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Journaling: Finding Perspective
How a Christmas Day meditation helped me (reluctantly) find a positive perspective on 2021
Today, Christmas Day, I did a yoga nidra class. As we are under lockdown in the Netherlands, it was in the safe, legal confines of a private home in a small group.
Yoga nidra is basically yoga sleep. It’s a kind of guided meditation you do on a yoga mat, in a yoga pose (usually śavāsana), snuggled under blankies and cushions as desired, in which you enter a deep state of relaxation. It is, in other words, the fucking best.
As the teacher started to guide us, she had us reflect on what has happened this year, a kind of personal 2021 retrospective.
I almost got up and walked out. My mind was incensed by this suggestion.
My mind simmered, outright irate at the inference we should be grateful for 2021. It resented the idea in the strongest possible way you can resent something. Instead of cooperating, my mind stepped onto its podium and commenced listing all the things that had gone wrong in 2021.
Ahem.
- I had COVID
- My Dad died (actually, at 97 and very unwell, Dad’s death was a blessing. However, when my mind is on a podium, it doesn’t let pesky facts like this get in…
