8 Tips to move forward in your goal of achieving a daily practice
1.Create a space for your practice that is inviting and which helps to create a place with a positive and supportive atmosphere. It can be a room, a corner of a room in which you leave a practice mat, a sitting cushion. A clear space that is dedicated to create calm and space in your life, clutter free with just a few objects that transmit the feeling of peace for you personally. It can act as a reminder and inspiration to practice.
2.Create a regular time, just like you have an appointment to do anything else, book yourself in to your diary or phone agenda or on your ‘list of things to do’ It should be at the top of the list as when we do practice we bring more joy, flow and ease into the other things on your ‘to do’ list. Make sure you are getting enough ‘down time’ ‘time spent being, not just doing’
If you do not have enough time, track you’re time for a few days and you will find there is a lot of wasted time. If you find an obvious area where your time and energy is going in your life that you would like to change then this realization can be fuel for change. It will probably be necessary to make an effort to break habits some habits until the healthier choice becomes natural and you begin to experience more benefits from practice.
3. Make a commitment to yourself, Connect to your true intention, connect to the life that you would want to create for yourself and people around you. Change the mind set that making yourself and health your focus is being selfish, we are a lot more beneficial to other human beings and nature when we are in a good space.
4. Bring the state of practice into your everyday life. If we are not connected to ourselves ie our mind is not connected to our bodies we may not even think about doing our practice. We may not be aware if we are in a positive or negative state of mind. Going about daily activities in a calm, relaxed way is very beneficial and is the real practice. It becomes a virtuous cycle.
5. Connect with others that practice and meet up weekly to support your own personal practice and ways you want to change. This can be with a teacher, with other practitioners or online classes if no one is in your area. If we are forming new habits it is normal for some relationships to undergo some change as well and spending time with others that are also moving in
6. Don’t beat yourself up, when you don’t practice. Ever experienced that when you are really annoyed at yourself for not doing what you intended it just keeps happening. What ever the mind focuses on grows. The mind is the creator of everything and keeping ourselves aware of what is going on at the level of heart mind is the main practice actually. Becoming aware of our limiting and self sabotaging beliefs and transforming them into more positive ones that are supportive to life is a huge part of getting into a regular practice.
7. Take small Steps, Do a little everyday rather than a longer session only once a week. As we build our life force we will naturally feel like doing more practice. If we do something everyday it builds a good habit and from there we can extend the time. When we achieve a little everyday and we do spend some time topping up our energy levels we will feel more motivated.
8. Set some goals and aspirations that inspire you to keep moving forward with your practice. This way we have less of the thoughts ‘I have to do my practice’. What are you doing it for, improved health, to cultivate more clarity and , heightened sense of joy, aliveness, wellbeing, to cultivate a harmonious life with others. We can achieve this and much much more, the practice you do changes your state of mind and filters into every part of how things flow and manifest in your daily life.
I encourage you to try everyday a little practice and see how it brings such positive changes, sometimes in unexpected ways.
Natalie Meijer is a Qigong teacher and life coach using the modalities of Yuan gong Qigong and Ren Xue and provides one on one coaching sessions to help you move towards what brings you more joy in your life. She also runs regular retreats, workshops and now online classes to support students achieve better health and wellbeing in all aspects of their lives.
