After this year’s rather quiet and subdued Christmas Card post, and since it is the day of rest, I’m offering these snowy photos and a video that is eleven-plus hours long for absolutely anyone who needs a longer haul to calm down and shake off the craziness of the season. It’s an ideal background for a meditation – whether that’s eleven minutes or eleven hours. Take your time – or make your time if you don’t think you have any – and give this little moment in the midst of the madness to simply breathe. Long, slow, deep breaths that don’t rush with an end in sight, but simply exist, one leading into the next, and not worrying about what comes afterward, because it’s all going to be okay.
With winter coming around the corner, we’re going to need to embrace the quiet amid the tumult. It also leads to a calmer existence overall, with the memory of meditation lingering longer and longer the more you put it into practice, bleeding beautifully into everyday life, when we most need the tools and habits to blunt the onslaught of panic and stress.
To that end, and considering the way meditation should be practiced consistently to be most effective, it’s never too early, or late, to start a simple mindfulness plan, even in the midst of the Christmas mayhem. In fact, now may be the best time to begin. Every day, you can give yourself the gift of mindfulness, even if it’s just for a few minutes – a time set aside only for yourself, when you lay down the worries of the day and the responsibility of caring for anyone else, and re-connect to the inner-being that must be healthy and happy to keep anyone else healthy and happy. What may feel at first like an indulgence is actually the best way to be more, and to be better, to others.
