How to Tune Into Your Inner Self

If you are feeling unhappy or having trouble meditating, you can get in touch with your inner feelings or intuition, get grounded, and have a good time.

1

→ Begin by asking yourself these questions: What is behind my current feelings? How do I want to feel? What do I want to experience?

2

→ Try some of these suggestions and then go on with your own creative ideas.

3

→ Gaze downward or tilt your head a bit towards your lap, and feel your chest and gut; breathe while doing this for a moment or two. Just be yourself for a few seconds.

4

→ Think about how you feel in this moment. Whatever it is, accept the feeling by either hugging yourself while feeling it or mentally wrapping your arms around the emotion, as if it were a ball of light.

5

→ Pay attention to any impulses that come up, like a desire to go outside.

6

→ Go outside. Look at the tree tops. Notice how the breeze or wind moves them and if they have any birds in them. See the clouds and note the direction and speed of the wind. Touch something in the natural world, like a smooth stone or a plant. Notice its texture and temperature.

7

→ Play with a kid as if you were still that young. Keep a sense of responsible awareness, but go ahead and feel the wonder of everything; try fun things like moving your body to mimic the poses the kid is striking, and let her or him in on it by pointing out stuff to laugh about together.

8

→ Spend five or fifteen minutes writing in a journal. Write about anything. Save what you wrote and read it later. You'll enjoy it and gain insights into yourself.

9

→ Listen to Cat Stevens Boy With A Moon And Star On His Head, and Led Zeppelin's Tangerine, and then plan a drive (any time of year) into the country. Plan a picnic if possible. Invite all ages of your friends and families!

10

→ Relax about the pressures you perceive in the world for a moment. Consider the differences and similarities between what is assumed and demanded by the post-modern world around you and what is necessary and desirable to you.

TIPS

→ Share what you have with someone who needs it.

→ Be grateful for what you have. There are always going to be people with more and less than you no matter how much you have.

→ Use your intuition and reserve fear for the moment it is needed.

→ Broaden your horizons by reading about something you would never have considered before today. Don't be afraid. Check out a book on Witches at the library, try rollerskating, or talk to someone who doesn't have friends - more often than not they will be not be dangerous people, just lonely or lacking in skills you could share by example.

Warnings

→ People may think you are strange for running barefoot in regular clothes, not a jogging outfit, so remember they're probably secretly wishing it was them running like that.

→ Nobody's perfect, and you don't need to try to be.

→ Dark people who have given in to cynicism and grouchiness or worse may try to take your new found light, but they can't if you don't let them get you down to their sad level again.