Still Being A Bit Selfish (or Using Some Pressure)

I’ve been pretty reflective and internal with a lot of my monthly challenges lately. Clearly I feel like I need to work on my inside right now and I’m glad I’m allowing myself to do that. It does mean that my monthly challenges don’t have the most measurable results, but I can feel that they are making a difference in my life and that’s what’s important to me.

Last month I set my challenge to spend the month refocusing and reconnecting to myself. I had some big goals in mind for what I wanted to do while working on that and I knew that some of them are things I really wanted to do. But to be honest, while I did work on reconnecting to myself I didn’t get a lot of things done that I should have.

I did spend a decent amount of time giving myself permission to be lazy or anti-social. I spent some nights at home reading or watching TV instead of making plans. And I loved having those nights at home. I did a lot of reading which is something that I hadn’t been doing enough lately. I went through the library system online and found several e-books that I wanted to read so I built up my wish list and hold list online. I’m slowly getting those books and I know I’ll have a lot of books coming up that I have been wanting to read.

I wanted to work on cooking more and doing a clothing inventory. Neither of those really happened. The clothing inventory did a bit with doing a mental inventory and stopping myself when I thought I should buy something. I have started orders online for clothes so many times in the past month that I just abandoned because I realized I didn’t need them. I still need to go through things and see what I have and what I can get rid of, but it’s a work in progress. And the cooking thing just didn’t happen. I think part of it was due to me allowing myself to be lazy, but I also had been dealing with health things that just stopped my motivation for cooking. A lot of times this past month I was just eating really basic and plain things that didn’t need much effort. But I am hoping the cooking thing will kick back in for me again soon.

When I was trying to think of my challenge for this month, I had a few things in mind. But it was something I bought online that ended up inspiring me. While I was nauseous I was trying to figure out anything that could help me. I ended up ordering a few things that people said had helped them in the past, and one of those things was an acupressure mat.

Several people suggested acupuncture to me, but I’m a little unsure about it. I don’t love needles (even though that is getting better) and it’s not covered by my insurance. It might be something I try eventually, but not right now. But when I was looking at acupuncture to help nausea I came across using an acupressure mat to help. This particular mat was about $20 on Amazon and has almost 8,000 pressure points between the mat and the pillow. I got it right after my nausea ended, but I decided to experiment with it this past week.

There are a few different guides online on how to use it and what you can do for different types of pain. The most basic one was laying on your back with the pillow under your neck for back pain and to help you relax. So I decided to try that first and I set the mat and pillow on my bed since there was more room on there and it would be easier to get up if I needed to.

A lot of people lay on these mats without clothing on, but most of the guides recommended easing into that. I wore a tank top so there was some exposed skin, but it was minimal. It took a few tries of laying down before I felt like it was the right position, but once I found the right spot I just spent time reading while laying on it. It was a bit pokey from time to time, but nothing unbearable or that painful.

I was on it for about 10 minutes before I felt like I needed to get up. I don’t love laying flat on my back, so that will take some getting used to as well. And after I got up I didn’t feel much at first. But within minutes my back was starting to feel really warm and it felt like the muscle tension and stress in my back was melting off of me. I wish I could describe the feeling better, but it was almost like there was something sliding off my back and it was taking the tension with it.

While I knew this was what the mat was supposed to do, I was still pretty surprised by how quickly it worked and how simple it was. I’ve only had the mat since the end of last week, but I’ve spent time on it every evening before going to bed. And that is my challenge for this month. I want to work on building up my tolerance with the mat when it comes to how long I can lay on it as well as working toward not needing a tank top when using it. I can already feel the benefits I’ve had in the few days I’ve used it, so I can’t wait to see how good I feel after a month.

I also want to work on experimenting with other positions. I have used the pillow on my feet (I was on my back on my couch with my feet on top of the pillow). That didn’t feel as amazing as my back did, but it still felt good. And there are positions to help leg pain, hip issues, and plenty of other things. I need to work on seeing what works for me because I have a feeling this mat will be something I use regularly to help my body feel better.

While this is a more objective challenge that will be easy to confirm whether or not I did it, it still feels a bit internal and reflective to me. This is about making my body feel better and that’s something that only I can tell. Maybe if my body is feeling better I will have more energy to put toward things I want. I’m just excited to see what happens and what other things I may discover about myself after doing this.

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