This week I attended a writing and meditation retreat led by Ann Cushman at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. It was a lovely day. I want to pass along something she has written about. It’s a pathway to getting a regular practice of anything underway.
1) Set an intention. Make a plan for what you can realistically do given your own wishes. If you want to write, are you going to write for 10 minutes every day? Fill one longhand page? Write one haiku? If you’re going to paint, are you going to make one sketch a day? One a week? One painting each month? If you’re going to meditate, will you do it each day for 10 minutes? or 20? Or three times a week?
2) Establish a “cue”. Plan to always do your practice at the same time and in the same place. Will you write or meditate first thing in the morning, just before bed? Will you write when no-one else is around? Will you go to a café mid-morning to write? Will you attend a group and paint with them? Will you listen to one guided meditation each week?
3) Round up your supplies and have them in one place. Pens, your journal, paints, canvases, books to consult etc. Have them all readily available so you don’t have to go hunting for a pen each time you sit down to write. Hve your meditation cushion, chair, recording all ready for yourself.
4) DO THE PRACTICE. You have to actually begin! If beginning is hard, ask yourself what is one easy step I could take? What is the next EASY thing? Could I just sit down and breathe for 10 breaths right now? Could I open my journal and make a doodle?
5) Reward yourself! I love this! A cup of fancy coffee? A piece of chocolate? A walk around the block? One game on your computer (or not!)?
6) Track your progress. Keep a checklist in your journal. Or give yourself a gold star. Attempt not to break the chain!! The challenge is to do it regularly – not onlky when you “feel like it”!!!
Here’s a poem I wrote at the retreat – after a poem of the same name by US poet Laureate Ada Limon.
INSTRUCTIONS ON NOT GIVING UP
~after Ada Limon
From a distance, a large bird (heron?)
flies swiftly into the tangle of live oak trees.
Can it see a path I don’t see?
Maybe it flies to the trees
somehow with the knowledge there will be
a place to land?
Similarly the weeds grow up through the gravel,
through cracks in sidewalks,
through ground barely thawed
because they MUST have light.
Rain falls without knowing where
it will land or why. It falls only
because the earth pulls it, and because
it is heavy and soft at the same time.
The chocolate powder yields its form
when met with hot water,
to lend its sweetness which can only
be tasted when it dissolves…
it’s mission accomplished.
~Penny Hackett-Evans
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