Spring is a good time to do a refresh in many ways, our homes, wardrobes, our routines and minds!
Sleep is a time when our thoughts can keep us up, and it can become a cycle we feel trapped in. Don’t beat yourself up, there are ways to help manage your sleep, and it's about building habits into your day and creating new patterns which will support your sleep routine.
In this busier, more complex life we live in it is important to set aside time to do this.
Thoughts can be a bit like the washing going round and round in our brain. We are designed to use our brains, they are there to help us, but the brains can go into overdrive, spinning out of control when the distractions of the day are not there to get in the way.
If we look at thoughts and use clothing and how we care for it as an analogy, we can think back to when life was simpler, we may have only had one item to wash, to look after, a simple garment made from skin that we wore, which we would clean now and again. Later on we may have had just a simple few items, hand woven wool, cotton or linen clothing that we would have washed by hand. Clothing would have been scrubbed, maybe on a stone in a stream or by a river, and we would have taken time to process it, to wash the item, maybe beat it on a stone and let the flow of the river naturally wash away the residue, the dirt. This would have been a process that we would have done by hand, taking time, allowing nature help us and the water to wash away all that was no longer needed, the debris gone, and the item dried out by the sun and the wind, and refreshed and ready to wear again.
Now we have more in our wardrobes, more clothing to care for, more of the washing to sort. It piles up around us. We no longer just have a simple few items to care for. We have a coloured items, whites, sports gear, workwear, delicates and house hold textiles, we have a multiple items. We have machines that have been invented to help us wash clothes, but we still have to sort it, we still have to load it in the machine, we still have to set the cycle, add the powders, the different detergents. We close the door and we let it get on with it. Then we take the take it out, we sort it, we hang it up, we iron, we put it away. It seems to be a never-ending cycle.
Can we equate this to other things in our lives too? The never ending To Do List, so much going on, building up a bit like our washing piles.
What we need to do in our lives to help us is really to simplify and declutter, a bit like sorting out your wardrobe, sorting out the washing, making things easier for ourselves, breaking things down into manageable, chunks. Not cramming everything into the machine all at once. We pick up each piece. We look at it, acknowledge each item. Make sure that we care for it in the correct way.
We can relate this process also to our thoughts too, if they start to pile up, they can potentially start to spin around and around in the middle of the night as the machine (our brains) attempts to give them a good wash and rinse.
So how do we deal with this? There are techniques we can use to help manage thoughts and worries, we may need to look at some things with more delicate care. It may be something like the woollen and silk items, they may have to have a cooler, more careful, slower, less agitation attitude to it their natural nature. Divide out the heavy items, more complex thing to digest, go slowly, gently, not throwing it away, not pushing to the side, letting it build up, gathered dust, go unloved or uncared for. Each thing has value, just like our thoughts. We look at them in the light, give them attention so that they can be processed and we can feel refreshed without the heavy load that holds us back.
1 to 1 and Workplace Wellness
If this resonates with you and you feel you could do with help with a Spring refresh, creating new patterns and habits that will help your overall wellbeing drop me an email astridcblake@outlook.com I offer 1 to 1 mentoring at different levels depending on your individual needs, we can have a chat to find out what these are. I also host a workshop in person or on Zoom for groups, Quieten the Mind for Sleep sharing transformative techniques that will help reduce stress, helping open doors to leading a happier, more creative life.
Astrid x
P. S. Beautiful handmade relaxing eye pillows are available to buy at in the Alice & Astrid online boutique.
How does it work?
Applying the eye pillow over the eye area with the weight of the seeds and lavender in the pillow has a similar nurturing and grounding effect of being tucked in to bed in a weighted blanket, the mind naturally relaxes and slows down the stream of thoughts, try it at night or after a yoga session, a lovely gift to yourself or a loved one.
Silk relaxing eye pillow £ 37.00 and cotton relaxing eye pillow £29.00 SHOP NOW
www.aliceandastrid.com luxury lifestyle, made in England, sustainable wellbeing and nightwear.