Patience Series
Patience Series Introduction
Sitting by the fire, the dogs are laying down, Joey is upstairs. Something I have been learning from him is the art of patience. He slows me down, encourages me to feel my ground. What can patience teach me? I’ve recognized that patience can do a lot. It can help me be aware. Help me create compassion for myself and others. Patience allows ample room for growth. There is no growth when there is no patience. There is growth in seeing that I cannot get the pages of my to do list done in one day and nor do I want to. Does all of that really need to get done in one day? Maybe, and maybe not.
When I take a deep breath, I see that me being patient allows for more.
The work I do is more meaningful not giving into my limbic system. There is a stereotype for people that have patience. As if patience equates to laziness. I believe it can be the exact opposite. Patience can allow someone to work hard while understanding that practice and patience is what will get them to their eventual outcome. Being patient doesn’t have to mean you do nothing besides sit there. Patience does not equate to laziness. Patience is different. Patience allows hard work and practice. Patience opens the door to compassion. To understand all we see today has started somewhere small. Our practices, our work, our literal bodies and minds. When I lack patience, I notice my body and mind are more stressed. I find I give into the practices and things that are not good for me, while unintentionally forgetting the practices that are good for me. My diet turns into something I am not familiar with, and my body hardly moves because my mind is in overdrive.
According to the Cleveland Clinic*, stress encourages me to break my healthy eating habits, feeds my depression and anxiety, keeps my body tense and my immune system weak.
Why would I give into a lack of patience just for someone else? Just for someone else’s lack of it? All things take patience and hard work. So these next couple of weeks I am going to blog about the areas in which I practice patience and how I practice. The breath work that I do along with the mantras I repeat. My intention for this month is to bring awareness to the areas of my mind and body. To bring awareness and focus to patience.
Patience Series: Tea
4/2/2023
I set the tea kettle at 175° and wait for the water to warm. Opening the Tazo Zen Green Tea bag, placing the bag in the water. I take a deep breath in to smell the aromas of the green tea with hints of lemongrass and spearmint while listening to Mikey Hart’s Supralingua album and light incense. This beautiful moment. This moment of peace with the beat of the drums in the background. Encouraging energy to course through my body. A moment that without these breaths and this writing, may go by too fast.
That’s another thing learning patience does. It allows me to explore my thoughts and curiosities. Slowly sipping my tea, I look down while breathing in and I start to wonder, what are the benefits of green tea? What is this doing to my body? With the addition of the herb I love dearly, lemon grass. I want this cup of tea to last. I want to be present in this moment while exploring and giving myself the space to understand my curiosities and dive into them a bit more. The perfect way to start my day.
Green tea and black tea come from the same type of plant called Camellia sinensis. The difference is the way they are prepared. To get my cup of tea that I am enjoying at this very moment, these leaves needed to be heated quickly by either steaming them or pan frying them, then dried. Green tea is known to help invigorate the digestive system and the caffeine in the tea enhances mental alertness. To me, that sounds like green tea encourages connecting the mind and body, just like my yoga practice. I’ve been trying to drink tea over coffee. When I drink tea, my body feels light, I have energy and know that I can just keep drinking this tea I love throughout the day. When I drink coffee, I feel heavy. The coffee just sits in my stomach instead of running through my entire core fueling myself for the day ahead with healthy choices. Allowing myself time to explore my curiosity, I see my cup of tea is still half full. Normally the pace I drink hot liquids is insanely quick. Taking a moment, slowing down the breath. On my breath in I close my eyes and repeat my mantra, “I love myself” on my breath out I switch it up and repeat “I am enough” I guess maybe that is where the lack of patience stems from huh? The desire to be enough. Constantly working and living in a fast-paced environment to get everything done so we can feel like we did enough that day. When I slow down, feel my moments, breathe in all that’s around me, I really feel I am enough. I know that I am not perfect. I know that not everyone will see my value, my heart. I know that I am just one human, and that is enough for me. When I bring my attention to my breath, I will repeat this mantra throughout the day. The mantra of “I love myself” and “I am enough.”
And with that this post will come to its stopping point for the day. Maybe tomorrow I will explore my other curiosities about lemon grass and the history of tea. For today, I am practicing patience and will come back to this later. I am excited to grow with all of you. Excited to explore curiosities while learning how to practice patience. I find it important to come back and keep editing if this is a topic I wish to explore more later, while getting this concept out today. Just because my writing has been published to all of you in the form of my website, doesn’t mean I cannot keep editing, adding, subtracting the parts that maybe don’t fit. This is an area that was built to explore, to deepen, to strengthen. A place to unite the mind and body. And those areas are always changing and adjusting. Just like this.
Link to listen to Mikey Heart’s Supralingua
https://open.spotify.com/album/4PjB91ROZCOKRx783FLyoZ?si=30eWU17uS4-RJbr8Sy7jhA
*https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/11874-stress
