Sharing ten of my tiny spells of recalibration, realignment and infusing mindful magic into how I live. From a WFH witch who works from home and works for home all day, everyday.
Realising when I’m too mercurial and in my head from social media and laptop work, and taking a mini break to do a hands-on task like watering the plants, tidying a corner or sitting on the floor to move and stretch my body for just five minutes.
Reminding myself to notice my breathing when I’m scrolling or on a screen. Reminding myself to take a deep breath as often as I can, a breath I can feel all the way to my stomach.
Doing grounding, relaxing breathing while doing the laundry - whether washing, drying or folding. Four seconds inhale, six seconds exhale. Mindfully coming back into the body and making mundane tasks a meditation, focusing only on each garment I pick up and the textures of how they feel, gently stepping away from too much head-y energy from digital work. Coming away from the whole thing feeling re-energized. Every household task that feels like a ‘chore’ or a ‘load’ can be transmuted into a magical space of recharging when we play with it’s energy.
Catching myself when I make micro-expressions on my face of resentment, irritation or obligatory frustration when I tend to the boring, low dopamine household chores. Alchemizing this into a better place by making weird faces, smiling and recalibrating my facial muscles to relax and ease. Remembering gratitude - for having a home to tend to, and for having the freedom, softness and possibility of finding comfort in mundane, human, everyday stuff. Using my household tasks as fertile ground for breathwork, mindfulness meditation, daydreaming and coming back to the physical makes them magical tools to feed my creativity. Way better than spending all my time in the task in resentment for ‘having’ to do them.
Music. Whenever I can, wherever I can, to up-level absolutely anything I’m doing. There’s a perfect genre, mood and playlist to enhance everything. Always having background music to life.
One time when I was drying all the clothes that belong to my entire family - something I used to hate but now I enjoy it - I decided to make it a game. With every piece of wet clothing I picked up to hang on the clothesline, I thought of something in my life that I am grateful for and felt the gratitude. Any chore that’s about repetitive actions, I turn it into a gratitude game.
Same for peeling baby potatoes, or a few days ago when I was tasked to hand-extract peas from pods because I couldn’t find frozen peas - boring, but so worth it because they’re fresher, sweeter and yummier. I thought of a gratitude for every pea that I shelled out. The most boring, irritating chores suddenly become a joyful practice of gratitude and I come out of them feeling recharged about life. They raise my vibration instead of tiring me out. They fill me with energy instead of bogging me down. I literally charged the peas we were about to eat with beautiful energy because of the gratitude I associated with each one. We’re told to write gratitude lists daily all the time, and we procrastinate it because it becomes yet another thing to do. I infuse gratitude listing into my boring daily chores and it makes everything sparkly.
Setting timers. A godsend. I set a ten minute timer called tiny tidy, and clean my room with focus during those ten minutes. Anything that’s left out post the alarm is left out, whatever. SO much better than procrastinating until you have to do a two hour deep clean. I love doing this the moment I wake up, or in that window of time before leaving for somewhere when I’m waiting for my pick-up to arrive. I make a huge mess when I’m about to go out, and it just makes me feel so much better to come back home to a slightly tidy room.
My journey with restorative yoga in The Daily Rest studio has taught me that just laying down and resting for 5-10 minutes a few times a day (even just once, twice or thrice) improves our night’s sleep infinitely. It’s truly medicine. It gives your brain some emptiness to sort itself out, so that you’re not drowning in a barrage of tangled thoughts the moment you lay down at night. Our heads do that at night because that’s the only time we’re giving our brain some quiet, empty space to organize and process life. If we get it out of the way during the daytime, we can truly switch off when we hit the pillow at night. I feel that even the busiest people can do this. If you don’t believe me, check your social media usage screen time during a day, how much of that can be substituted for a little lie in or stretch?
The last one is spicy. I’ve learnt that dancing is so essential for a good quality life. Moving emotions through the body is medicinal. And this doesn’t mean any professional or presentable kind of dancing. Just moving in silly ways when no one is watching, like no one is watching. Not even to a mirror. I’ve never been a good dancer, and I avoid watching myself in the mirror to avoid judgement. But just dancing when you’re cooking, or to a two minute song right after a shower when you’re naked and deciding what to wear - it changes your whole vibe and enchants your aura. It will loosen you up physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. This is something we all have big resistance to, because we take ourselves too seriously. I gave it a shot this year, and it’s so worth it.