Two Ways, Falling Upward, and a Great Alternative to Breath & Meditation

1. Become More Resistant to Daily Stressors

“We each have our unique starting baseline—the level of stress arousal that we usually hover around through any typical day… Regardless of where we start from, the lower we can get our baseline stress arousal, the better—it means we’ll be much more able to tolerate the peaks of stressful events.”

— Elissa Epel, Ph.D., The Stress Prescription

This is a good case for doing our contemplative practice first thing in the morning. By starting at a lower baseline, we’ll better tolerate the day’s stressors.

2. Two Ways to Keep Your Practice Interesting

1. Switch up your routine or exercises every 15-30 days to continuously create novelty.
2. Cultivate mindfulness so the same old boring exercises continuously create novelty.

Fortunately, neither is “better” or “right or wrong,” and you can use both approaches simultaneously.

3. An Alternative to Meditation and Breathwork

“All my walks have been different, but looking back I see one common denominator: inner silence. Walking and silence belong together. Silence is as abstract as walking is concrete.”

– Erling Kagge, Walking

If you always feel like you “should” meditate or practice breathing but can never stick with it, consider walking instead. Walking is a concrete and reliable way to find a similar inner silence…no sitting required.

4. You Must Do Both

“Reflection and action must never be undertaken independently.”

– Paulo Freire

No commentary needed.

“It seems that in the spiritual world, we do not really find something until we first lose it, ignore it, miss it, long for it, choose it, and personally find it again—but now on a new level.”

— Richard Rohr

In good breath,

Nick

P.S. my favorite pick-up line

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