> When do you feel the most happy, content, or peaceful?
> What is an activity or circumstance that give you a good rush of blood to the brain?
In all the mental health work I've done this year I relearned (or more accurately am still relearning) how peace is in the body more than in the mind. Anxiety is too. We use our brains and egos too much. So it has been meditation for me that has been the activity I think of first for a question like this - of relearning how to get out of my head and just be. Although it's not a rush exacty :)
My more conventional answer is basketball - or any physical thing that I can go at intensely where I'm in my body and very active - lets me get out of my head too. My higher brain shuts off and I forget about everything. After playing basketball it feels like waking up - like oh right, I have a home. A car. Things to do. Coming out of meditation feels like that too.
Good conversation with good friends is always powerful for me - it's like being home, but not a physical place, a mental/emotional one.
So true about how our bodies carry peace and anxiety. I love how I feel energized in my mind after doing something active! I have yet to fully grasp the benefits of meditation, though. I have a hard time with stillness.
This is good! And I agree with you. You are a writer (and a good one at that). As soon as I get through my present financial difficulties (God willing) I will go paid. Keep up the good work! I don't even know how I got to your page. I was in the writer office hours. Did you comment there or something? Of course, your interesting name may have pulled me in. I thought I was going to be reading about a meditating moonshiner (Zen Jug). Listen, I am trying to get a handle around the "recommendations" thing in substack. You? Check it out and then check out my substack and maybe we can help each other.
Thanks for commenting and for your kind words! I was in the writer office hours this morning, so that's probably where you saw me. That's funny about the "meditating moonshiner!" My last name Zug actually means "train" in German and is the name of a town outside of Zurich, Switzerland. I get a lot of people sending me photos of themselves standing by a sign to Zug.
"After I explained my mom’s concerns and wondered how to respond theologically, he graciously and wisely suggested it didn’t matter. She wanted comfort, he said, not theology."
THIS. My this resonated with me deeply. I have friends (pastor + pastor's wife) who are walking through some tough stuff with their adult children. As I listen to some of the frustrations and actions, all I want to say is--"she needs her parents, not a pastor."
> When do you feel the most happy, content, or peaceful?
> What is an activity or circumstance that give you a good rush of blood to the brain?
In all the mental health work I've done this year I relearned (or more accurately am still relearning) how peace is in the body more than in the mind. Anxiety is too. We use our brains and egos too much. So it has been meditation for me that has been the activity I think of first for a question like this - of relearning how to get out of my head and just be. Although it's not a rush exacty :)
My more conventional answer is basketball - or any physical thing that I can go at intensely where I'm in my body and very active - lets me get out of my head too. My higher brain shuts off and I forget about everything. After playing basketball it feels like waking up - like oh right, I have a home. A car. Things to do. Coming out of meditation feels like that too.
Good conversation with good friends is always powerful for me - it's like being home, but not a physical place, a mental/emotional one.
So true about how our bodies carry peace and anxiety. I love how I feel energized in my mind after doing something active! I have yet to fully grasp the benefits of meditation, though. I have a hard time with stillness.
HI Jen,
This is good! And I agree with you. You are a writer (and a good one at that). As soon as I get through my present financial difficulties (God willing) I will go paid. Keep up the good work! I don't even know how I got to your page. I was in the writer office hours. Did you comment there or something? Of course, your interesting name may have pulled me in. I thought I was going to be reading about a meditating moonshiner (Zen Jug). Listen, I am trying to get a handle around the "recommendations" thing in substack. You? Check it out and then check out my substack and maybe we can help each other.
Thanks for commenting and for your kind words! I was in the writer office hours this morning, so that's probably where you saw me. That's funny about the "meditating moonshiner!" My last name Zug actually means "train" in German and is the name of a town outside of Zurich, Switzerland. I get a lot of people sending me photos of themselves standing by a sign to Zug.
"After I explained my mom’s concerns and wondered how to respond theologically, he graciously and wisely suggested it didn’t matter. She wanted comfort, he said, not theology."
THIS. My this resonated with me deeply. I have friends (pastor + pastor's wife) who are walking through some tough stuff with their adult children. As I listen to some of the frustrations and actions, all I want to say is--"she needs her parents, not a pastor."
Sometimes listening and hugging is the best response.