Slow Your Roll

I am on a self-anointed sabbatical this summer. I taught two intense, four-week summer school classes during the month of June, and I have been off the month of July. I'm 26 days into the month and I am just beginning to get a handle on this business of rest and relaxation. Basically, I have been working at relaxing.

And you know there is something out of balance when you've got to work at it, as opposed to, let's say, flow into it.             

My cats, Mookie and FuBu, look at me in amazement. "What!? You don't know how to stop, relax, chill? Fall prostrate, go limp, zone out? What kind of cat are you?"

"Nope," I confess. "There's always a voice in my head that constantly rattles off a list of chores and catastrophes that she is just barely keeping at abeyance until I get my rear in gear.  Her name: Vicious Voice. She's as thin as a straight black pencil line, wears oversize red-framed glasses, and holds a To-Do list that scrolls from here into eternity. She wears a black and white horizontal striped outfit, kind of like the gear the chain gangs wore in old movies. She's a young Pat Benatar...on steroids,  and she screeches at me through a megaphone. She makes me nervous. I guess I'm just a 'scaredy cat.'"

The Mooks and Foobs are asleep before I finish my story. At the first whisper of stress, they pass out. A protective measure, I'm sure. This ability explains why lions rule. They do not stress. They know how to slow their roll. They expend energy only when it's necessary; and, when it is, they act with laser-like focus, speed, efficiency, and accuracy.  And once they have taken care of business, they eat, play, and nap! Domestic cats, like Mookie-Cola and FuBu-Booboos, sleep about 16 hours a day, over twice as long as their stressed out human-companions.

The next morning, I found this note taped to the cats' food bowl:
YaYa: You need to get your life back from that crazy Vicious Voice! Here's what you've got to do:

                             Tell her: "You are not the boss of me!"

                                                          Then...

                                        Stre-e-e-tch out that tension.

                                         Next...

 

    Put your hands in the air and wave 'em like you just don't care. 

        Then...

                                           Hang Loose, Baby!

                                           And, finally, remember:

  

Relaxation means 
releasing all concern and tension 
and letting the natural order of life flow through one's being.--Donald Curtis 

Thank goodness, I still have the month of August to practice!
Write and tell me what you do to relax.