Just as a snake sheds its skin, we must shed our past over and over again.

Jack Kornfield

Cows chew their cud as part of their unique digestive process. They regurgitate semi-digested food from the first stomach chamber, re-chew and re-swallow it for further digestion. This process is crucial for extracting nutrients.

We humans, on the other hand, derive no nutrient or value whatsoever from ruminating, obsessing, or looping about a grievance, regret, or unexpressed need. Unlike a cow’s productive cud-chewing, our mental rumination is nutritionally bankrupt—a broken record that plays the same painful song without resolution.

If you find yourself having revenge fantasies about someone while trying to sleep, replaying that awkward conversation from three years ago, or endlessly analyzing what went wrong in a relationship, you’re stuck in the human equivalent of chewing mental cud. The difference? We can absolutely stop ruminating.

As far as we know, we are the only species that can train our brains to think differently. We possess the remarkable ability to recognize these thought patterns, interrupt and redirect them. We can choose to step off the hamster wheel of repetitive thinking.

The biggest downside to ruminating? It blocks or numbs us from feeling the real feelings we want to avoid. While we’re busy mentally chewing,  we’re not processing the actual emotions underneath—the hurt, fear, sadness, or disappointment that need our attention to heal and move forward.

If you are interested in a 30-day free meditation course by neuroscientist Sam Harris, please email me with the subject line “meditation course” and I will  send it to you.

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Wellbeing Ideas

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How to turn off unwanted thoughts with Guy Winch

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Consider a Jouska (pronounced zoos-ka) n.

a hypothetical conversation that you compulsively play out in your head—a crisp analysis, a devastating comeback, a cathartic heart-to-heart.  The key?  Once you do a jouska, LET.IT.GO.

From the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

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Happy Cows

Keeping with the cow and wellness theme, it never  gets old- when the cows get to leave the barn after  being inside all winter

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For Uncertain Days

To be liberated, dive toward doubt with great eagerness. Given to being surprised or remain ossified a safe distance from alive.

 The Almanac of Birds

 Check out my  curated list of podcasts and documentaries HERE   Let us know of others you like that are not  listed HERE

STAY WELL,  Eileen