December | 2019 | Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray)

1. Morning walks. With the snow and ice, in places these have been pretty risky, and I’ve been rerouting to cleared sidewalks instead of getting to go by the river. Even so, they are still one of my favorite things.

2. Christmas lights. One bonus of being up and out before the sun is we get to really see all the lights. Today there was a yard that has a whole row of pine trees along their back fence that they’d strung full of white twinkle lights. So pretty. We’ll probably get our tree this weekend and I’m looking forward to sitting in the living room with nothing but the lights of the tree.

Our tree from last year. Merry everything, happy always.

3. Writing with friends. Writing is typically solitary, and as an introvert I love that, but it’s nice to have the company sometimes too.

4. I don’t have a job. The holiday season with Eric being on break is making me appreciate it even more. I will work more eventually, but for now it’s nice to have the time, the space, the quiet, the calm.

Ringo likes to lie right next to the vent under the kitchen sink and steal all the heat

5. My tiny family. It was really nice to have Eric home last week. I’m looking forward to having him home even more over winter break, getting to do some more fun stuff together. Ringo has been doing really good with his vet visits he’s had lately, and Sam is as sweet as ever, turns 10 years old this week, (as a rescue, we’ve had to guess at his exact birthday, choose December 10th). I think both dogs are enjoying having me home more, even though most of the time they are just napping.

Bonus joy: clementines, getting most of my Christmas shopping done, getting all the laundry washed and dried and folded and put away in a single day, good TV (I recently watched Westside on Netflix, “A cross between a reality show and large-scale music video, the series follows a group of young musicians trying to hit it big in Hollywood”), good books (I’m finally reading Night Circus), good music (listening to Summer Walker’s Over It this morning), sitting in the sauna (which is going to be closed next week – *sob*), sticking up for myself and getting support, yoga, meditation, writing, sleeping in, clean sheets, a warm shower, sitting under my heating pad, getting my office mostly in order, candy, coffee with hot cocoa (I’ve heard it called “cowboy coffee”), cuddling, taking a nap.

My meditation shrine

I realized the other day that when cultivating a new practice, an essential thing to remember is to not make it a big deal. What I mean is sometimes your rules and restrictions about what you think your practice is supposed to be are based on what you know about long time, serious practitioners, and a whole set of internalized “shoulds.” In this way, rather than easing into things, you make it a big deal and set the bar too high.

For example, with meditation, you might feel like you have to have the “right” meditation tools (cushions, shrine, timers, etc.) and that at the start you should be meditating for long sessions. These intentions in the beginning end up becoming obstacles rather than support. You wait until you can afford the “right” tools, spend hours researching and talking about the practice and the tools but not actually doing anything, or you sit for one session of half an hour one day and immediately the next day are too busy and can’t manage sitting for that long so you skip it altogether.

I could write a whole book about cultivating a practice. In fact, I probably will. What I’m thinking about today in particular is how we get in our own way when we want to start, turn it into a big deal that ends up tanking the whole thing, AND how after we establish our practice, there is a natural shift to taking it seriously, which can look a whole lot like “making it a big deal.” What I mean is while it’s good in the beginning to not worry about the specifics or put too much pressure on getting it “right,” once you are committed, it’s good to honor what you are doing in a different way.

Once a practice is in place and you’ve found your own reasons to continue, taking it seriously makes a difference. For example, when you first begin a yoga asana practice, you can do so without a mat or props or any sort of in-person interaction with a class or a teacher. There are plenty of really good free videos online, and a belt from a bathrobe makes a perfectly good yoga strap. And yet, if you’ve been practicing regularly and intend to continue, it makes sense to invest in some props and maybe even find a community in the form of a studio or specific teacher, to research the different kinds of yoga asana and regularly practice the one that resonates most with you.

So to start, don’t make it a big deal. Then when it becomes a big deal, honor it as such. And know that no matter what, it is your practice and what “honoring” it looks like is specific to you, your experience and intentions and goals — and no one else can tell you what that is. Only you know, and you can trust yourself.