Mindfulness and Housework: Vacuum This
As a guest on a local television show recently, I decided to bring along my vacuum cleaner. No, it wasn't for a segment on household hints. I wasn't there to share secrets for deep-cleaning a carpet. Instead, I was using my vacuum cleaner as a memorable visual (aural?) aid to talk about mindfulness. My host, Roland, gamely turned it on during my bit, and we attempted to shout over the roar of the machine.
After a few seconds, we gave up, and as he turned it off, the ensuing silence was a welcome relief. I used the vacuum cleaner to talk about how we have this noise in our heads all the time. Our thoughts are creating a swirl of sound, and it can be exhausting to try to concentrate, relax or get creative with all that racket going on. This mental vacuum sucks our energy and makes it difficult to gain clarity, let alone peace of mind. We need to turn it off in order to have the quiet space we need to truly pay attention.
The surprising part of this is that turning on a REAL vacuum cleaner and running it across your floor provides an excellent opportunity to quiet the noise in your head. You can use your power switch to make an intentional shift toward mindfulness, and let this housecleaning task become your chance to watch your thoughts. Any slow repetitive physical task lends itself beautifully to mindfulness practice, and the back-and-forth motion of your vacuuming can give a soothing rhythm to your thought-watching. Set your body on auto-pilot and focus on the thought parade in your head. Or, you can choose to use your dust-sucking time to focus on the physical activity required.
Feel the muscles as you move. Focus on your shoulders and arms as you stretch and retract, stretch and retract. Switch arms and watch how it feels to relax that one side while flexing the other. The point here is to make use of the task as a trigger for mindfulness, but remember this: fun is a huge motivator in all things. So, if you can't get too excited about vacuuming in general or thought/body-watching in particular, I heartily recommend Option #3--the "Mrs.
Doubtfire" approach to mindfulness. You remember the scene in the movie, Mrs. Doubtfire, when Robin Williams, dressed as the matronly nanny, rocks out while vacuuming to Aerosmith's "(Dude) Looks Like A Lady," right? This must be the greatest housework scene ever. It makes me want to go to my cleaning closet and dance with the vacuum wand myself. That's what I'm talking about.
If you've ever been stressed about something and gone on a cleaning binge, you know how good it feels to scrub the floor and wipe away your frustration at the same time. You might as well get something done while you've got that adrenaline pumping, right? So, if a meditative vacuuming session doesn't inspire you, you can still use this time to be mindful by focusing on your air guitar moves. Pay attention to your sense of fun as well as your sense of perspective. Exercise your concentration. Focus on what it feels like to cut a rug while cleaning it.
Mindfulness doesn't require stillness, and it certainly doesn't have to be serious. Turn on your vacuum, and let the focusing begin. Suck it up..
Maya Talisman Frost is a mind masseuse in Portland, Oregon. Through her company, Real-World Mindfulness Training, she teaches eyes-wide-open ways to get calm, clear and creative. To subscribe to her free weekly ezine, the Friday Mind Massage, please visit http://www.Massageyourmind.com.maya@mindmasseuse.comWhat does a Registry Cleaner Do?
The registry was designed to speed up the operating system but this very intention and design by Microsoft could prove detrimental to your system is the registry is not serviced and maintained by regularly using a good registry cleaner software to clean the registry of useless entries that are slowing down the system and taking up disk space.
There are many registry cleaners such as the PC
Mantra's registry cleaner, the PC registry cleaner and the Windows XP registry cleaner that can spruce up your system and make it much more enjoyable to use. Registry cleaner software, as any registry cleaner software, scans the system and traces obsolete or outdated data. Then after determining the good from the bad the registry cleaner deletes the redundant data enabling your PC to perform error free and more efficiently than before running the registry cleaner.
Ensure The Registry Cleaner Has A Good Backup Function
Before using a registry cleaner...
Vacuum cleaner > What does a Registry Cleaner Do?
And You Always Will
I opened the dishtowel drawer for about the sixth time, hoping the towels had somehow magically appeared.The brand new towels still weren't there, of course."What did Mom DO with them?" I wondered aloud.I knew they had to be around somewhere because I had given them to her for Christmas only a few months ago. Not that the towels were so terribly important. It's just that when you're expecting guests, you'd kind of like everything to look nice.Okay, so maybe I wasn't going to find them. Then again, the guests wouldn't arrive until tomorrow. Plenty of time to worry about dishtowels later.On second thought, maybe I ought to forget about the towels all together.
My father's niece and her husband didn't seem like the kind of people who would leave in a huff because their host hadn't put out new dishtowels.What next?Perhaps I'd better see if I could lay my hands on Mom's best tablecloth. A tablecloth had always been one of the things my mother insisted upon when we had company. I went...
And You Always Will
Vacuum cleaner > And You Always Will