Developing a Daily Practice
Developing a Daily Practice
We often hear about the importance of developing a daily practice when embarking on a healing or spiritual path. But, why is this important and what does a good daily practice look like? We asked our founder, Yumiko to explain and share some insights into her own daily spiritual practice.
All of us live day-to-day. Feelings and emotions arise within us every day. They let us know where we are in relation to what we want and, if we can allow them to, they will steer us towards what we want and away from what we don’t. However, it’s not always easy to trust our own feelings. We have been trained away from this since we were children when we were encouraged towards pleasing others and not expressing how we felt.
Daily rhythm
An important aspect of daily practice is that it provides a rhythm and this rhythm can help us to build greater trust in ourselves and increase our self-confidence. It is rather like when we exercise our physical body to build physical fitness. When we regularly work with our mind, we become more connected to who we really are and we connect with our core values rather than those that might have been imposed on us by others.
Understanding what’s right for us
In turn, this helps us to become happier and more grounded. The greater our self-knowledge, the better our understanding of what is right for us. Daily practice helps us to strengthen our connection with who we really are and builds our deeper knowing, which is the foundation of a fulfilled and happy life.
Simple rituals
One way to begin developing a daily spiritual practice is to create simple rituals for yourself. It’s a good idea to start small so it’s easier to incorporate into your day and you don’t become overwhelmed.
The resonance of beauty
Yumiko recommends finding something beautiful every day. It doesn’t have to be a big thing – a flower, a stone, a cloud – choose anything that you find beautiful. This simple practice opens up our hearts to the resonance of beauty. Our hearts can become a little ‘closed’ as we go through life and we experience getting hurt. Opening ourselves up to beauty creates a moment of healing for the heart. It also helps to connect us to our true selves because seeing beauty outside ourselves also enables us to see beauty within.
Daily intention
You can develop this practice further by making it your daily intention to see beauty in the world around you. When you consciously look for it, you will tune yourself to notice beauty. And the more you notice, the more you will see. It is like opening your eyes and seeing the world in a completely new way. You will discover greater appreciation for things that you may have taken for granted and you may start to see beauty in everything and everyone.
Use your senses
It's fine if you don’t immediately see beauty all around you, however. Just start with a single thing. Look at it very closely and ask yourself ‘why do I find this beautiful?’ Maybe you might want to paint it, or close your eyes and touch it or smell it. Use as many of your senses as you can to really experience the essence of the thing you have chosen.
Gestalt
It can be interesting to imagine what it might say if it could talk. Such approaches are commonly used in Gestalt therapies as they can help us to access parts of ourselves that we would not normally find it easy to access. When the object shares its feelings, these may be your own unacknowledged feelings. Note down what it says.
Stillness and solitude
When you develop a regular practice, you are finding a moment of stillness and solitude in your busy day. Ideally, if you can build it into your daily routine at the same time each day, it will be easier to stick to. If you have chosen an object, you might like to place it somewhere where you know you will see it – by the wash basin when you are cleaning your teeth or next to the toilet, for example.
Meditate
Whatever you choose as your daily ritual, Yumiko advises choosing something that brings you back to who you really are, something that you love. It’s important to relax and be kind to yourself. Don’t take it too seriously and don’t worry about it. Some people meditate every day and this can be the perfect way to connect to the still place inside yourself. Learning to relax is the first step towards meditation so try and find things to do that relax you.
Some people are put off by the word ‘meditation’ but Yumiko explains it doesn’t necessarily mean sitting with your eyes closed. She finds staring at a marble often helps her to enter a meditative state, or even chopping vegetables. Create a practice that works for you and, if you can, do it every day. If not, do it as often as you can. And relaxxxxx.