Easy Home Holistic Practices
If life feels too hum-drum, it’s time to get reconnected with yourself and the world through holistic practice. The ground you mind, body, and spirit through existential experiences found all around and within yourself.
How to Perform Various Holistic Practices at Home
You don’t have to go to an expensive yoga retreat or scale a mountain to gain the peaceful benefits of holistic practice. Develop your own mindful rituals at home:
1. Drumming
Drumming is used across cultures for fun, building communal experiences, and sending messages. It is also used therapeutically to heal sicknesses and for spiritual communication. You can learn to drum at home by following lessons online or attending group drumming classes in your city.
Play the drum, feeling the rhythm pulse up your legs and through your body as you sit. Play standing, with the drum, tucked under an arm, moving and dancing around.
Be inspired to let your hands lead by creating your own beats to match your feeling at the moment. Try to match the beats of songs that affect you, but keep your time and place of practice reasonable to not disturb others.
2. Yoga
All levels and ages may practice yoga with confidence to exercise, increase flexibility, and decrease stress. There are much yoga poses to use as a morning ritual to get ready for the day or as an evening ritual to get ready for sleep.
If creating a bedtime yoga ritual, there are simple poses you can do right in bed to relax and drift off to sleep. Rest with your knees to your chest. Press and lengthen your legs against the wall. Lie in a fetal position.
Yoga has also been revealed to relieve symptoms of anxiety, depression, and addiction, reinforcing your connection with the body as a sacred temple and bringing you mindfully into the present.
Use yoga to help clear your mind and keep it calm.
3. Meditation
Meditation is another holistic practice known for helping to alleviate anxiety and depression, as well as improve your focus and productivity. There are many ways to meditate, and not all involve chanting mantras.
Start by taking five minutes and focus on your breathing. The idea is to let your body and mind do what it does without judging yourself while bringing your attention calmly back to the present moment. Let your attention focus on the rise and fall of your chest and to the beat of your heart, while your worries fade away.
Short meditative moments (even something as little as taking 10 focused breaths) can decrease your stress, increase your focus, and lower your blood pressure.
4. Stream Of Consciousness Writing
Do you love to write? Even if you’re not one to keep a journal, writing things down provides many benefits. Your pages may express goals, thoughts, or feelings that you’re reasoning out or can’t speak to anyone about. Writing allows you to work through grief or record memories.
Julia Cameron, the author of The Artist’s Way, has an interesting take on mindfulness through writing. She encourages her readers to write “Morning Pages.” These involve writing whatever happens to be on your mind when you first wake up until you’ve filled three pages in longhand. This can be gibberish or eloquent.
The goal is to fill the pages and empty your head to start the day with a clear mind. Make stream of consciousness writing a regular holistic practice for the mornings.
5. Create an Altar
Altars do not have to be religious. Create a personal altar that is sacred to you and therefore generates positive energy in your home. Choose a small surface by a window inside or outdoors, in a space that gives you comfort.
Fill this space with items that are sacred to you. What represents goals you want to achieve? Do you want to add photos of loved ones? What about using candles, crystals, and colors that have meaning to you? Your altar can also be a dedicatory space to art or to a loved one.
Change up the altar with the seasons or your mood. This sacred space is yours to cultivate mindfulness and peace, or whatever your heart dreams up.
Wrap-Up
Developing a holistic practice will help you remain connected to your innermost self, especially when life gets busy or you feel stuck.
Whether it’s drumming, yoga, meditation, writing, or building a personal altar, these practices are a jumping-off point until you find a practice that truly resonates for you.
Enjoy your newfound mindfulness and discover the impact achieving this level of inner peace can bring you.
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