Pamela Miles

Practice Health, Happiness, and Spirituality

Although in some endeavors, practice makes perfect, when it comes to life, practice makes present. And present makes possible.

Articles on practicing and promoting health, happiness, and spirituality.

Your Year of Practice

Practice, Self-care

What do you practice?

Not the obvious — sitting for meditation, getting on your yoga mat, or placing hands for self Reiki (to mention my favorites).

What is your hidden practice, your mind’s default, what your mind does when you aren’t telling it what to do (as in most of the time)?

Every mind has a practice, a habit it defaults to. Your mind is no different.

What does your mind practice when left on its own?

Does your mind practice gratitude or self-love? Or does it practice some variation of self-doubt or self-criticism?

Transforming your default

A conscious daily practice — one you choose and continue choosing each day — changes your mind’s default so when the going gets tough — as it does at times — your mind supports you instead of digging you in deeper.

Is there a practice you enjoy but practice sporadically?

Can you restructure your practice — and your expectations — so you actually practice every day? What amount of time could you commit to comfortably? Twenty minutes? Ten? Five? Two? One?

Consistent practice is possible

Even a minute of practice consistently each day is enough to transform your life.

It’s easiest to be consistent if you choose a time of your day to practice — as you arise or go to bed, before you eat, etc. You might need some support to start that habit, but soon you’ll enjoy your daily respite so much that you’ll look forward to it, and rely on its support.

Yes, the effort you can make is enough to transform your life. As long as you keep making it. That’s when it becomes a practice.

Time to choose

Choose a practice you feel excited about. Now is a good time. Otherwise, it becomes one more thing you have to do.

If you don’t have a practice, here’s one anyone can do: breathe.

Breathing is the easiest practice because your body already practices it. All you need to do is pay attention to a few breaths. Pay attention, as in enjoying a few breaths. Not changing your breath, but rather keeping the company of your breath.

If you already have a consistent daily practice, would you like to refresh it? Here’s an idea: as you start your practice each day, think of one thing you are grateful for. It can be a very small thing. There will be days when a tiny bit of gratitude is huge.

The real secret

The secret to continuing practice is motivation. If you practice defensively — because you want to change or be better or stop talking so much or whatever — you will run out of steam.

But if you practice from gratitude and self-love — simply because you are grateful to be, and this is the person you get to be now — your gratitude and self-love will continually refresh your practice. And your practice will continually refresh you.

Why not love yourself now? If you don’t love yourself, who will?

Then let your enthusiasm to take good care of yourself — for your own sake and the sake of those you love and those you don’t even know — carry you forward through this Year of Practice.

Supporting one another

Please tell us what practice you choose in a comment below. Then let’s support one another by sharing our #yearofpractice generously, inviting others to join us.

What goodness might we manifest in the world this year with our daily practice?

How Are You Managing?

Healing, Practice, Self-care

We live in challenging times.

Who would argue? Who doesn’t know someone struggling to manage the details? Maybe you are that someone.

Take heart: challenging times are ripe for practice.

Becoming your own rock

The support created by spiritual practice is never more palpable than in challenging times.

Whatever your chosen practice — meditation, yoga, Reiki, prayer, awareness of the breath, etc. — hold to it now. Be consistent in your effort, even when your effort seems absurdly unequal to the challenges at hand.

If you are steadfast in your practice, it will keep your heart tender, steady, and clear.

Steady practice gives perspective, revealing details and context together in a balanced whole.

Steady practice enables you to sense the timeliness of your participation. It opens the ease to wait when it’s time to wait, and act when it’s time to act, without conflict.

When there is conflict, steady practice helps you recognize that conflict is within the person feeling it, and enables you to explore your inner battlefield, transform your understanding, and heal even festering wounds.

The healing and steadiness you create in your own life is your much needed offering to the world.

In challenging times, the foolish forsake practice, dooming themselves to foolishness without end, while the wise cling to practice.

Work Your Longing

Practice

My dad was a man with purpose, so it was surprising when he occasionally paced aimlessly about the house, invariably opening and shutting the refrigerator several times before finally saying, “I have a yen for something, but I don’t know what it is.”

It took me a while to recognize what he was feeling. Children tend to know what they want. As we age, desire becomes more complicated.

And maybe simpler.

Eventually I too tasted the restlessness of desire without direction. If you are older than thirteen, you know the feeling. A yen for something, anything. Except, of course, anything you have.

It’s easy to feel the discomfort of this restless desire, but what if you paused to look again? Why not sit and explore desire? If you have a spiritual practice, use it. If you don’t, simply breathe and observe.

Stay open and aware, and you’ll be surprised by what you discover.

At the core of desire lies a sweet longing, your heart aching to be, to simply be. Since you already are being — you already are what you desire — you can rest in this longing and let it enliven your experience of yourself.

All of you.

Everything you are.

No longer restless. Now scintillating.

The joy of longing

At this time of year, instead of getting carried away by desire, letting it whip you into expectation and disappointment until you are exhausted and brittle, why not unmask and enjoy longing for what it really is, an expression of your joy of being?

Joy, the gift that truly keeps on giving.

Love Your Ego

Favorites, Practice

Everyone wants to love and be loved.

Your ego is no different. But the ego has a harder time finding love because it’s confused about what love is and where love comes from.

From its first whiff of love, the ego assumes love comes from outside. The ego sets off looking for more, and fears losing the love it has. So to the ego, love is deeply intertwined with fear.

That fear thing makes it hard for the ego to release deeply into love, and easy for ego to come up with lots of reasons why it — and you — are  unlovable and will be rejected once truly seen. And thus self-loathing is born.

Sound familiar?

Not just for fairy tales

You know the part in the fairy tale when kissing the frog reveals him as the prince he’s always been?

What if your ego were like that prince (or princess)?

What if you dared to love your ego, just as it is? Yes, it takes great courage, but if you dare to truly love your ego with full awareness of all the reasons you now despise or deny it, you’ve essentially kissed the frog, and you know what happens then.  You experience your own glorious essence playing as yourself — ego and all.

Transforming your relationship to ego

Try it. The next time you notice self revulsion rising, don’t distract yourself. Instead, relax into its presence.

But instead of diving into the feeling, stay present as the witness, the one who is experiencing the feeling.

When you feel the desire to love and be loved that gives rise to self-revulsion (which is the assumption that you are not lovable), settle into that desire to love and be loved, to be good, to be valued, to be whole.

Allow your desire for love to permeate your awareness and, in the depths of that longing, you’ll come to know that you are not simply loved, but love itself.

Why not give it a try? After all, what have you got to lose? Not love, and not your ego, just your confusion about them.

Is Intention Enough?

Practice

People often say, it’s the intention that counts.

Yes, intention counts, but no, it’s not enough.

If you intend to practice but don’t actually practice, what have you gained? (Feeling guilty? Not a gain.)

We need to follow through, to put intention into action.

No matter how strong your intention is, one thing is true:

Thinking about practicing (yoga, Reiki, meditation, qigong, etc.) is not practicing.

Only practicing is practicing.

Who’s in Charge of You?

Creativity, Practice, Self-care

“Hello-o,” I sang into the phone.

“Uh, umm, hmm…who is this? Is this the person in charge?” the caller asked, perhaps flummoxed to reach a human breathing rather than a recording.

“I’m Pamela,” I said, “and yes, I am in charge of Pamela.”

We laughed.

Putting yourself in charge

That simple truth was funny at the time, but it’s no joke.

Daily spiritual practice puts you in charge of yourself. Any spiritual practice will do. Practicing consistently — every day — makes the difference.

Consistent spiritual practice opens the moment so you can see the choices you can make right now. You know, those choices, the ones that make it more likely what you want will actually come to pass.

Those choices are how we co-create our lives, how we build our happiness and health. When we don’t make those choices, we default to whatever is already in motion, whether we’re aware of it, or not.

Response-ability

No, we’re not in charge of the universe. I for one am grateful for that.

Being in charge of myself is a good fit, something I can actually do. It’s inspiring, empowering and enlivening, a responsibility I can live up to.