Whatever kind of Gypsy Girl you are, your life involves change. Whether that change comes through travel to distant lands or the deep inner journeys of daily life at home, the one thing we can be sure of is that everything will sooner or later change.
Whether we have invited, even chosen, change or whether it arrives unbidden, even unwelcome, change comes. Change always comes. Our babies grow and change. Our bodies age and change. Our lives are transformed by birth, marriage, divorce and death. Our material fortunes come and go, our moons wax and wane.
When we travel we are consciously choosing change in our life – we change our location, our daily routines and sometimes even our time zone. Travel provides us with a great opportunity to experiment with practices that can help us stay grounded in the context of all that change.
I spent a decade traveling constantly. From 1998 until 2008 I was either traveling, living abroad or commuting long-distance (i.e. by plane). It took me most of that time to learn this, but eventually I came to understand that there were practices that could help me stay grounded even when I was on the move.
Whether your travels these days are mostly inner or outer, at home or abroad – here are some practices that can help you ground and stabilise yourself in the midst of chaos, movement and change:
- Get a warm oil massage.
- Take hot baths, drink warm & relaxing teas.
- Create and maintain simple daily routines (for years mine was a morning run, then it changed to be a morning pot of coffee, now it has changed again – the content of the routine matters less than the consistency of the routine itself)
- Invite stillness through simple relaxation techniques including restorative yoga.
- Do some slow, easy sun salutes inviting the warmth of the sun and grounding into the support of the earth.
- Put your hands and feet into the earth by lying on grass or gardening.
What helps you ground yourself in the midst of change and movement, whether from travel or in daily life?
