Meet Ganesh. My buddie that I’ve had for many years. I bought him for my birthday during my beginning years of yoga teacher training. It was a big turning point in my soul healing. Ganesh, for those that know yoga, means remover of obstacles. 🙂 I got a lot of them so I thought at the time that I could use all the help that I could find. Plus the blue eyes I fell in love with. And his soft looking face.
He’s gone with m to all trips, races and what not. Been with me through a ton of good things and ugly things. I’ve almost melted down when I’ve realized I’ve left him somewhere. I’ve done a lot of extra driving to make sure he is by my side.
Why … because he is an anchor for some qualities in life that I am working to cultivate. To have stronger in my life. And I believe in magic, miracles and pixie dust. Ganesh holds that idea for me when life gets tough.
Binkie. Security blanket. Totem. Prayer beads. Pet rock.
Overeating, sexting, drinking, mind numbing amounts of netflix.
Over exercising. Working too much. Yelling and blowing up.
It’s totally ok for babies and young people to have stuff animals, security blankets and the like. As adults/parents we know that one things the little people need to learn is how to soothe themselves, deal with emotions and learn how to be ok. Even when life is more fun.
We give the new babies a binkie. Some of us are partly given them binkies as a replacement for nurturing and being a parent. Tho a baby using a binkie to learn to self sooth is ok. When done mindfully. It’s a good point to drive home that it’s not unfrequent for parents to substitute parenting and nurturing for binkies, bouncing chairs and what not.
Our habit of inappropriately dealing with life starts very early.
We then give our children all these kinds of toys. Stuff animals and what not to … help them. Let’s just say that parent x is doing everything just fine and the special stuff animal that they purchase for their kid is just a lovely add to their life. It’s ok and needed for the child to bond with this stuff animal. To them it. Take care of it and what not. There are many life lessons that are learned, practiced. And it’ socially acceptable.
At what age does it become unacceptable to not have binkies and security blankets.
We give up the magic of stuff animals for tough love, logic and “growing up”. We learn to be more hard and shut off, then remain soft and talk to stuff animals that aren’t actually alive.
They are now selling weighted blankets.
Perhaps we are doing ourselves wrong with expecting to be able to deal with life without providing ourselves “comfort”. I mean, we do provide ourselves with “comfort” but it’s usually in the form of the lists above. Things that aren’t inline with super healthy.
Perhaps we need to get back to soothing ourselves in a soft way. Don’t be worried about what other people think. Have stuffed animals that we take everywhere with us. Stuffed animals that we keep in our meditation spaces or our quiet and private areas.
