Disclaimer: this is a place of learning, safety, and hope. Take what you want from the post and forget the rest. Maybe this will help you. Maybe it won’t.
Sleepless Night = Thankful for flexible hours
As always, I tend to do things out of order. Or maybe an order that only makes sense in my head?
No matter what, yesterday was overwhelming. Between work and news updates, coping with life feels harder than normal. The healing circle helped a lot, but it also brought up memories and things I am not prepared to work with right now.
So, I took the opportunity of a sleepless night to finish a work project on deadline and have some fun dancing in the dark. My plants were sleeping. The night was quiet. Groceries came late, so I ate late too. But the Internet was going strong, and I was too high on adrenaline to calm down.
So I worked and danced in my work chair. I smiled and laughed at a kindle unlimited book on another screen. Looked at cute cat photos from an adoption agency (yes I plan to adopt a cat this year). And continued the boring work tasks necessary to create client deliverables on deadline while drinking peppermint tea with ginger-infused honey.
The task took less time than I anticipated; wrapped up around 2AM, so I lay down to rest for a few hours before starting the work day.
Funny Faces – Making and Rearranging of Face muscles
Work finished early, and I was tired, but not ready to sleep. It’s one of those sunny, but cold days where the heat doesn’t always work because it’s too warm outside, but cold inside. So I lay down on my comfy chair in the living room with some blankets and decided to do muscle relaxation meditation.
8 out of 10 times, I fall asleep during this meditation. Kid you not. It’s one of the reasons why I don’t talk about it much here. Nothing to say other than a) it works; and b) it puts me to sleep.
But then it got noisy. Guess the upstairs neighbor came home from somewhere and decided to move around?? So I came back to the present with an achy face. Felt like everything from my eyebrows to my chin was stiff. So I started moving my cheeks up and down. The left side felt different from the right side. So I alternated moving one side up and down with the other a few times. And suddenly, my nose wasn’t so stuffy either.
So then I tried to wiggle my nose (or scrunch it up and down) to see how that felt. Again, it was an unexpected sensation – like when you pull your fingers backward to stretch them – and sound inside my nose as I breathed in and out.
Next I tried moving my cheek bones and muscles side to side (like a half smile), alternating that with puckering and lifting my lips in different positions (grimace, smile, open, closed, bared teeth). I never realized how many small muscles, ligaments, and tendons there were in the lower part of my face before this. As I moved my cheeks, lips, and nose, the sensations occurred as far away as my ears (where my jaw connects to the skull), chin, and forehead.
So I got my eyes and forehead and jaw involved too. All this with my eyes closed as I reclined with my head tilted backwards. Because why not? I was comfortable curled up under my covers and half asleep. Then the noise and cold breeze from the windows distracted me. So I entertained myself making funny faces.
And ended up with today’s movement challenge.
Dancing Plants = happy plants
Right, I forgot to mention this all happened in about 1-2 hours while my mobile phone played music from a classic rock playlist. By classic I mean from the 1950’s to 1970’s. Earlier in the day, I had an audiobook on before the work meeting, and the plants perked up. We don’t often listen to music or other stuff during the day because there’s so much noise from people and cars.
But it was (and has been) quieter than normal. So I put the music on for them while I rested. We all like music (in general), but my plants have some favorite genres. Classic Rock being their number 1 favorite. They like jazz, blues, instrumental/new age, classical, and musicals too. But Classic Rock always gets them dancing.
So what happens when you have a bright sunny day, windows are open, everyone gets a drink of water, and the music is playing?
Dancing plants. I kid you not. They perk up their leaves and branches; then start swaying and moving without a wind. If they weren’t so camera shy, I’d make a video to share. But they are camera shy.
And so while I made funny faces and relaxed into meditation, they danced and laughed in the sun.
Reflection
All in all, it was a fun start to what could have been a tired, stressful day. I got an extra nap. The plants danced. We laughed and played. Got energized to do some clean up. And learned that I really need to be mindful of exercising my face and jaw muscles more.
No, that doesn’t mean I’ll talk more. Or less. Eat more/less. Drink/hydrate.
Yes, it does mean I will work harder to be expressive (express emotions), smile, laugh, and make faces just for the fun of it in my private time.
Who knows what will happen…maybe my RBF will morph into an RFF (resting fun face) instead?
No matter what, I hope you all make some time to laugh today.
Thanks for reading.
