Listen to your body

With my head feeling like a cabbage I took my coffee outside to catch a bit of sunshine and to wait for the coffee to connect with me in some way.

A cabbage? Yes, a cabbage, still, compact, tightly packed but nothing moving, inert, inanimate. Of course alive with potential but not exactly quivering with purpose. Not an unpleasant feeling, just nothing much happening. It was very nice lying on the bench in fleeting sunshine, looking at my rain barrel of white daisies ( click on photo to enlarge image of daisies when the sun went in) and up at the blue sky with white scudding clouds.

Scudding? the word surfaced from somewhere. I've just checked it out and the Free Dictionary says:

intr.v. scud·ded, scud·ding, scuds

1. To run or skim along swiftly and easily: dark clouds scudding by.

2. Nautical To run before a gale with little or no sail set.

n.

1. The act of scudding.

2.

a. Wind-driven clouds, mist, or rain.

b. A gust of wind.

c. Ragged low clouds, moving rapidly beneath another cloud layer.

[Possibly from Middle English scut, rabbit, rabbit's tail; see scut)

Very nice. I was more spot-on than I realised because I was noticing the wind-driven movement of the low clouds and they were in little puffs, very rabbit-tail-like. I like the nautical part, the concept of putting down one's sail before a gail, going with the flow and not offering resistance.

The background to this is that I'd just come off a coaching call where I had been suggesting to a client that she 'listen to her body'...

...as in having a rest when she felt tired rather than driving herself on and feeling overwhelmed by so many tasks and so many ideas for new projects. So when I came off the call I decided on a spoon of my own medicine and took myself outside for a 'mini-break', a rest until some energy arrived.

So, a head like a cabbage, a bench, a little sunshine and stopping to look at the flowers and the sky. These things take little time and no effort and they give you time to catch up with yourself. I find that when I honour signals to stop and rest then overall I have a great deal more energy, and not only more energy but a clearer head, a stronger sense of purpose and fresh ideas. 

what's the 'mini-break' that would refresh you? Ask, and listen to, your body.