Relaxation Techniques: How to Become Bigger Than Your Thoughts

Sometimes life gets so hectic we feel like we’re moving through mud – heavy, low-energy, and stuck.

But as you probably have noticed, self-care changes when we cross the line into motherhood.

No longer do we have easy access to long, sweet, serene practices in beautiful yoga studios; wonderful spa days with long soaks; spontaneous outings with friends.

Now, to step into clarity and freedom to be who we want to be, we need relaxation techniques like this one: quick, super effective, and something we can do any time we find ourselves with 2 minutes.

According to yoga, we actually are made of layers, called koshas. You can think of them like concentric circles, with breath, or prana, being a pathway in through all of them.

It’s why exercising, or doing breath work, can change the stay of our body mind.

On the outside is the physical body.

Next in is our thinking/emotional body – most of us spend the day lost here.

Beneath that is our intuition and inner wisdom.

And at the center is bliss, or anandamayakosha.

How much time do you spend in bliss? Or anywhere but the thought/emotion body for that matter?

To find balance, we need time in all of it throughout the day.

Bliss is pure awareness, or Consciousness. When we tap in to this essence of who we are, we can come back to our day able to handle any situation better, and we open ourselves to a lightness and a clarity about who we are and why we’re here.

DO try this at home: for two minutes, sit, close your eyes, and every time you have a thought, say in your mind “thinking.” 

Most of the time you’ll be just saying “thinking” gently in your mind.

You’ll find yourself aligning with the whole container of awareness, within which thoughts are arising, rather than with the thoughts themselves.

You might even experience a couple moments of bliss. My meditation teacher Paul Muller describes it this way: you settle down at the bottom of the ocean for a moment, where it’s quiet and peaceful.

Here’s a bonus I’ve experienced: throughout your day you’ll start to hear “thinking” repeated automatically in your mind. You’ll realize there are other wonderful parts of you to spend time in besides thought that are just as real, and you won’t be brought down so much by negative thinking.

When I started doing this about 15 years ago, I was surprised that when the voice in my head told me “I’ll never be able to do that” or otherwise undercut my intentions, there was an automatic response: “thinking”. And I came back to the open, limitless possibilities of the present.

I hope this helps you too get yourself out of the mud of limited thoughts…

And please let me know how it goes…enjoy!

Jessica Jennings, MS, ERYT, RPYT, founded www.MaYogaLiving.com to provide yoga, education, and support for moms and moms-to-be in their own homes. She loves helping people use their experience in the years around birth to create lives that reflect their own authentic feminine power and wisdom. If you are a mom, pregnant woman, yoga teacher or birth or mom expert - or you want to be - join our online community.