Soul Food
Last week I talked about having a spiritual connection, soul food is what helps increase our spiritual connection.
Soul food is spiritual nourishment, it is anything that simply uplifts or inspires us. One universal source of spiritual uplift is to bring more beauty into life, whether this is through exploring nature, being creative or simply appreciating art. Beautifying your home or garden is an easy way to feel more spiritually nourished. Other common soul foods include enjoying the wonder of children or exquisite music. Making time to catch the sunrise or sunset can seem like a huge challenge in our busy lives yet it never fails to leave is feeling more uplifted. Similarly climbing to the top of a hill or mountain is worth the effort to see the view which can often uplift us. Another, key spiritual nourishment is to simply stop, and remember you are a “human being” not a “human doing”, so stop and take the time and space to simply be.
We often feel down in the dumps or depleted when we have gotten to bogged down with responsibility, and “doing” while forgetting how to play, sing, dance and make things with our own hands. That is when its time to stop and nourish yourself with soul food. Remember soul food can literally be anything that nurtures us and makes life feel it’s worth living.
Identifying your soul food and feeding it to yourself increases your spiritual connection which is profoundly healing and nurturing and probably one of the best form of preventative medicine you can give yourself.
If you would like to improve your spiritual connection try exploring the following
- What lifts my spirit and inspires me? Can I spend more time doing what inspires me?
- Who lifts my spirit and inspires me? Can I spend more time with people like this?
- Are there any places that inspire me? How often would I like to visit them?
Related Posts
How to prevent Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness?
If your training was effective, you should feel some soreness the next day, and for two days at the most. If the second day is significantly worse than the first, and your soreness lasts into a 3rd day or beyond, you have what they call delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS), and it’s a sign that you trained too hard for you. There are no hard and fast rules on what is too hard as DOMS varies from individual to individual. So now I want to talk about how to prevent Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness.
- Anti-Inflamatories
2. Static Stretching
As its not that beneficial to stretch cold muscles, start with a gentle warm up to wam up your muscles. So both your joints and muscls are prepared and get the most benefits from stretching.3. Constrast Showering
Ideally after stretching, jump in the shower and give yourself around of contrast hydrotherapy by alternating the temperature between hot and cold every two minutes. The contrast effect has definitely proven to be effective for reducing soreness and restoring muscle performance more quickly when its used the day after the workout, and any other day that a muscle is sore.4. Warm Up
Ensuring that you warm up before exercising by lightly working the same muscles that you are going to train can go a long way to reducing DOMS and injuries. References Vaile JM, Gill ND, Blazevich AJ. The effect of contrast water therapy on symptoms of delayed onset muscle soreness. J Strength Cond Res. 2007 Aug;21(3):697-702.How to be more mindful
So if mindfulness is doesn't requires lots of effort, and its really beneficial, why aren't we all doing it? While exploring a new city is naturally interesting, we rarely have the same enthusiasm for brushing our teeth, loading the washing machine or my commute. So if you are like me, these are just some of the activities that I do on a regular basis that I have labelled "boring" and I go into autopilot (mindlessness). So the simplest way to practice mindfulness is to bring awareness to the daily activities you consider "boring". Another great way time to practice mindfulness is while you wait. We are all so short of time that waiting is a huge source of frustration, whether its waiting for a train to turn up, waiting in line or being stuck in traffic. These are all ideal times to just be mindful. You can do this by focusing on your breathing and left everything else just be. Start by breathing in and out slowly - one cycle should last for approximately 6 seconds. Breath in through your nose and out through your mouth. Letting your breath flow effortlessly in and out of your body. Our brains respond to short burst of mindfulness, so its ok to keep it short, a few minutes per day.
More Mindfulness Exercises
In my previous post, How to be mindful, I described a mindful breathing exercise. Now I want to share with you more mindfulness exercises. 1. Mindful Observation Choose a natural object, plant, flower or cloud in the sky. Simply focus solely on it for a minute or two. Visually explore it and allow yourself to be consumed by its presence. 2. Mindful Listening Listen to a piece of music you have never heard before. You could re-turn your radio to a new station or download a new track to your ipod. The idea is to listen, to become fully entwined within the composition without preconception or judgement of the genre, artist, lyrics or instrumentation. 3. Mindful Appreciation The point of this exercise is to simply give thanks and appreciate the seemingly insignificant things in life; the things that support your existence but rarely get a second thought in our desire for bigger and better things. All you have to do is notice 5 things in your daily life that go unappreciated. Once you have your 5 things, then consider
- the benefit they bring to your life and the lives of others
- what life would be like without these things
