I was gifted a stay in a local luxury hotel for my 50th birthday (in the middle of 1st lockdown) by my very dear friends in Bangkok.
As you know I am a huge advocate of self-care & me-time so I saw this as a beautiful opportunity to practice what I preach when I’m not at home.
It’s also the first time I’ve been out out in over a year.
Part of nurturing myself is enjoying a fab meal. I wanted to go to a great sushi restaurant in town so I’d booked at table. Except they get booked up months in advance so my dinner reservation was for 5.15pm!
Since I couldn’t check in until 4pm I had arrived at the hotel in my new very red red going out out dress. I literally checked in & headed straight out for dinner. I felt quite conspicuous & very slightly uncomfortable being a lady in red at such an early hour!
I realized when I arrived at the hotel that even though I wasn’t going to treat myself to a spa treatment I could use the spa facilities… except I had forgotten my swimsuit!
I couldn’t help but acknowledge that I hadn’t really planned this very well!
Dinner was lovely, the restaurant as good as I remembered. But there was something about the vibe I couldn’t put my finger on. So I reflected, as I enjoyed my soft shell crab sushi, that I was actually really glad to be heading back early. Things were turning out just as they were meant to be after all.
I had planned on enjoying a glass of wine in the hotel bar on my return but I swapped this for some solitude & Netflix-ing…sometimes self-care for me is just doing nothing! No spiritual quest. No nothing, just being. And maybe a Lindor or 2?!
Being a posh hotel, the TV in the room was hooked up with Chromecast, just turn on your device & it will connect were the instructions. This is my idea of technology heaven! Turn it on & just like magic it works.
Except of course technology isn’t quite that magical. You obviously have to pair the devices. I tried but nothing seemed to be happening. I’d given up & was watching Peaky Blinders on the iPad when the TV screen flickered & did some thing. Voila! Except in my shock I’d turned the TV off. Sigh.
I decided I was already committed, I needed to have a mini technology win. And besides I could watch Tommy on a big screen & who doesn’t want to do that?
So I set it all off again & 10 minutes later I was good to go. Except it restarted the episode. Ah who cares? Then I got distracted with messages from the kids & decided to rewind what I’d missed. Except it went straight back to the beginning again. Arghhh.
I became aware of feeling a little frustrated. Then I thought why wasn’t I just self-caring with a meditation in the gloriously large bath? Why was I wasting this opportunity with all this nonsense?
Well I reasoned, everything happens for a reason. Anyway I could have a bath in the morning.
Except I woke up too late & decided on breakfast over the bath!
I took a nice walk around the grounds which were stunning after breakfast & rather wished I had had time to explore the evening before.
Over brunch later that afternoon (is it brunch when it’s closer to afternoon tea?) which had to be ordered via an app instead of with a waiter I reflected in rather a bemused fashion at why suddenly life was so heavily dependent on technology & a little more complicated because it is.
By the time I got home on Saturday afternoon I was feeling really energetically drained & not very well. I felt like I had ‘wasted’ this beautiful opportunity & a little guilty for doing so especially since I was so grateful for the really generous gift.
But I really believe everything happens for a reason, the universe gives us what we need & no more than we can cope with.
So I knew there was a reason the trip had left me feeling energetically drained & rather emotional. I took the dog for a long walk along the river as I knew I needed that alone time in nature to process the past 24 hours.
I have an open root chakra (which I discovered when I explored my human design) & this leaves me susceptible to absorbing other people’s energy. I realized I had been picking up on the energy that was all around me…all the people in the restaurant & at the hotel. Not just this but the energy pervading the planet at the moment which is palpably resonating at a low vibrational frequency of fear & doubt.
That’s why I was feeling so physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually drained. I had absorbed all of this low vibrational energy.
I knew what I needed to do when I got home: to meditate in the bath. And I knew that it was the energy chamber meditation I needed to do to balance all this energy.
Whilst I was meditating I had a very visual & visceral experience. This doesn’t happen every time & I was really grateful for this magical experience.
I also realized I was weighed down by all the dense & heavy energy of duality I had absorbed whilst I was out. And what I needed to shift. So I chose to let it go, release it, grateful for the insight & the lesson.
I knew exactly why everything had panned out just as it should: so I could encounter that very real experience of the impact of duality on my energetic field.
I couldn’t help but wonder if some of this is to do with the paradigm shift as we start to understand & appreciate the importance of energy in all that we are & all that we do.
But I also think the menopause has played a role too.
During the menopause my highly sensitive tendencies have definitely been exaggerated (& these were definitely being triggered to some degree this weekend too).
But I also chose to become way more consciously aware to help me navigate the menopause.
Together this has helped me to become way more consciously aware of the energetic impact of what I am doing or exposed to & do the relevant self-care to balance this.
This conscious awareness helps me to be more aware of what I’m thinking & why, so I don’t get tripped up by my own thoughts & structured, limited way if thinking. This awareness helps me to flip these thought patterns.
It enables me to be more consciously aware of what’s going on all around so that I can do whatever I need to do to balance that instead of powering through oblivious & then getting floored.
It has even helped with the brain fog because I am more consciously engaged so I’m less forgetful. I remember where I put things or what I have agreed to, I have better structures in place to support me so I don’t forget so much.
So ironically, a night away of self-care, that wasn’t quite as self-care-y as I hoped turned into a really subtle but insightful little journey of a more spiritual, energetic & emotional…which is exactly what it was meant to be.
And so I am massively grateful to my amazing Bkk-buddies for a wonderful night of decadence which morphed into beautiful little spiritual, emotional & energetic quest. Thank you.