spiritual practice

What I Missed Most Being on Vacation

Posted by Barbara Techel

What I Missed Most Being on Vacation

This past Monday we returned from a ten day trip to South Carolina, North Carolina and Georgia. I’ll write more about that adventure soon which we did in our Vamper – our Chevy Cargo Van converted to a camper. It was quite the whirlwind!

While I took along my journal and oracle cards on the trip and planned to meditate, I never did get around to doing my daily ritual while away. Though honestly, I really did miss it. But with adjusting to being in a van for ten days it just never presented itself in feeling right to take time to do this inner work. And that’s okay, really.

But I was thrilled to return to it Tuesday morning. You know how they say when away from someone you love it makes the heart grow fonder? Well, that’s what I realized about this practice I have in place, and how much I value this time to center and ground myself.

Adapting to getting in and out of the Vamper often I also found that when I returned to my first yoga practice since being gone, along with my journaling and consulting with my oracle cards, how thirsty my body was for the stretching and my mind for the expansion. Just visualize both drinking it all in with gusto!

It felt incredibly good to get back to starting my day in this way. I enjoyed vacation, don’t get me wrong, but it was confirmation for me that being away from these practices is something I truly do value as part of my self-care routine. And this is a good thing. It made it all the sweeter to return.

XO,

Barbara

P.S. While our beds in the vamper are pretty comfy, oh, how I welcomed sinking into my bed at home too. Everyday since, morning and night, I’ve been telling it how much I love it!  🙂

Rituals: When They Go Astray.

Posted by Barbara Techel

I’ve been reading lately about how important rituals are. If you aren’t comfortable with the word ritual you can think of them as a spiritual practice or centering activity. If you don’t like those, you can come up with something that feels right for you.

You likely have at least one thing you do everyday that is the same and this can be considered a ritual. I like to drink out of the same tea cup everyday. That is a ritual. A small, but pleasurable one for me.

About two weeks ago I wrote about my morning ritual and a Christmas message I got from it one particular morning. But each day my ritual is to light candles in my writing cottage, turn on my tulip lamp, and pick one or more oracle cards from various decks I have. I also now integrated picking one of my SoulCollage® cards since I’ve now made 22 of them. I normally ask a question of the cards and am always amazed at the cards I randomly draw that fit for my question.

After my cards are drawn, I do my yoga practice. All of this is so centering for the rest of my day. I love it.

Today it went astray. It started with someone having to come look at my gas fireplace in my cottage yesterday. It’s not working properly. A part needed to be ordered for it which will take 2-3 weeks. It’s been -20 to -30 degrees with windchills all this week. To be safe, I have to manually turn off my fireplace each night now until it can be fixed.

Well with -30 overnight you can imagine how cold my little cottage got. I went to manually turn the fireplace on today, but an hour later it still wasn’t warm in there. This caused my whole ritual to go astray.

I could feel myself getting frustrated. But decided I would adjust and did. It wasn’t the same, but I had my ritual, well sort of, in my living room. Now I love my cozy little house, and I’m not complaining, but well, it was just different. It really made me think about the ritual I’ve come to love out in my writing cottage – how important it is to starting my day off with a centered mind.

So yes, I know this is part of life and these things happen and we adjust. So again, it’s not a complaint. It’s a very interesting observation of how ritual can have such an important impact on our lives and our well being. It’s made me appreciate my rituals all the more.

Even Kylie’s daily ritual was different yesterday. Most days after she is done eating breakfast, she heads back into her kennel to sleep the morning away. But not yesterday morning. I found her on the sofa in the living room, head resting on the blanket. Guess she needed a change of scenery. Not sure why. But today she is back at her same ritual again.

Two hours later, my cottage still with a chill in the air, finds me at the kitchen table and a temporary ritual of writing here, Kylie snoring loudly in the background, and me, once again, appreciating how much I love the quiet and ritual I’ve created within my cottage.

But alas, John has promised to dig out a wonderful heater from his back shed to keep my cottage at a steady warm temperature overnight, so I can return to my beloved ritual tomorrow morning.