Learn how to keep your self centered with yoga and meditation during stressful and busy times of the year from owner, Ayako DeRuby.
I have been practicing yoga and meditation for 14 years. I have learned many techniques to find my center again, such as breath-work, mantras, and meditation, which have helped me become aware of thought patterns that no longer serve me. My daily practice has helped me stay rooted throughout most of my day, with some part of me connected deeply within as I interact with the world.
With that said, there are some settings that I find myself being pulled into past mind patterns, that in turn, pull me into my past behavioral patterns. I became inquisitive about why I could stay primarily rooted in my everyday life without getting swept away but still find myself getting lost in a different part of the psyche in specific settings.
I realized that when I returned to places or situations that once created strong reactions, the pull was much faster and with much momentum. The next thing I knew, I was lost in my past psyche. I made a game plan to address this conundrum as I know there will be some situations in life that I cannot avoid that will trigger me.
One method I tried was to leave notes in my phone reminding me how to come back to my center, get out of my head, and return to Self. I would look on my phone when my past mind patterns started to become triggered. Little did this work because by the time I looked at my reminder on my phone, the words began to lose their meaning, and I was already lost down my rabbit hole.
Here’s what went wrong. I was trying to stay rooted after I was already getting triggered. Have you ever tried to calm your breath amid an argument? Yeah, it’s hard AF. This was pretty much what I was doing in my “phone reminder” method.
The meditation method that I have been adopting that seems to be keeping me more rooted is this:
1. Connect with a method that brings you to your center the fastest (it’s breath-work for me).
2. Within every hour, go somewhere to work on this meditation technique for 5 minutes. Even if you don’t feel like you need to, still go. The reason being is that you are coming back to the space inside that is more centered than the reactive mind. You do not want to wait until you are in your reactive mind before using your centering technique (refer to the “phone reminder method”).
3. Set an alarm on your phone to go off periodically to make it seem like you need to answer a phone call if it’s hard to slip away.
4. Remind yourself that this is a practice and it’s not an overnight fix.
Is there a method you found that works best for you?
Please share!
