Today, we are starting the second week of our SELF-CARE AND HAPPINESS challenge, and this is our new task for the week.
MEET THE SKY
Every day this week, we will be going outside twice a day and staring at the sky for ten minutes at a time. If your neck hurts, do 10 1-minute stretches and recline against the door of the house or a wall.
The necessary conditions:
1. You have to be outside for this.
2. Look at the sky with the utmost attention. Concentrate on what you are seeing. Banish all thoughts of your problems and everything you need to do.
3. Most of the sessions have to occur in daytime. It’s OK to do one or two at night, but most have to be done when there is sunlight.
4. Breathe in the fresh air very deep and enjoy its taste, smell, and texture.
5. Ten minutes, twice a day, OK? You can set the alarm in your phone to alert you when 10 minutes are past.
Clarissa's Blog 
So, does it have to be the sky? Is there something particularly important about that? I am asking because I live near a beautiful lake and think staring at the lake would be very uplifiting for me (I love water.) But I will stare at the sky if you think that part is important.
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Although a lake is great, but it is important that it should be the sky. The act of gazing upwards, the absence of any boundaries except the horizon, the emphasis on the breathing while looking at what you are breathing in, the distance – these make for a different experience.
I’d do both the lake and the sky.
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A good exercise, simple yet very challenging. I remember too that this was the first thing I stopped doing in psychotherapy, upon being told I was not feeling enough pain (you had to be in crisis, and stopping doing this was what I came up with to create one; the next measure was stopping taking Saturdays as relaxation days).
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“taking Saturdays as relaxation days).”
– This is one of the future stages of the challenge, actually. 🙂
Your therapy sounds like a torture camp. I don’t know how you survived it, to be honest.
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Well, I had some resources … but mainly, I think it was that some people do survive torture camps. (I had my dept. chair looking at my vita the other day, pointing to the gap, and saying: “one wonders what happened here.”)
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I have all sorts of gaps that people could wonder about day and night. The first one is: “You don’t seem to have been involved at all in Western culture at all for the first fifteen years of your life. It seems you were probably self-involved or arrogant or something. We don’t believe in the lack of geographic proximity, which sounds like an excuse, to us.”
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Can I wait until it’s not 0 out?
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Frosty air, what can be better than that? 🙂 But yes, I don’t want anybody to freeze.
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What’s better, doing these sessions more rarely than twice a day or doing shorter sessions?
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I think shorter sessions are the way to go.
Also, to answer a question somebody else asked, lifitng the head is key to the whole experience.
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This is way more pleasant than I thought it’d be.
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Love is supposed to be enjoyable. 🙂
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I love the idea of staring up at the sky, but all I’d get right now is a face full of water! It hasn’t stopped raining here for the last six weeks. Oh except for when we’re having 90mph winds.
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So you are moisturizing! That’s 2 benefits in one. 🙂
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I still haven’t done this. And I know I should. I have been in doors way too much this week and it’s making me irritable. This is on my official to-do list. 🙂
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It’s just ten minutes. Or even five. But it’s fun. 🙂 🙂
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I live on campus, so it’s difficult for me to find times to do this when someone isn’t going to walk by and mistake my standing outside in the cold for being locked outside of the dorm. I tried staring at the sky while I was walking back from class, and about two minutes in I slipped on a patch of ice. Maybe I should get up earlier. :p
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Gosh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for this to cause trauma. The next week’s activity is done at home.
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It’s all good. 🙂 The slip happened a few days ago, and I wasn’t injured or anything. I’ve found that if I go out when classes are in session, I can stand on the sidewalk by one of the staff parking lots without any hassle. It’s near the science building, and in the summer it gets too cold in the lab so I stand out there, then, too. 😀
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I just wanted to say that I did this for the first time today and it was a wonderful experience. During the summer, I do this sort of thing almost daily but not during the school year. And the week slipped by me without me doing this. But today I was having a slightly “off day.” Nothing terrible. But I was feeling irritable and out of sorts. And then I remembered the challenge. So I went and did it (near the lake that I mentioned earlier–but looking up as you suggested.) And in 10 minutes, I felt like a new person. So I’m going to make a commitment to myself to do this 1-2 times a week for the remainder of the semester. So thanks for the great suggestion. It was really wonderful. 🙂
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I’m really really glad that this helped!!
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