Reflection|Journal Keeping – Well-Being Wednesdays

SESSION VII|Staying Grounded WITH Sound

Drumming with Bilal|XU 2019 Diasporic Soul Cohort

Use your journal to document how you used sound to feel more grounded, rooted and centered. Much like our Staying Grounded in Nature session, this week offers you choices. You can explore all the choices now or chose to do only a portion of them for the time being. It is up to you. With each option, be sure to make note of how it made you feel – physically, energetically, emotionally and mentally. You can identify the sensations you felt in your body as well as what ideas, feelings, images or thoughts may have come up for you. Be sure to reflect on why what came up may have come up for you.

Feel free to use the Felt-Sense Diagram below (Session II) and the Emotion Wheel so that you can be specific as you identify and describe how you feel. Understanding how you feel emotionally and sensing into your body and knowing how it feels fosters your ability to be more grounded and deepens your capacity for self-awareness and ultimately healing.

SESSION VI|Staying Grounded With Affirmations & Restorative Yoga

Take time to make note of how this week’s restorative practice made you feel – physically, energetically, emotionally and mentally. Take time to reflect on how your body felt when you integrated your affirmation into the practice. How did it feel to repeat our refrain and to recite the verses you selected from your affirmation? Be specific; make note of the how you felt emotionally and identify the sensations you felt in your body in the practice as you relaxed and as you use affirmation.

Feel free to use the Felt-Sense Diagram below (Session II) and the Emotion Wheel so that you can be specific as you identify and describe how you feel exactly. Understanding how you feel emotionally and sensing into your body and knowing how it feels fosters your ability to be more grounded and deepens your capacity for self-awareness and ultimately healing.

Don’t forget to keep repeating your affirmation each day and feeding your DIASPORIC SOUL.

SESSION V|Staying Grounded With SOUL

XU Django Praxis Cohort (2018) in Community (@ Tangor Guest House)

Use your journal this week to document what captivates you, inspires you and excites you during this week’s session. Additionally, create your SOUL AFFIRMATION in your journal. Use up as much space as you need. Write, draw or collage your affirmation. Use art supplies – – pens, paint, markers, crayons, colored pencils etc. YOUR AFFIRMATION IS YOURS. IT HAS POWER. It has the power to console you. It has the power to restore you. It has the power make you feel more confident, more courageous and more powerful. It should make you feel strong and frankly kinda bad ass! It can make you feel more centered, more grounded and more rooted. It can decrease the feelings of dis-ease you may be experiencing. So be sure to invest ENERGY and CREATIVITY and SOUL in crafting your affirmation. Your SOUL affirmation should, really, actually, shift your energy. It should make you feel good to create it. It should make you feel good to say it out loud. Journal about how your SOUL affirmation makes you feel as ‘good’ does not fully capture the range of sensations and emotions you might experience when you declare to yourself that YOU FEEL GOOD! YOU GOT SOUL! And, if you feel inspired to do so feel free to do this week’s session with members of your family or community of friends. It can be fun as well as healing and restorative to do this creative and affirming practice with people you love and who love you back. Have fun!

SESSION IV|Staying Grounded With NATURE

Document the various ways you chose to connect with nature. Make note how it feel to connect with Mother Earth albeit indirectly. Keep track of how often you engage her and how she makes you feel. If you develop and nurture your relaitonship with Mother Nature continue to keep track of what you did and how it made you feel. You may find that you want to start a separate journal to capture all the ways you have connected with and deepened your relationship with Nature and Mother Earth.

SESSION III|Staying Grounded With Ritual

Make note of what you chose to release or let go of that keeps you from feeling grounded, rooted and centered in your journal. Come back to your list periodically and see if what you chose to release comes up for you again. Also, take time to note in your journal, how you felt during this week’s session. How did it feel to set up for the ritual; did you feel particularly grounded as you set up a concrete physical space? How did you feel when guided to identify some of the feelings, thoughts or beliefs that might be causing you to feel ill-at-ease or making you feel a sense of dis-ease? How did it feel to release or let come of these sentiments by burning them? Overall, using the felt sense chart that is provided below make note of how the ritual made you feel?

Session II|Staying Grounded with Yoga nidra

XU 2019 Diasporic Soul in Restorative Child’s Pose|Pre-Visit Convening

Take time to make note of how this week’s yoga nidra (deep relaxation) practice made you feel – physically, energetically, emotionally and mentally. In fact, use the felt-sense diagram below to see how much more specific you can be in identifying and describing how you feel exactly. Sensing into your body and knowing how it feels fosters your ability to feel more grounded and deepens your capacity for self-awareness and ultimately healing.

Between this week and next, when you feel out of sorts, ill-at-ease or experience some level of anxiety or dis-ease, take a moment to connect to your breath and your body. And, document how you feel in those moments when you are not relaxed, grounded, rooted and centered. Notice what happens to your breath and in your body.

Session I|Staying Grounded- Connecting to Body & Breath

Members of the Xavier University Family connecting to their bodies and breath during the Diasporic Soul restorative yoga session at the Fall 2019 USS Symposium

Take time to document in a journal how this session made you feel – physically, energetically, emotionally and mentally. If you don’t currently journal, start one with a few pieces of paper or on your phone or computer. Explore how connecting to your breath and being aware of your body, in this case, specifically your feet, might help you feel more grounded and give you a greater sense of well-being.

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