Participate with awareness of your connections
- Focus your attention on where your body touches an object (floor or ground, air molecules, a chair or armrest, your bed sheets and covers, your clothes, etc.). Try to see all the ways you are connected to and accepted by that object. Consider the function of that object with relation to you. That is, consider what the object does for you. Consider its kindness in doing that. Experience the sensation of touching the object, and focus your entire attention on that kindness until a sense of being connected or loved or cared for arises in your heart.
- Focus your attention on your feet touching the ground. Consider the kindness of the ground holding you up, providing a path for you to get to other things, not letting you fall away from everything else.
- Focus your attention on your body touching the chair you sit in. Consider how the chair accepts you totally, holds you up, supports your back, and keeps you from falling down on the floor.
- Focus your attention on the sheets and covers on your bed. Consider the touch of the sheets and covers holding you, surrounding and keeping you warm and comfortable.
- Consider the walls in the room. They keep out the wind and the cold and the rain. Think of how the walls are connected to you via the floor and the air in the room. Experience your connection to the walls that provide you with a secure place to do things.
- Go hug a tree. Think of how you and the tree are connected. Life is in you and in the tree and both of you are warmed by the sun, held by the air and supported by the earth. Try and experience the tree loving you by providing something to lean on, or by shading you.
- Dance to music.
- Sing along with music you are listening to.
- Sing in the shower.
- Sing and dance while watching TV.
- Jump out of bed and dance, or sing before getting dressed.
- Go to a church that sings, and join in the singing.
- Play karaoke with friends or at a karaoke club or bar.
- Throw yourself into what another person is saying.
- Go running, focusing only on running.
- Play a sport and throw yourself into playing.
- Become the count of the breath, becoming only “one” when you count 1, becoming only two” when you count 2, and so on.
- Become a word as you slowly say the word over and over and over.
- Take a class in improvisational acting.
- Take a dance class.
Refer to the list of pleasurable activities for more ideas