I’ve believed for sometime now that we’re often handed forced downtime when we don’t take it ourselves.

Illness and injury seem to be two things that creep into life when we know that we need to slow down…but don’t.

So we’re forced to slow down.

We’re forced to drink in our breath (or take it in the form of tiny, cough-filled sips), and we’re encouraged to rest sore backs or stuffy heads.

And maybe these things are just nature taking its course, or the way things happened at the moment and, obviously, there’s a biological component of stress and fatigue and illness. And yet.

And yet, I find, within my own life, that I’ve often felt a strongly metaphysical reason for my physical illness.

So what do we do when our rest isn’t something we should perhaps consider anymore, but something that we have to do, due to illness or injury?

We do this.

We take the time to assess how slowing down benefits us.

Yes, it might not be ideal, but, simultaneously, life often has both blessings and ugliness and what we choose to focus our energy on is the direction we tend to follow.

In other words, if I choose to witness my restful period as something luxurious (even when hacking up a lung or two) or as a time for self-care, then I’ll get so much more out of it than if I’d seen this time only as a pain in the rear.

We breathe.

I’ve skipped out on yoga class for a few days now, frankly, because I can’t breathe well. That said, focusing on our breath—or even its difficulty—can help us cultivate awareness of our current self and situation. And, though not on a mat, I often find myself practicing better “yoga” when actually living my life in this manner.

We learn to sit still.

Let me share with you one of my favorite quotes:

“To be idle requires a strong sense of personal identity.” ~Robert Louis Stevenson

This is so true.

It takes a person who knows—and securely welcomes—herself to be able to contentedly sit in the quietude of the moment and just be.

Use your forced sick-leave wisely by spending time to get reacquainted with yourself and by practicing both self-awareness and self-acceptance.

We let go of the to-do list.

I’ve written before about how life is not a to-do list, because it isn’t.

Life isn’t a journey either.

I recently shared this idea, in the form of a picture I made, because I’m honestly also getting sick of the whole “life is a journey and not a destination” thing. Why? I’ll tell you. (But, first, look at the picture, as I think my explanation will become pretty obvious.)

I get that “life is a journey” is supposed to represent life as something we walk through rather than run towards, but, at the same time, I still think a better imagery for the way that I personally want to live my life involves footprints and slow, intentional steps.

I want to leave footprints on the hearts of the people I love most, by sharing with them daily my complete presence. Easier said than done—so I’ll use my downtime to help myself remember how much more peaceful and enjoyable life is when I focus on the sensations of picking my foot up and placing it back down and not on getting ready to lift my other foot back up.

And, of course, life is also more pleasant when we’re healthy. But, as we all walk towards autumnal air, I’m deciding to offer up that we let our lives feel full in every moment, even those less-than-ideal ones.

I’m suggesting, too, that we wake up and drink in where we are, even if our “journey” took a detour.

And I’m going to be a proponent for taking that downtime before it’s forced upon us, and the best way to do this is by repeatedly looking into our invisible mirrors and taking the time to really see who, and where, we are.

Photo: Andres Nieto Porras at Flickr 

This article was first published by elephant journal.

The post 4 Ways to Enjoy Lazy Days. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

Every now and then there are spaces in life that feel like they exist purely as tests of will and mental endurance.

For me, these last several months have been one of those times.

Simultaneously, though, as life often happens, wonderful things have co-existed in this same tender, frustrating space.

Just today—when I find myself internally cheerleading that we’re nearly through it! and go, team, go!—I’m driving down a windy country road with unexpected construction, behind a truck depositing gravel, when a piece of loose stone flies up and nicks my windshield. Then I momentarily find myself stopped and waiting to be able to pass through this now one-lane road, talking to one of the workers. At one point, I get out of my car and show him the nick as he’s giving me a phone number to call.

Later, when I’m driving home, I feel the stick, stick, stickiness of my feet as I alternately press the clutch and gas pedals. I mentally slap my forehead with my hand and think, “Doh! Tar on my most expensive and newest shoes.”

I spend the next hour with a toothbrush and various soapy concoctions scrubbing at them in my kitchen sink.

My mental cheerleader vanished and turned into a not-so-cute devil perched upon my weary shoulder.

I’m back to feeling easily agitated and to taking in deep breaths before responding to something challenging that my small daughter does. More and more, I find myself wondering why my life has been such a string of bad-luck-type events when, for one, I don’t believe in bad luck and, for another, I genuinely seek a life of no drama; one of joy.

Yet, sometimes, regardless of our intentions or luck status, we find every wonderful, glorious life occurrence colored—or dimmed—by the shadow of something difficult. While I certainly haven’t come up with the perfect answer to why this is, I have come up with something that helps me work through my life and, better still, to enjoy it.

I do this:

1. I breathe into my heart space.

I intentionally slide my shoulderblades down and lift my heart skyward.

I inhale into my expanding chest, feeling the power and healing of breath, and I exhale the tensions out of my neck and jaw. And when I forget that life is something to be taken in stages, one step at a time rather than in dismissive chunks and fundamentally unobservant journeys, I remind myself to inhale, exhale and repeat.

2. I sing.

At the top of my lungs.

In the car with windows rolled down.

In the kitchen with sauces simmering on the stovetop.

I sing softly to my tiny daughter and I sing spontaneously as the water runs down my body in warm showers.

I sing.

3. I laugh.

When I want to cry. Well, okay, sometimes I cry. However, generally all we need to do is look at life differently.

That tar on my shoes? Really. Something like that could easily have ended up in a bad story.

Um, moving on.

4. I pray.

Last night I found myself praying and then feeling silly because I really didn’t know who the hell I was praying to. Regardless, I did. And I felt better.

5. I eat.

I don’t eat to soothe myself and I don’t cook to pacify the people I love. Instead, I eat as a normal, healthy human animal does, but I pay attention to the crispy crunch of tortilla chips or the chocolate-y, velvety texture of my first cup of morning coffee—and it reminds me that every moment of my ordinary life is something to be taken in, appreciated and felt (even when that coffee burnt my mouth this morning and I was suddenly spitting my first sip back into the cup).

6. I love.

I love fiercely.

I love completely.

I love easily.

I love openly.

I love jealously.

I love compassionately.

I love with my whole being and, likewise, I love myself this way too.

7. I dance.

I dance on my rubber yoga mat.

I dance as I flow from Warrior I to Warrior II. I dance to the steady thumping of my heart and the slow drops of sweat as they roll down my body and onto my purple mat.

And then I dance as I write.

My fingers move and flow across the black-and-white lettered keys.

I let my heart ooze out of my hands and onto white-and-black screen, and I feel this dance leave my body and a new shape forming within my awakened soul; a new song to move to on another day.

And then my daughter and my husband are nearly done preparing dinner.

I breathe in the aromas as I let my fingers glide across my laptop keyboard; as I sit writing at my worn antique dining table.

My fingers slow and slow and slow like a winding down ballerina nestled inside a music box.

I inhale, I exhale, and I realize that the tar was just on shoes and the nick was just on a car, and that my bare feet alone can handle my earthy, strong steps and that I don’t need a vehicle other than my own body to carry me through life.

Repeat.

Photo: Flickr/Dani_vr.

This article was first published by elephant journal.

The post 7 Things I Repeatedly Do to Stay Sane & Happy When Life Sucks. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

My shoulders settle down my back and my heart lifts at the clickity-clack sound of my fingers dancing across my laptop.

My ring turns on my right hand, so that the family heirloom diamonds point down and towards the softer skin of my palm. I twirl it back into place with my pinkie but it slips back and I don’t care.

I feel my head settle down and into my heart space as I anticipate purging myself through words.

Sometimes life requires purging. 

I sink into my chair with my tall spine jetting up towards the sky; my posture only slightly slumped at my tired shoulders, but it’s more of a softening and a giving in to my need to write and open up than a wilting droop.

Because sometimes life makes me want to envelop myself in bedsheets and tears and drown myself in slow, steady-thumping music as my chosen backdrop.

And then I’m driving down the windy road and feeling this need to blast the music too loudly for the little girl safely nestled in a carseat behind me.

I want to roll down the windows and feel every ounce of wind that I can across my flying, tangled hair and I want to drive off, away from the rising sun, towards a place that awaits in the shadows; calmer, gentler than the life of my past few weeks.

But I can’t.

I learned a long time ago that we cannot run away from our problems or from ourselves and that this only serves to prolong inevitable discomfort.

So I keep the music at a more moderate level and tell my daughter in the backseat that I love her.

I place my hands consciously at ten o’clock and two o’clock and drive to the yoga studio to drop off a few more copies of my just-released book and then to our local eyeglass shop instead of towards some imaginary oasis of pure fun and end-of-summer laughter.

But how do I eradicate my tensions and my stresses, and my over-filled life, when I no longer want to run my feet into splints or starve myself sick or drink too much wine while cooking dinner?

How do I become clean and new in my skin—right now—and my heart and my over-worked brain? 

The shower I took kind of worked.

I let the water wash over me as I quickly rinsed off, and I felt a little bit lighter in my stuck emotions as I toweled off my  dripping hair.

And that long, deep drink of water felt nice.

The soft feel of it on my tongue and the releasing it brought to my dry throat made the center of my chest soften just a touch.

But these are temporary fixes—just like alcohol and pounding the pavement.

Sure, there are long-term benefits to appropriate exercise and I’m not one to diminish the joys of moderate drinking either, but, still, when I go to bed tonight my problems will still be there and their weight will not have lessened.

So I’ll open up a book, after turning on just enough light to read by; holding the loved, worn pages up to my nose as I transport myself out of my bedroom.

I’ll let my eyes droop for too long until I finally admit that I need to flip off the light and, putting my book to the side, finally curl up under my bedsheets.

I’ll will my pre-slumber thoughts to be positive—things that conjure my gratitude and my love for my inhabited human skin—as I feel the way that my body tingles right before I fall asleep.

And maybe I’ll remember a few of my black-and-white dreams or maybe I’ll get up once or twice to use the bathroom, but when I wake, in the soft grey light of my bedroom, I’ll have a split moment in time before the sleepy fog clears and my mind once again turns to my everyday reality, and in that instance I’ll have purged myself of my yesterday.

So maybe, sometimes, we can’t do much to move forward from our troubles.

Instead, we dig in our heels and feel it all and hold the people we love tightly.

We let tears fall and we do, from time to time, roll all the windows down in the car and turn the music up too much.

And we acknowledge that tomorrow will be different from today, even if we don’t purposefully seek out this change. 

We recognize, too, that our daily choices of health and joy help attract these things back into our lives, but, equally, we understand that life is often beyond the control of our own two hands (no matter how well placed at ten o’clock and two o’clock).

I notice that my diamond stones—the ones that even my great-great grandfather wore—are once again perched on the top of my finger, and I honestly don’t know if they rolled back on their own or if I unconsciously shifted them back there while my fingers danced.

I observe, too, how my shoulders round a little bit more and, glancing at the time, I note my readiness for the evening to be enclosed in darkness.

And I tell myself that tomorrow will rise up new and clean and pure from today’s ashes, simply by my continuing to put one foot in front of the next.

Because sometimes that’s all we can do.

This article was first published by elephant journal.

Photo: João Lavinha/Flickr.

The post When All We Can Do Is Keep Walking. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.