self care – Ginger Simpson White

porch time…

Sitting and relaxing and unwinding. Breathing in the fresh air. Getting calm. These are some of the benefits to having a space outside to retreat to and sit for a while, especially on a regular basis. For me, it’s our little front porch.

I call my time out there my porch time. (Also known as porch sittin’.) And it’s something I’ve come to consider as being essential to my well-being the past several years.

Porch time is a time when I usually read whatever novel I’m reading. Sometimes I have my coffee out there. Sometimes my husband joins me in porch sittin’ and we enjoy the fresh air and nature sounds. Sometimes I take a TV tray out there, get settled with my tablet and foldable USB keyboard, and work on my writing.

Sometimes I don’t do anything but look at the sky and breathe, doing my best to release whatever stress and anxiety I’m feeling.

Our porch is very small and quite narrow. But it’s covered, so it protects from sun and rain. There’s room enough for a wooden park bench along one side and a folding camp chair on the other, and little outdoor pillows for each, so it offers spots to sit and relax. We have a couple of small stands and tables out there, so it gives room to place coffee cups and books.

And since it’s literally right outside my front door, I don’t have to get in the car and go somewhere to get to a relaxing spot…which means I can spend time there even if I’m having a low-energy or off-balance day.

In cooler months, I put on a sweater or jacket while I’m out there, and I have a lightweight flannel throw to keep me extra cozy while I read. When it’s hot, I can take one of our small battery-operated fans to help create a breeze. The weather (especially when it’s cold) does keep me away more often than I’d like. But then I get back into the routine of it as soon as I can because it is so important to my mental and emotional well-being.

Porch time is calming and relaxing, but it’s even more than that for me.

It’s grounding.

It’s restorative.

And it’s healing.

Do you have a space like that in your life? Somewhere you can easily get to, a place to unwind and breathe and get grounded and simply be?

I hope you do. It can really help.

❤

grief and anxiety and writing and grace…

I often think it would be nice to be the kind of writer who could write any day, every day, no matter what was going on with life or emotions.

But I’m not.

Although I’m able to paint every day, even if life is in turmoil and the anxiety is high, I can’t do that with writing. I think it’s because, for me, writing involves some part of my mind and brain and attention that’s hard for me to access if I’m not feeling a certain amount of being settled inside myself. I don’t have to feel completely calm and settled to write, but there has to be a certain level of it that simply isn’t there when the anxiety is super high.

This definitely gets in the way of writing routines and rhythms. And it can mean writing in starts-and-stops. It can even feel as though I’m taking one step forward and two steps back.

And I have to admit that it’s discouraging. But it’s something that has been true for me throughout my decades of writing.

Even though this has consistently been the case for me, though, time and again I re-visit this issue and examine it and ask myself certain questions.

Should I push myself more? Should I force myself to be more discipled? Should I find some coping technique, even if it’s unhealthy, that numbs my feelings (whether anxiety or grief) enough that I can hear the characters and stories that want to be told through my writing?

None of those feel right for me. When the anxiety is so bad, pushing through it or pushing it aside seem impossible. And ever since the end of my long slow xanax taper, I have no desire to risk more anti-anxiety meds or even alcohol to numb. Whatever calming techniques I use or try need to be things that won’t mess with my brain and central nervous more than they’ve already been messed with (and harmed by) prescription medication.

So I keep coming back to giving myself grace. Or trying to, at least.

Giving myself grace and space and time to grieve the losses in my life. Giving myself grace and forgiveness for not meeting some self-imposed ideal of what my writing or productivity should look like. And giving myself grace and permission to honor my personal rhythms… whether that’s with my writing, or dealing with life in general, or going through a day.

And giving myself grace to do it all imperfectly.

How about you? Do you need to give yourself more grace? Do you need to do more honoring of your needs and your feelings and your rhythms?

If so, I hope you’ll do just that.

♥

My art journaling page from early 2020 for my word-of-the-year – grace.

laughter yoga, anxiety, lightness…

As part of my healing journey, I’ve started taking time each day for some laughter yoga.

Laughter yoga is something I’ve thought of doing for years because I’ve long known the benefits of laughter when it comes to physical and emotional health. But I procrastinated and put it on the back burner, thinking to myself “oh yes, I need to look that up on youtube” whenever I happened to think of it at all.

But thanks to the brain retraining and neural rewiring I’ve been deeply diving into lately (because of my physical healing journey, as well as to help with my lifelong anxiety), laughter yoga came back into my awareness several times over the course of a few days. And my procrastination about it finally came to an end.

What is laughter yoga?

Well, this is the definition according to wikipedia: Laughter yoga (Hasyayoga) is a practice involving prolonged voluntary laughter. This type of yoga is based on the belief that voluntary laughter provides the same physiological and psychological benefits as spontaneous laughter. It is done in groups, with eye contact, jokes and playfulness between participants. Forced laughter often turns into real and contagious laughter.

I haven’t been doing it with a group (I’m not aware of any groups in my area for laughter yoga) but youtube has been filling in just fine.

And the laughter changes things… Physically. Emotionally. Mentally. After even a few minutes of laughter yoga, I notice a decrease in anxiety and a new level of lightness to my mood. I’ve also noticed that the benefits stay with me long after I stop the laughter yoga session. The good-feeling energy-shifting of the laughing spills over into the rest of my day.

I’m doing lots of other things to decrease anxiety, engage with joy, and help cope with physical symptoms. Laughter yoga is only one tool of many in my toolkit.

But so far it’s proving to be a very helpful tool.

There are many laughter yoga videos on youtube – way more than I’ve watched. Here’s one I’ve used:

It can feel a bit strange at first, it can feel not-really-funny at first, but the laughter becomes contagious. Before long, I’m laughing just because.

It’s those mirror neurons firing.

And the results are good stuff.

♥