Tomorrow, I’m leaving for a Vegan Cruise!

Really, it’s like a floating conference. There are dozens of doctors, nutritionists, authors and fitness professionals leading lectures and classes and every day is jam-packed with speakers, panel sessions, cooking classes and activity choices.

And, of course, delicious vegan food! 

To me, the cruise also marks the end of the long snow-bird experience I set myself up for this winter. I arrived in Florida on October 24th and I’m returning home to Colorado on March 14th, shortly after the end of the cruise.

The pros and cons of snow-birding for this long are probably the subject of another piece of writing and I haven’t completely sorted them all out yet.

My morning runs… oh how I love them.

Living alone for two months (Berk returned January 3rd so that he can ski) is another tale. So, so good but also lonely. I love time alone but there has been a lot of it. 

So, I’m headed off to be not at all alone for a week on the ocean.

And my laptop is not invited!

With all of my alone time down here I’ve kept myself busy working, working, working.  I have a bunch of mid-flight projects, clients who are used to regular access to me and things that can’t wait that I need to hand off to other people to handle while I am away.

There is probably some deep patterning here that I need to unwind, but since my corporate warrior days I’ve always felt that the work you have to do before and after vacation almost makes a vacation not worth it. Not quite, but almost. 

So, not unexpectedly, I’ve been having a hard time shutting my brain down before bedtime at night.  I thought I’d share with you what I’ve been doing before bed that’s really helping me: 

Supported bridge pose while palming the eyes.

Here’s why it works:The mild inversion part of the supported bridge pose supports both finding a calm state and invoking the parasympathetic nervous system. This relaxes the mind,  physical, and energy body for better rest.

When you cover your eyes with your hands by putting the heels of your hands below your eyes, your thumbs on your temples and let your fingers drape into your hairline, you are gently holding several calming points at once. 

The heels of your hands are on a powerful acupoint that is often used for grounding and your thumbs are on a meridian that’s a key part of our fight-or-flight response, so we’re inviting that meridian to calm down. And then on your forehead, you’re holding the main neurovascular points that promote relaxation and stress reduction in your nervous system.

You can see me doing this technique in the picture above.  You can turn your block to be at any height or use a bolster or a firm cushion instead.

I can go from brain-on-fire to sleepy in about five minutes this way.

Hopefully, I won’t need this on the cruise!