Monday mornings are infamous in a culture conditioned to have fun on weekends and go back to the ‘grind’ of work/school/paying bills/paying dues. Off we trudge, lunch bags in hand, grieving the past days of sunshine and steeling ourselves for the days ahead, just like our ancestors did. No wonder I woke up feeling achy and sore like an aged labourer. I was repeating a pattern set long before I was born. However, I have something my ancestors did not: knowledge of myself as Signal in a body for the human experience, offering a new way to move through the world, and ownership of my choice to do it or not.

Sounds easy, yes? Know different, choose different. Part of the knowing different is listening to body cues – pressure, pain, or stiffness, for example – then breathing and relaxing into those sensations, inviting energy to move and information to present itself. Often this looks like prolonged periods of mindful breathing, relaxation, and quiet as the brain calms to let the body do its thing. However, silence is uncomfortable for most of us, particularly those of us with Signals pushing to be heard through the droning demands of the outside world. Writers are especially adept at filling the inner void with constant chatter of stories, often developing elaborate explanations for why this hurts or that annoys or this other thing just isn’t working.

So this particular Monday I awoke to a rainy day with head swimming, lower back aching, and the desire to do little except burrow under my quilt and wish the world away. My choices were many. I could claim that I had a virus, pop some Tylenol, go back to bed and wish for Tuesday to come as soon as possible. I could yawn and stretch and make breakfast, because of course everything can be fixed with a good meal. I could suck it up and push through, go to my desk and plunge into my do-list.

Instead, I chose ME. I did go back to bed but mindfully, stretched under the covers and breathed. I breathed into my lower back and relaxed. Breath gentle and steady, owning the wisdom of what my body was locking down and inviting it to move. And there it came, a memory in my awareness of frustration with another’s choice and actions spun into a story that kept a ball of righteous rage spinning deep in my lower back: fire energy that I could choose to use for creation, instead choosing to lock it away, keeping me achy and in place rather than energized and in flow.  So easy to stay stuck in the feeling, to keep the frustration going when it is about another person. Why don’t they know better? Why do they keep doing that to themselves?  Meanwhile, my energy stays diverted and my intellect insists I push on and not let it bother me. Sheer genius.

Genius that no longer serves if I choose to evolve and live fully in the life I am creating, moment by moment.

The thing is, once one story emerges, others will follow. More ownership of creation required … in this case my knowledge that I had started my Monday morning lockdown on Sunday, binge-watching Succession past when my body wanted to go to bed. A two-pronged genius approach here. Lack of sleep guaranteed I would wake up feeling like I was hit by a train. And hours immersed in a streaming service meant I was not present to my internal stream of consciousness, the flow of energy into words into my expressions to the world. Stay silent, stay safe. That may be true in some circumstances, for some people. It is not true for me. How to alert me to my misguided choices? The body never lies.

After I owned my binge-watching hangover as part of this intelligent yet misguided creation to keep my fire energy locked down, I could touch yet another story churning beneath. Write a blog today? No, don’t have time.

Hmmmm. I have an entire day spread ahead of me. As a contract worker I have more control than most over my external demands of time. No room to write my own blog? Of course I have room. Space is infinite.

And here I am. Back pain is gone. Head is still a little swimmy, but I’m only one coffee in. Body is relaxed as words flow, not squeezed under external pressure, invited to flow from within.

How many Monday morning agonies are tied to the stories found in workplaces and schedules, the lack of room for change or adaptation, the ‘we’ve always done it this way‘, or ‘too late or too old to change now‘ or the myriad of other ways we as humans convince ourselves that change is scary, habit is productive, routine is the grease to the human wheel of survival.  Well, habits can be reframed and reformed and patterns can be interrupted, and if we as a world want things to be different, we as individuals need to be honest with ourselves about where we choose habits and patterns of others, take ownership of all we create and choose mindfully for ourselves.

This blog is proof of what happens with ownership, choice and mindful breath. For you it might look like something else … a chapter outline, a pitch to a publisher, cleaning out the closet, whatever you hold as something you want to do yet to this point have avoided doing it. There is a reason why you haven’t done it. Honour that in the moment, and open to learn from it. Then the stigma of Monday morning may fade into the infinity that is a quantum existence, where, as the beloved Lady Violet from Downton Abbey, we ask, puzzled, “What is a weekend?”