May Mindful Living Beyond the Mat

May's edition of Life beyond the mat! We're always looking out for things across the internet that bring us small joy, insight, or make us think more deeply! Here are a few that we bookmarked this week:

🔍 Explore + Learn: I gave a stress management workshop this week at a NATO program! One of the topics we discussed were our hobbies that allowed us to downshift our energy. Many of these included time in nature, projects using our hands, community activities. Lots of good practices: fishing, painting, gardening, being part of a choir, and shout out to the gentleman who mentioned that one of his hobbies is simply eating pizza (can't blame him!)

🎤 Good Listening: I'm re-listening to the book 'Connect' based on the Stanford course on human connection nick-named "Touchy-Feely".

🍴 Eat: it's CHERRY SEASON. 🍒 Last night I ate a pound of cherries for dinner, and I have no regrets. (On that note, tart cherry juice is delicious paired with a little lemon seltzer as a spring drink!)

📺 Watch: "I don't want to brag, I'm very good at procrastination. I'm going to have a writer's block, I just haven't gotten around to it yet!" I was charmed this morning by this video of the author Fredrik Backman on Creative Anxiety and Procrastination. This is a feel good video of four minutes of Scandinavian dad-jokes, capped with a moving message at the end.

⏳ Tackle a Nagging Task: have you been stalling on something? Every week I try to tackle a nagging task. This weekend is my quarterly kitchen purge. It's on the calendar, and I toss things that have reached adulthood in best-by dates, do a little extra cleaning, and an inventory of my pantry.

⭐️ Yoga in Action: in honor of last week's Nurse Appreciation Week and Teacher Appreciation week – consider reaching out to thank these amazing humans who make our lives better every day.

🤣 Memes of the week: a tiny meditative web game called gravity points.

Here's to good living!

– Sam, Ompractice Co-Founder