your weekly mindful morsel

mindful morsels appear every Wednesday

photo courtesy of Dan Smedley on Unsplash

Happy good Wednesday, Reader 💜

I have an extreme bout of spring cleaning energy and inspiration lately. I want to refresh EVERYTHING within my proximity — I’m talking washing walls, scrubbing carpets, revamping tiles, making small repairs I’ve been procrastinating, and a whole slew of other possibilities.

It sounds like a lot, and maybe I won’t get through it all, but I’m here to see what happens. I’m enjoying immersing myself in this energy and being moved by it rather than trying to force it into another shape.

Too often we’re in the predicament of having tasks to do and trying to shift our energy to work for those things, despite it not being a natural fit (hence caffeine). It’s very much akin to the relationship between breath and movement in a yoga practice.

I often hear (and give) the cue to move with your breath, as in let your breath be the leader. Move for the length of your inhalation to exhalation, and let the transition of your breath cycle determine when your movement changes.

What happens more often is that we breathe with our movements. We let the movement dictate our breath. We cut our inhalations short because our body might be moving fast. Or we hold our breath when we’re not quite finished with a transition. We’re literally making our life force wait as we try to make our breath line up with our movement.

Curious, isn’t it? Why wouldn’t we want to move more naturally and sink into our natural rhythms?

It might seem simple to just move when you breathe, but it’s very challenging and contradicts a great number of things we’ve learned in terms of how to live in this culture of ours. It takes a lot of practice and letting go and accepting that your movement isn’t going to look the same as you might expect. It takes patience to pause and slow down — to not get as far. And it takes a lot of compassion to know it won’t come together all the time.

Try it for yourself — start with your arms at your sides (seated or standing), lift them up as you breathe in, and the moment you start to exhale — no matter where your arms are — start to lower them. Repeat for 2 minutes and see what your experience is like. It’s a wild time.

But it is a magical, unifying experience to move with your own inner rhythm rather than one fed from years of subsisting on external input. This is a powerful way to meet your body and start a conversation.

I’m super interested to hear if you give this a whirl a few times this week. Send me a message and let me know what you experience 🙂

With whimsical vibes,

Welcome to Zenful Mindings

I'm Brianne, a trauma-informed yoga & somatics facilitator, Reiki practitioner, and mindfulness advocate. I specialize in body literacy to help people reconnect with their bodies for a stronger sense of self, autonomy, and connection to natural rhythms.

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