A steadfast approach to 2025
Q: What practices are you bringing into the new year?
Kinnari’s Dialogue
Happy New Year dear readers! Hope your year has started off on a good note. At this end, Mitali and I took a trip this past weekend with our families to a place called Mar Vista cottages & farms in northern California. It was a lovely little spot with cottages across the Pacific Ocean and plenty of animals to get the little ones excited. Both my girls along with Mitali’s younger son spent a good amount of time feeding the goats, bunnies and chickens.
My favorite spot was a creek side trail on the property. Stepping into the forest with the sound of water gushing and rushing, on its way to meet the ocean immediately brought me into presence. On our last morning there, I took the time to sit there on my own and contemplated picking a “misogi” for the year - a term I had come across while scrolling Instagram. Misogi, meaning 'water cleansing', is an ancient Japanese practice involving purifying the mind, body, and spirit through physical and mental challenges. In samurai tradition, it helps warriors build mental clarity and gain a deeper understanding of themselves by pushing their limits. In modern day however, people are using it to think up one big challenge for the year.. something that is REALLY hard to do, and will push you to your limits. It’s a way to remember your year. [Here are some things people have shared in case you are curious.]
Do I need to pick ONE hard thing? Am I not already working on making improvements across the board? It would be cool to have one thing to remember the year by though. Should I sign up for another physical challenge like I did in 2022 - walking the camino? Should I quit my corporate gig and start my own company?
I didn’t have an answer. I let the contemplation go and turned towards the flowing water and the tall trees again. A few minutes later I closed my eyes and did a small meditation. Upon finishing, the desire to deepen my meditation practice came back to me. Over the past year, I’ve tried to maintain a daily 10-minute practice but to be honest I’ve let it slide on many days. At the start of 2023, I’d had a desire to expand on my inner life and had kept up with a meditation practice for several months, only to put it on hold when baby L arrived later that year.
“An effective method of meditation leads us to an experience of profound stillness, an inner silence that defies description. It is an emptiness that is full with peace, creativity and happiness. It is the natural condition of our mind beyond the processes of our thinking. We cannot help but get the feeling when we are in this state that this is who we really are. It feels so much like home. It feels so good. It is not only a mental experience. With effective meditation, every cell in our body is brought to a state of profound living stillness. Many of the symptoms of this stillness, this inner silence in our body, are measurable – the whole metabolism slows down along with the mind.”
On that day by the creek, post-meditation, I made a decision to experiment with a new way to meditate (based on the book I was reading). I committed to doing two 20 minute meditations daily, based on the method laid out in the book, for the month of January.
The other thing I have been thinking about is what practices I want to continue (or start) in 2025. Here are some of my daily ones:
Daily practices for 2025
End of day review - picking this back up from 2023. It’s a quick 5 minute practice before bedtime where I reflect and write (in an excel spreadsheet) 3 quick wins from my day and 3 things I want to do the next day. This helps me look for the “good” in my day and also helps me think about the most important things for the next one.
5 minutes of writing - I enjoy writing, it gives me so much. I want to do more of it but sometimes I let other things get in the way. This “5 minute” practice is the equivalent to “just exercise for 5 minutes”.. it’s intended to get me to start, knowing that once I do I’ll continue to do more.
100 grams of protein + 30 minutes of movement - as a vegetarian I don’t eat much protein. I spoke to a nutritionist who suggested having two protein shakes a day. I’m still on just one a day, but working on incorporating two. The second one - 30 minutes of movement is slightly easier since I’ve been at it for a few months. Both of these are related to my larger commitment to getting healthier.
20 minutes of meditation, twice a day - going from barely keeping up with a daily 10-minute practice to this feels like a big jump. However, if it truly helps in bringing about inner silence then I hope to continue with it for the rest of the year.
I would love to hear from you about practices you are either continuing or bringing into your year. Or perhaps you are going all out and have a misogi you’d like to share!
Mitali’s Dialogue
“New year, new habits, new you.” Well, not for me this year. I am content with “old me”. I have no new year resolutions - no new habits to practice, no new challenges to take on.
This year instead I am going to just try to keep up with the practices that I have already established. Back in December, I did get caught up in the barrage of emails about starting something new in 2025 and signed up for two new movement related services (dancing and walking). But I quickly realized that I was not in a place to add new habits. I lack the discipline to add any new habits to my routine when I am barely being consistent with the ones I already have.
Over the past couple of years through trial and error, ups and downs in my health, I have figured out the habits that sustain me (I wrote about this back in October). Since then, I have practiced writing weekly priorities and being consistent with my habits. I noticed the energy I got from committing to doing the same things regularly. Maintaining my practices over the past three months has given me confidence in my ability to stick with the same old. The challenge will always be keeping up with the practices. When things are going well and my energy levels are high, I get caught up in exploring new interests, or I travel and disrupt my routine, or I commit to too many social engagements and before I know it, I start to neglect the habits that brought me to my sweet spot. And then when my energy levels start to dip, I avoid doing my habits using lack of motivation as an excuse and the downward spiral makes it impossible to get back on track.
So one of my words for this year is consistency - doing the same thing every day or every week - like a solo walk on Mondays or yoga on Thursdays or writing my priorities for the week every Sunday. It may seem repetitive or boring or some days the habits can start to feel like a chore. The challenge will be to not question the wisdom of consistent practice but to remind myself that the beauty of doing the same old boring thing means I don't have to think about what to do and I get to reap the rewards over the long term.
Last week I watched the movie Perfect Days which chronicles the daily life of a caretaker of the Tokyo toilets. He follows a very structured routine but still manages to find moments of beauty and joy while doing the familiar things. It reminded me that each day I can make a choice on how to experience the familiar and the mundane. Which brings me to my other word for this year - contentment. Being satisfied with my existing practices. Finding fulfillment in the way my life is playing out. Being at peace with what is. Accepting the moment, not resisting or wanting things to be different.
I recently read that in Bhutan, contentment is considered a very special emotion, one that is the highest achievement of human well-being. The word they use is chokkshay, which is a very deep and spiritual word that means ‘the knowledge of enough’. It basically means that right here, right now, everything is perfect as it is, regardless of what you are experiencing outside.
Contentment is an ongoing practice that I have been attempting over the years. One of my affirmations from 2023 was - “I am at peace with the present moment and trust in the unfolding of my life”. I find myself mostly at peace with what I have in my life, living from a place of “enough” vs “more”. I have learnt to appreciate all of life's experiences, the good and the bad. The place I struggle with is radical acceptance of all my emotions. While I view each situation as an opportunity to teach me something, there are emotions that I am still not comfortable with and I resist acknowledging them when they arise.
Knowing that every emotion has a lifespan, can I allow for all my feelings to come and go without needing to change them, fix them or avoid them? Just this past weekend there were some big emotions expressed in our family causing chaos to ensue on the first day of our vacation. I found myself struggling to acknowledge what I was feeling. The urge to resist the emotions, to shame myself for feeling a certain way, to despair that my patterns keep repeating themselves, made me want to run away from my emotions.
As I found myself succumbing to my old distraction methods, I forced myself to get in touch with my breath and stop judging myself. To give myself all the time needed for this emotion to pass. Right here, right now, everything is ok as it is. I can be content with my sadness, with my anger. I am complete as a human being.