We’re coming off a few hard workouts, today is a day to nourish our hearts and souls. There are three beautiful writings from some thinkers/practitioners/writers that might help you during a difficult time. You can read them all at once, or savor them throughout the day.

 

First, read these writings by Pema Chodron.

“Learning how to be kind to ourselves, learning how to respect ourselves, is important.  The reason it’s important is that, fundamentally, when we look into our own hearts and begin to discover what is confused and what is brilliant, what is bitter and what is sweet, it isn’t just ourselves that we’re discovering.  We’re discovering the universe.  When we discover the Buddha that we are, we discover that everything and everyone is Buddha.  We discover that everything is awake and everyone is awake.  Everything is equally precious and whole and good.  When we regard thoughts and emotions with humor and openness, that’s how we perceive the universe.  We’re not just talking about our individual liberation, but how to help the community we live in, how to help our families, our country, and the whole continent, not to mention the world and the galaxy and as far as we want to go.”

“If we find ourselves unworkable and give up on ourselves, then we’ll find others unworkable and give up on them.  What we hate in ourselves, we’ll hate in others.  To the degree that we have compassion for ourselves, we will also have compassion for others.  Having compassion starts and ends with having compassion for all those unwanted parts of ourselves, all those imperfections that we don’t even want to look at.  Compassion isn’t some kind of self-improvement project or ideal that we’re trying to live up to.”

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Second, read this poem by Mary Oliver, out loud, and slowly, to yourself:

 

ANGELS by Mary Oliver

You might see an angel anytime
and anywhere. Of course you have
to open your eyes to a kind of
second level, but it’s not really
hard. The whole business of
what’s reality and what isn’t has
never been solved and probably
never will be. So I don’t care to
be too definite about anything.
I have a lot of edges called Perhaps
and almost nothing you can call
Certainty. For myself, but not
for other people. That’s a place
you just can’t get into, not
entirely anyway, other people’s
heads.

I’ll just leave you with this.

 

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Finally, try this breathing practice from Thich Nhat Hanh. You can read along and breathe as suggested:

1. Breathing in, I experience calm in me. Breathing out, I smile to the calm in me.
2. Breathing in, I experience joy in me. Breathing out, I smile to the joy in me.
3. Breathing in, I experience equanimity in me. Breathing out, I smile to the equanimity in me.
4. Breathing in, I experience openness in me. Breathing out, I smile to the openness in me.
5. Breathing in, I experience happiness in me. Breathing out, I smile to the happiness in me.