Easter Week

This whole week is called Easter week or Holy Week, and I enjoy celebrating it with my family. My grandsons are too young to understand the story of death and rebirth, and so we focus on the spring theme of new life. 

Agenda:

1. Love meditation
2. Read "The 5 Resets"
3. Pocket calendar plan

1. Love Meditation:

Every month after the full moon, in the quiet-energy yin time of the waning moon, I practice a love meditation that progresses from receptivity, to gratitude, to generosity:

Day 1: Practice a love meditation, and open to receive blessings - send a prayer to the universe asking to be showered with love, kindness, health, and happiness.

1. 1 minute - Relax your body, and focus on the tender emotion of generous love. Allow a smile to settle on your face and in your heart.
2. 1 minute - Visualize love as soft, tingly, warm, pink light, and see it move from your heart to every part of your body so that every cell is glowing and vibrating.
3. 1 minute - Now see the pink light of love radiating to fill the whole room, then the whole city, and the whole planet earth.
4. 1 minute - See that all people, plants, and animals feel warm and happy.
5. 1 minute - Send an extra dose of love light to those people you want to have a better connection to.

2. Read "The 5 Resets":

For Lent, I'm reading "The 5 Resets: Rewire Your Brain and Body for Less Stress and More Resilience" (2024), by Aditi Nerurkar. My goal is to get wiser, stronger, and more adaptable.

I've been working at the first reset - to Get Clear on What Matters Most. I set some realistic goals, and made a realistic plan - By Easter I will adopt healthy choices for snacks and meals without processed food, and be less addicted to easy carbs; integrate most if not all of the Emotional Balance Workbook exercises into my everyday life, and feel more emotionally grounded, aware, and regulated; and complete at least three art projects of some kind.

The second reset is to Find Quiet in a Noisy World. She spends several pages discussing smartphone and screen time addiction: Digital noise causes us stress. She suggests I create boundaries around my valuable attention bandwidth. I've also instituted a buffer of one hour of no screen games before my planned sleep time.

The third reset is Synch Your Brain and Your Body. Our mind-body connection is always running in the background, and plugging in to it with intention can help reduce your stress. 

I've been enjoying the Stop-Breathe-Be habit of noticing my body, thoughts, and emotions in the moment. She goes on at length about the science of breathing: slow deep breaths into your belly will physically calm you down, whenever you feel anxious.

This week I'll practice Heart-Centered Breathing, to soothe myself when I'm sad: 

1. Put one hand on your heart and one on your belly.
2. Inhale through your nose for a slow count of 4.
3. Exhale for a slow count of 7. 
4. Repeat a few times. 

3. Pocket calendar plan:

To celebrate the week with the grandsons, we are using our pocket calendar - a hanging with 7 large embroidered pockets that my mom made for us when our children were young.

Tuesday = bunnies and Easter cookie cutters

Wednesday = foam basket balls

Friday = egg dye kit

Saturday = pens and cardboard eggs filled with candy!