Everyday Practices
Choosing Me, Again and Again
For Being There for Yourself
US$6 3 practices · 7 tracks · listen or download
Get the pack · US$6Most of us are much better at being there for other people than for ourselves. We notice when a friend is struggling. When it’s us, we don’t always notice, or we notice and keep going anyway.
The mind has plenty to say about this. There are more important things to do. Other people have it worse. So choosing ourselves can feel strange to start with, and it takes a little getting used to.
And we forget. We choose ourselves, and then we lose it again. That’s part of being human. The practice is in coming back, again and again, with words like ‘I am the one person who can truly be there for myself, no matter what, if I choose to be.’
There are three tracks here: a letter to your future self, a breath practice for finding a safe place inside, and a short piece on staying with pain. Two of them come in three lengths, so there’s one for whatever time you have.
What’s inside
Dear Future Self
3 versions
Full version · 16 minShorter version · 11 minStraight to the letter · 8 min
For when you want to be on your own side, now and later. After a count down from ten, you listen to a letter to your future self, in the first person: ‘Dear future self, I am here for you.’ It talks about the choices you make today, how ‘we disconnect so that we can reconnect’, and ends with thanks to the future you. The full version adds a section sending ‘heart bombs’ into the future, and closing affirmations. The shortest skips the countdown.
This Safe Space
3 versions
Full version · 14 minShorter version · 10 minMicro version · 6 min
For when you need somewhere inside to rest. It opens with ‘Everything here was created from nothing. This includes you,’ and a moment to notice your body. Then, three times, you open your eyes, breathe in, and close them as you breathe out, all the way down. Then the breath, the pull of gravity, and a still place inside where sounds and thoughts come and go. The shorter version leaves out the eyes exercise. The micro version goes from the body straight to the breath.
When I Choose to Stay
6 min
For when you’re ready to stop running from something painful. The track talks about pain that used to be background noise and now speaks more clearly, because you’ve started listening. It asks, ‘Are you willing to be with your pain from time to time?’ Then a few words in the first person, like ‘I am willing to sit with my discomfort.’ It ends with a rhyme you can carry with you: ‘I sit beside the pain I feel. Empowered now, I help me heal.’