Community Concepts (November 2021)
11/06/2021
Dojo Philosophy for Everyday Life
We enter another holiday season, speaking of all we have to give thanks for, while looking side-eyed at various looming threats. As a community, we’d like to look more closely at thanks. We often pile thankfulness in with an appreciation of our blessings and the grace we’ve been given in our failings. At its best, this thankfulness draws our attention out of ourselves, and on to the connections that keep us whole. At its worst, it is used as a mask to hide inner pains. Often it is momentary instead of sustained and passing as opposed to transformative.
One of the big pushes at Unity this season has been to start a mindful three-part practice to improve our lives every day. We wanted to create a way to help not just our students, but our community strive to reach a more mindful and motivated daily life, so we’ve made it free to everyone. You receive points for three, daily acts representing the Mind, Body, and Spirit. We also decided to incentivize progress with weekly and cumulative prizes, and with levels to motivate progression.
You’re more than welcome to use our free website if you’d like the incentives and awards, but you can just as easily set it up on your own at home. Here are the daily tasks and how to get the point. You can play for prizes, but once you add these tasks to your day, they are their own reward!
Mind: To get this point each day you’ll need to turn off all screens and devices 2 hours before your ideal bedtime. Read a book, play an instrument, talk to family, do a puzzle. You’ll be amazed at the immediate change in the quality of your sleep and how much more quiet you’ll find in your own mind to learn, focus, listen, and grow. Many people report after the first week looking at devices less during other parts of the day as well.
Body: To get the body point you’ll need to exercise every day. At Unity that means coming to class or working on complimentary fitness goals. It can be anything that puts your mind into the mode of working on your body and it’s potential. It is important, however, that it is not a reflection in hindsight on some activity in the day that seems to count. The point of this practice is to be mindful of your body’s potential for at least thirty minutes each day and give it your full focus and attention. Teach it a new skill, increase its capacity to perform, feel it move through nature, sweat, and reach its limits. Be prepared for even better sleep and improving body image as you take time each day to be proud of your body’s ability to improve.
Spirit: While both of the first two points will improve how you feel, the third point comes from connecting your life more intentionally to those around you. To get the spirit point you need to take some time out to show your gratitude to a person, place, group, etc. Like the body point, it doesn’t count to look back on your day and conclude that you already did it. It’s far more important to take a moment to think of something you’re grateful for, decide how to show your thanks, and follow through. This mindful moment could be a phone call to tell a person how you feel, a letter written and mailed, a lawn mowed, a grave tended, but it must involve mindful time spent. At least 15 minutes. A text fired off is not enough time to break you out of the spiral of your day into an experience that makes a new and lasting connection to another.
If all of this seems like too much to take on, try to get two of the points each day for two weeks. If you’ll log in to our website, we’ll keep track of it for you! I promise you won’t regret the attempt.