That twilight moment - tap into it

That precious moment when we first wake up and before our day really starts with emails, TV, children, phone calls. That precious moment when our mind has not yet been kickstarted with stimuli. I call it twilight time.

Julia Cameron, in her book The Artist's way, teaches us a technique to tap into our creative spirit at that time. I won't do the technique justice, (Read the book, it is amazing) but the essence is that during that twilight time, that we write, in longhand 4 pages of whatever comes up in our mind. Almost stream of consciousness.

People who meditate often enjoy meditation in that twilight time.

It is the time of day when our mind allows us to be more OK with thoughts, without the usual boundaries and fences of resistance and defensiveness. That inner voice isn't quite as awake yet!

Use that time to start the day with reflection, to tap into the creative part of you that exists and thrives with less structure. rules and boundaries.

I was introduced to this poem by Steven Barza by my new Yoga instructor , Molly Birkholm (Molly runs Healing River Yoga in South Florida and does amazing work with veterans and using Yoga to help with PTSD):

When we awaken there is a moment
before we remember
the burdens we bear,
that yesterday we lost or won
a fortune or a battle or a love
or that today we must go
to work or to court or to hospital
or we have nowhere to go,
before we start piecing together
who we have been or who we will be,
and in that moment we are simply
consciousness, sensation,
appetite not yet linked to memory or
will.
I like the way we are
in that naked moment
before we are defined,
in that briefest moment
before we don ourselves
~Steven Barza