Day 145: 5/26/11 Home Mini-Retreat with Tai Chi

Day 145: 5/26/11
New Thing: Home Mini-Retreat with Tai Chi
Inspiration: CREDO
Cost: $0
Time: Two hours                
Bottom Line: I feel very centered and motivated.

Reflection: Today was my day off (I know it is weird to have Thursday off--but sometimes you have to take what you can get) and I spent a good portion of it engaged in a two hour mini-home retreat. This retreat is a part of the CREDO experience and was designed to be done within the first few weeks of your return home to help you meditate on how your CREDO plan is going. You may remember that part of my CREDO plan was to form a Rule of Life which was a great focal point for my meditation today. Since it was such a beautiful day, I decided to do the whole thing in our back yard under our tree.

The first part of the retreat was designed to spend 30 minutes in some kind of centering prayer. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to try out a Tai Chi DVD that I found at the library. I have only ever tried Tai Chi once with my sister years ago and definitely wanted to try it again.  One of the things that I am learning is that I am able to find a meditative zone much more quickly if I combine movement with my prayers. So, I brought out my lap-top and went through these fluid like movements for 30 mins. I felt much more centered and in tune with the environment by the end of it.

From there, I spent an hour going over my new Rule of Life looking for places where I have already seen God's movement. I was happy to find that even though I have not totally implemented everything in my plan yet, I am already discerning growth in areas where I have. For example, I feel like I have much more energy by making better food choices and I am feeling much less stress by committing to finding an hour of "Sabbath Time" every day. It was also helpful to see what I had already forgotten in just a few short weeks, and found that motivating to continue. I ended this session with prayer of thanks and guidance.

After that I took a 30 minuet prayer walk with Ken and then went out for a run. All-in-all, it was a great way to spend two hours.