Meditation and Mindfulness for Well-Being and Self-Care at Allen Counseling Center

Spring: A Time for Balance and Renewal

A lot of people set their New Year’s resolutions by January 1st. This practice is borne out of tradition, but when you think about it, it makes much better sense to start the new year in March which is a time for regrowth and renewal. Spring is when new ideas and goals spring forth! No better time than now. Now is always a good time for change. Today is the first day of Spring! Spring is a Time for Renewal The Spring Equinox is in March, and it is when the Earth's equator passes through the center of the Sun. Day and night are balanced equally in time, and this is the perfect time to think about life balance. One glance around you will tell you

By Jennifer Slingerland Ryan|

Decluttering Both Your House and Heart

Things pile up. We over-gift at the holidays and receive gifts we don’t use, buy clothes we never wear and save papers that don’t need to be saved. Nonetheless, the reality of life is that getting rid of things is often extremely difficult. While the sadness of ditching toys your kids have outgrown is more obvious, feeling anxiety over shredding billing statements that are ten years old is a bit harder to explain. Despite how difficult it feels, though, decluttering brings good things both spatially and emotionally. Here are a few tips on how to declutter both your house and mind this spring. The Physiological Chemistry Behind Stress Mess Psychology Today talks about “stress mess” and draws parallels between physical clutter and emotional clutter. Stress

By Jennifer Slingerland Ryan|

Optimism: The Spring Thaw Your Mind Needs

Anyone who’s ever said that optimism is simply a state of mind probably never tried to be truly optimistic. The truth is, it’s not easy, especially if you’re going through a difficult time in your life or dealing with other troubles. Optimism is something you have to work for and work at, but in the end it can be very rewarding. Here are a few suggestions for how to find your inner optimism this spring. Optimism Is Not About Denial There’s a big difference between blind optimism, which amounts to denial, versus reconfiguring your perspective. NBC discusses that the brand of optimism that can positively impact your brain and increase life span is all about acknowledging stressors and dealing with them productively. Being in denial

By Jennifer Slingerland Ryan|

You Are The Company You Keep

Why do we keep doing and feeling the same things over and over again, even when they aren't serving us well in any capacity whatsoever? Oh, the madness! Consciousness is a “here-and-now” experience of focused attention that is fundamentally a measure of how our body, thoughts, and mind is changed by interaction with our internal or external world. As such, our caretakers as infants played a vital role in helping us make sense of our internal and external worlds. We came to know who we are because of what they mirrored back to us, and therefore, consciousness is said to be context-dependent. This is a process in which we regulate our inner and outer worlds, to gain an understanding, if you will, of how the world operates

By Jennifer Slingerland Ryan|

Nesting

While creating vision boards this week with our staff, I pointed out how important it is for me to have quiet, meditative time, usually in the horizontal position on my couch. My bed will suffice, too. It's "mommy" time in which I at times feel guilt, but push away, because I know the mommy-guilt is ever-present and what I really need is recuperative, "me" time. See the couch on my vision board below? Yeah, that's me - dreaming on a couch. When the other counselors at I Choose Change created their visions boards, one thing they mentioned is that they don't have their own place to "nest". There is no space where they feel like they can hunker down, be introspective, meditate, and let

By Jennifer Slingerland Ryan|