after enlightenment, the dishes

I’ve been crazy busy at work. This is fairly regular for my job, so I’m getting pretty good at remembering to get enough sleep, take vitamins, drink water, eat breakfast (and lunch and a balanced dinner, for that matter), and build some downtime into my week.

Yet I’ve still been feeling stretched. Physically, I’m fine, not too tired or hungry or hurting. Emotionally, I’m all right; I feel loved and supported, and I don’t freak out too much. Some other system — spiritual? mental? — felt like it was running on fumes. I noticed I kept trying to escape, to get my head elsewhere, and couldn’t stay focused.

So last night I drew a hot bath with lavender-scented suds, and I spent some time grounding, centering, doing square breathing. I figured something needed restoring and that’d be good for what ailed me.

This morning, I felt dramatically better. Who’da thunk, right?

It’s a little embarrassing to admit that I’ve never been able to keep up a regular meditation practice, and I’ve had a lackadaisical approach to psychic hygiene. I’m a strongly visual person, and psychic hygiene is hard to see (unlike physical hygiene; I can see if my hair’s in bad shape, for starters). But a big chunk of the woo-woo that I do is not visible, and my sense of energy is tactile/kinetic, so how exactly is “I can’t see it” an excuse to discount it?

I think improving will be a matter of connecting that stretched feeling with a need to center, breathe deeply, and then making time to do that often so I don’t have to wait until I feel stretched. And, luckily, I’ve got plenty of opportunity to practice.