Quality over Quantity

I hope you are all doing well this Monday morning. I recently started working with a new coaching client. One of the first things I often do with new clients is to help them develop an analysis of their thoughts. The first step is noticing the QUANTITY; we actually have about 60,000 thoughts a day. The next step is to explore the QUALITY of those thoughts.

Our thoughts become stories woven together and repeated over and over again to create the fabric of our minds. Once there is an understanding of the quality of those stories we can determine with a little more perspective both what is true and what serves us. With the perspective of the work we can lessen the quantity of our thoughts (especially the unhelpful ones) and improve the quality.

We worked with this idea on the mat as well by focusing on the quality of our movements, our breath and the thoughts that came with them. This took priority over the quantity of movements. Faster and more is often not better. Instead slowing down and being intentional, both in movements and thoughts, brings us closer to weaving supportive and true stories in our minds. And just like when we slow down and hold poses in our bodies, the physical practice becomes even more challenging, the same is also true in the mind. It takes understanding and practice but it is worth it.