Breathe Deep. Breath Slow. – A Mantra (2020 Re-post)

© RedCat

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Breathe deep. Breath slow.

Breathe deep. Breath slow.
Take your time to inward go.

Breathe deep. Breath slow.
Cultivate space to grow.

Breathe deep. Breath slow.
Investigates what lies below.

Breathe deep. Breath slow.
Release all that keeps you low.

Breathe deep. Breath slow.
Accept all there is in the now.

Breathe deep. Breath slow.
Connect to life force flow.

Breathe deep. Breath slow.
Listen to your higher self say so.

Breathe deep. Breath slow.
Learn what wisdom want you to know.

Breathe deep. Breath slow.
Changed awareness new seeds sow.

Breathe deep. Breath slow.
Let the winds of change blow.

Breathe deep. Breath slow.
Trust your soul your path to show.

Breathe deep. Breath slow.
Bathe in inner divine glow.

Breathe deep. Breath slow.
Let the universe its love bestow.

Breathe deep. Breath slow.

© REDCAT

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Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

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Re-post comment:

For tonight’s Wandering the Archives Wednesday.
I’ll share this meditation mantra.
I think of it whenever I feel I need to calm and center myself.
I might not repeat all the lines, but enough repetitions of just
– Breathe deep, breathe slow –
works just as well.

Enjoy!

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Photo by DTS VIDEOS on Pexels.com

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I like repetitions and rhymes. I also like meditation and mantras. :-)
“Breath deep. Breath slow.” – was the first meditation poem I wrote. Which coincides with the first day I started to seriously meditate. Right now I’m thankful for the fact that I managed to make it into a habit before the pandemic started. Without that daily dose of peace and grounding. Without that self-care, I think my depression would have bloomed right now, fueled my the ongoing catastrophe.

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Photo by Magicbowls on Pexels.com

Daily Haibun, June 29th – Lost skill

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After waiting and waiting. The time has finally come. Grandma is fully vaccinated. The kids can come and stay. They are elated. I look at the bags to pack and realize – my pack in a heartbeat skill have faded. I’m back to writing lists and overthinking.

Seasons come and go
They never forget how to
Continuous flow

© RedCat

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Read other Haibun’s written for the monthly dVerse prompt by me here.

Read other Daily Haibun’s here.

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Fool’s Journey to Enlightenment (2020 Re-post)

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Fool’s journey to enlightenment

One life
Two hands
Three in any holy trinity
Four cardinal points
Five sacred elements
Six, love and sex, contain sacredness
Seven chakras to shine clear
Eight Sabbats in the wheel
Nine, three fold law times three
Ten Sephirots emanating divine light
Eleven mysterious knowledge insights
Twelve full moons, and one blue orange
Thirteen witches in the magic coven

Nineteen, loving wisdom hope govern
Twenty-Twenty karmic judgment appear, grow better, renew, global catastrophe draws near
Twenty One light’s biannual turning point
Twenty Two spiritual paths to ascend the three

One hundred words to set you free

© REDCAT

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Re-post comment:

It’s nearly midnight. My mind is spinning. So this felt like a good choice for Wandering the Archives Wednesday.

Enjoy!

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First idea, one hundred lines of poetry, counting up. Before the tenth, hmm, maybe if I had a week to work. Edited idea, one hundred words.

My favorite prompt of the week, The Sunday Muse, celebrates its hundredth.

Also linked to The Writers’ Pantry and Promote Yourself Monday.

Happy 100th Musing everyone!

Downward Slope

Photo by Spencer Selover from Pexels

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Last weeks a downward slope
Each day feeling unable to cope
Everything beyond a depressed scope

Struggling against hopelessness
Feeling utter loneliness
Separated from liveliness

There should been preparations
A goal achieved celebrations
Not dark depressive deteriorations

© REDCAT

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The weight off the world seems to lay on my shoulders. However-much I work against it. All old harmfull programming is in full force. Sending out censors and critics to tell me off for every not written to prompt, shame me every unanswered comment.

Some form of perfect storm. The pandemic and isolation.
Me on the cusp of achievement.
The step where I usually self-sabotage.

As the publishing process has long been out of my hands, I hoped for a feeling of accomplishment. Instead my twisty-loopy-trauma-scared mind makes the most of trying to make me feel fear and confusing. Trying to downplay my work into worthless nothingness, wondering how I can presume to have something to say.

How I miss friendly hugs!

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Pixabay

Return To New Normal

Photo by Oleg Magni on Pexels.com

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What will the world look after the pandemic? How will the geopolitical landscape change? How will that affect me personally?
Will one catastrophe lead us to accept responsibility for, and take action against, the looming human made climate emergency.

Even before the pandemic my life where in flux, changing. It still is.
A history of unprocessed trauma, a newly acquired trauma activating full PTSD and leading to major depression, will do that to a life. But now the urgency to imagine a better future, for all humans, feels even more acute.

So what should I do? Change career?
Change residence from city to wildwood?
First step. Change myself to the core! Rewriting those programs that prohibits self-love, true self, esteem, courage to live my truth, my goals, my dreams.

In springs pale rebirth
I see the truth of seasons
Birth, growth, change, rebirth

© RedCat

Posted as response to Tuesday Writing Prompt Challenge: Tuesday, May 5, 2020.

Photo by Janko Ferlic on Pexels.com

Letter of Hope

PHOTO PROMPT © Dale Rogerson

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Recall our midwinter feast
Our hope and ecological fears as we laid the tens to rest
A new decade for new beginnings at least
Instead modern humanity put to one of our greatest tests

Now we shelter in place
Curtailed from roaming free
Lost within our inner maze
Now we have ample time for truths, we might not want to face

So fortify yourself by recalling those hopes and fears
Decide where you want to go from here
So next time we meet, after our happy to be free tears
We’ll start working to bring a better greener world near

© REDCAT

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Written for Friday Fictioneers. This time I tried a tale trough a letter…

Click on the frog for more stories.

GloPoWriMo 2020

DAY 1 – Build a New Start
DAY 2 – Beloved Bookstore
DAY 3 – Sunshine and Hail
DAY 4 – Isolation Dating
DAY 5 –Staring out a Windowpane
DAY 6 – Casanova Comes Closer
DAY 7 – Swirling Colors of my Mind
DAY 8 – White – Red – Black
DAY 9 – Different World After
DAY 10 – Spring Hay(na)ku
DAY 11 – Love – Hay(na)ku
DAY 12 – Make Art – Triolet inspired
by Neil Gaiman and Chris Riddell
DAY 13 – What did you think would happen
to a child left on my doorstep?
DAY 14 – Ballad of the Lost Poet
DAY 15 – Writer’s class – Hay(na)ku
DAY 16 – What is a Nomad without a Tribe?
DAY 17 – Pale Spring, Here Again, Nature Awake
DAY 18 – Spring Day in the Garden
DAY 19 – Close Couplets
DAY 20 – Lost in Love’s First Flush
DAY 21 – She Tasted Like Memory
DAY 22 – Struggling Mind
DAY 23 – Written in the book of dust
DAY 24 – At the end of every week, Friday-Cozy!
DAY 25 – Slip, Crack, Shatter
DAY 26 – Humans Really Don’t Know
DAY 27 – April Rain
DAY 28 – Greeting the Watch Horse
DAY 29 – Letter of Hope
DAY 30 – Witches Walpurgis Night Preparation

Intense Meditation, week 4

© RedCat

This week in group we where taught a Mindfulness technique called
3 – 2 – 1, it can be done sitting or walking, eyes open or closed, and as so many other meditation tools for the beginner it’s easier achieved sitting still with eyes closed. So we start there until we can do it more freely.

It’s purpose is to soothe and calm an overactive mind.

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Here’s how to do 3 – 2 – 1

State, silently or aloud, three things you See, Hear and Feel (as in perceive with a sense).
Then two things of each.
Then one.

Breath calm, deep and even during. Though the focus here is not breath but the world around.

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I see purple tulips. I see rain drops. I see a stack of books.
I hear the sound of typing. I hear birds singing. I hear the sound of wind.
I feel the warmth of my sweater. I feel the chill spring air trough the window.
I feel the wood floor beneath my feet.

I see purple tulips. I see a stack of books.
I hear birds singing. I hear the sound of wind.
I feel the warmth of my sweater. I feel the chill spring air trough the window.

I see purple tulips.
I hear birds singing.
I feel the chill spring air trough the window.

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I have found this tool to work quite well, especially done in nature, but then all forms of meditation is easier for me there. Even writing a version now made me way more mindful and present in the current moment.

© RedCat

After four weeks meditating several times daily, it feels like a habit has formed, that I’ve completed the first step on the path. Now I’m looking forward to finding out what the next step is.

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Read
Intense Meditation, Week 1
Intense Meditation, Week 2
Intense Meditation, Week 3

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Note

The attentive might notice, way more than four week’s have now gone since the first post. When I started this series, I envisioned meditating this intensely, mening around three hours per day, for the duration of the eight week – Compassion Mind Training – and writing a post for each week.

Then corona virus SARS-CoV2 causing the illness Covid-19 pandemic hit the world. And everyone’s lives changed. Including cancellation of all
non-essential treatments to lighten the load on the health care system.

I’m happy and heartfelt grateful for having managed to make meditation a routine before the pandemic, and I’m proud to say I still meditate daily. It might not cure PTSD or clinical depression, but it helps to cope with both.

Going forward I plan to set up a page to gather my resources on Compassion Focused Therapy and meditation. I will also keep writing posts about my own experience and path. Reviews of tools, techniques, teachers, books and other resources. And share the insights I gather on the way.

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The road might be long and windy,
but with will and intention
we can make the journey the point,
not an unforeseeable future goal.
©RedCat

Beyond Crisis

The artist says it ‘evokes the building of a world with more solidarity and more humanity’
Source

From vantage high
Floating with birds in the sky
A girl appear to our eye

My world lies in tattered ruins
Tomorrow on hold as millions sickens
Future unsure as planet fills with poison

Alone on a mountaintop
She despair to hope swap
Humanity hand-in-hand in co-op

Let us rise from the ashes
Together with compassionate actions
Build a new green world for all humans

© REDCAT

The other day I ran across pictures of Guillaume Legros artwork Beyond Crisis. Ever since then It’s been on my mind. And today together with Go Dog Go’s Tuesday Writing Prompt it became a poem.