

Or a retreat to Spain in May or Costa Rica in June (early bird deadline for both is March 1)?

Just let me know how I can support you this year. We’re all on the path together and I know as well as anyone that making time for ourselves can be soooo hard. But I promise, we’re worth it! I hope to hear from you soon.