Find Your Flow Challenge – Week Three

 

When you don’t pay attention to your intuition, or go against it, you may find that you feel a certain heaviness, lack of energy, a kind of deadness. This is because the life force is trying to come through and move you in a certain way, and it is being blocked.
― Shakti Gawain

Hello, Lovelies!

Welcome to Week Three of the free Find Your Flow Challenge. I’ll be posting every Tuesday in September, with activities and rituals to help you get back into flow. If you missed the beginning of our challenge you can start that here.

Last week we worked to reconnect with and nurture our joy.

This week our focus is on freeing up our Life Force. Are you ready? Let’s go!

And remember, you don’t have to do all of these activities. Pick what works for you.

WEEK THREE – FREEING UP LIFE FORCE

Let’s start by recapping what flow is all about.

Flow is a natural state that we are all capable of achieving. When we are in flow:

• we can deeply engage with tasks
• we are aligned with our authentic self and we use our talents and gifts
• we experience a sense of calm and satisfaction
• we have a natural sense of our next steps.

One of the things that facilitates flow is having strong and available life force energy.

Life force is a vital invisible energy that resides within all living things. It’s more than just the energy available within your cells, it also represents your energy for emotional and mental tasks, your capacity to engage with the world around you, your ability to stay healthy and strong, and your ability to express yourself, create, solve problems, and think original thoughts.

Let’s do some activities to increase our awareness of our life force, and enhance its power within us.

Activities For Week Three

1. Tuning In To Your Own Energy

You might remember this activity from Week One. Tune in to your body several times a day. Do this by stopping, putting your hands over your heart, closing your eyes and taking three slow breaths in and out. Then ask yourself how you feel, and pay attention to your body, your thoughts, and your emotions and your energy levels. Record any information in your journal or on your device. Be investigative. Don’t judge. Have compassion for yourself. Ideal times for this activity are on awakening, a few times during the day, and just before you go to sleep.

I also recommend paying attention to your energy levels as you interact with relationships and tasks.

Think about this as you connect with people or activities:

• What/who drains your energy, and makes you feel flat, tired, sad, cranky or otherwise less great?
• What/who gives you energy, and uplifts you, makes you feel stronger, happier, more positive, better in yourself? AND (Dare I say it?) more in FLOW?

Try to minimise the stuff/people that drain you, and maximise the stuff/people that energise you.

2. Boost Your Mood Through Food

All organic things have energy. This is especially important when it comes to food. Plants, animals (and animal products such as milk, eggs), bacteria, water, have a life force energy that can contribute to and enhance your own. The fresher the product, and the fewer miles it had to travel to get to you, and the closer it is to its original, natural state, the greater the life force residing within those things.

This week, pay attention to what you eat. Drink more water. Eat more foods that are fresh and vital. Cut down on food that is overly processed, fried and less than fresh. Give thanks to the the food, or the source of the food, before you eat it. Spend a moment thinking of how this food will nourish you.

Take it a step further by paying attention to your body after you have eaten – straight after your meal, a few hours later, and many hours later. How do you feel? Does it start off great, but later feel not so good? Does any of it help sustain you over a longer period of time? What else does your food to you?

Start to make choices that give you more energy, and remember to stay hydrated. Often our energy slumps can be remedied simply by drinking enough water.

3. Embrace Practices Designed To Enhance Life Force

For thousands of years people have devoted themselves to various spiritual practices that enhance life force energy. Why not try one of them and see how it affects you? The list includes:

• Breathwork
• Yoga
• Tai Chi
• Qigong
• Meditation
• Chanting
• Nutrition (including herbs and supplements) customised to support your body through methodology from Ayurveda, Western herbalism or Traditional Chinese Medicine
• Acupuncture, acupressure, reiki and other forms of energy healing
• Chiropractic and kinesiology
• Forest bathing
• Immersion in oceans and rivers

You may also have some other favourites that work for you. This week schedule time to try at least one from this list.

4. Get More Rest

I know. We already did this in Week One, right? Still, none of us are getting enough down-time. So let’s do this one again! Interestingly, a friend was telling me she took her kids to the city for a weekend, and after a big day of running round she insisted that everyone go back to the hotel and have a rest before they went to the theater that night. The kids grumbled and complained. BUT after the weekend away, when they were listing their top five things the kids all put having an afternoon nap in their top five!

Start by finding one window of 20 to 60 minutes of quiet time for yourself that is not work and where you don’t have to take care of anyone else’s needs. If you can’t get alone time at home take yourself out for a walk or a swim, go to a park or a cafe or anywhere that feels right for you. Spend this time just resting, relaxing, looking at nature, walking, swimming, sipping coffee… Stay off your devices. Let your body and mind recharge. Do this once in the next 7 days. Feel free to do more than once if that works for you.

5. Journal To Find Your Truth

Journalling is a fantastic way to reflect and go deeper, so that you can find your own answers. The prompts below are designed to help you see what is draining your energy, and what charges you up.

Answer any or all of these journal questions:

• • Even thinking about _________ exhausts me because…
  • Whenever I ___________________ it always makes me feel better because…
  • When I think back, one of the times in my life I felt most vital and alive was when…
  • Thinking back to that time when I felt vital and alive I was doing…
  • I absolutely know these things suck the energy out of me…
  • In my heart I know it would restore some of my lost energy if I just…
  • One thing I do that I know I do to myself that drains my own battery is…
  • Something I’ve done in the past that has always helped me to regain strength and feel better is…
  • It’s time for me to get help with…
  • No matter how bad I feel, I know I can turn it around, at least a little, by…
  • My playbook (list of moves) for increasing my energy would include…
  • A person who makes me feel small/exhausted/unbalanced/unsure of myself is _____________ and what I need to do about this is…
  • One person who always lifts me up and recharges me is ____________. Knowing this, I can…
  • Part of my problem with low energy is that I keep doing these things…  And some solutions to this could include…
  • I admit, it’s scary to think about being full of life force and feeling amazing because then there would be no excuse for… and that makes me feel… My wise self would tell me that…
  • When I think about that last answer, and what that means for me, I know in my heart that it is time to…
  • Honestly, in my ideal life, I would…   And a tiny step I could take towards that now would be…

Thanks for joining me on this journey towards greater flow. Feel free to drop me a note in the comments or over on Facebook and let me know how you are going. I’m cheering you on!

See you next Tuesday for our final lesson. Much love, Nicole xx