What day is it? asked Pooh
It's today, squeaked Piglet.
My favorite day, said Pooh.
( The Tao of Pooh, Benjamin Hoff, 1982 )
I discovered this book a little over two years ago, when I was trying my best to get out of my depression by focusing on other ways of looking at life. Diving into Taoism and reading the Tao Te Ching, led to me discovering the sweet little book The Tao of Pooh. Not only was it an easy and fun read, it also brought back memories to my youth, where Winnie the Pooh was one of the fictional characters that I grew up with. Now I think of it, it was probably one of my mom's favorites and that makes the memories even stronger.
Just after getting out of bed this morning, I decided to meditate. I turned on my phone ( that I keep on airplane mode and outside my bedroom from an hour or so before bed until at least an hour after waking up ) and opened the 'Calm' App. This is my favorite paid for app. It's not cheap, but I find it well worth the money.
I decided to keep the airplane mode on my phone on - not wanting to be distracted or disturbed by incoming notifications - and started looking for offline meditations.
My eye fell on the 'Winnie the Pooh Series', consisting of 5 episodes connected to 5 different characters in the Winnie the Pooh universe. Each one of these characters is connected to a certain theme. Pooh stands for Wu Wei, the art of allowing,Piglet for Worry, Tigger for Authenticity, Eeyore for Pessimism and Rabbit for Busyness.
I was reminded of the lovely little book that this meditation series is based on, The Tao of Pooh. I actually wrote a blog post on this over two years ago.
Found it! It was written on the 9th of November 2017, when I was trying to get out of my depression by focusing on Taoism, among other things. Apparently I called that post 'Unfinished Stories', something that has been somewhat of a red thread throughout my creative career ( both in filmmaking and writing ) and apparently a normal characteristic for Vata type people ( as I recently learned from Ayurveda ). The full post can be read here but feel free to skip it: @vincentnijman/unfinished-stories
Reading back, I feel like I was a different person back then and it's true, we're constantly changing and I'm in a different place entirely ( both literally and figuratively ) and I'm happy about that.
To get back to Pooh, his character is based on an important theme in Taoism, namely Wu Wei. This can be described as the art of allowing / non-resistance or the more modern phrase: Go(ing) with the flow.
Let's be honest, this is still very difficult for most of us. We try to control everything and that is exactly what differentiates us from nature.
Try to be a little more like Pooh, a little more like water or the rocks in the river. They just are. Stop judging. Stop trying to be different. Stop resisting. You are you. Perfect, just the way you are. Stop trying to control everything and to row upstream. Just make the best of whatever happens and go with the flow. All is well.
Have an awesome day and if you haven't already, you might want to look up 'The Tao of Pooh' and give it a read.
Perhaps you even want to give the 'Calm' app a try. Back in the days, I tried the latter for a week. I then forgot to cancel the trial and ended up paying enough money to make me feel like actually using it for a year. I found it so valuable, that I paid for another yearlong membership. Since then, I used it over 500 times for short meditations and other relaxing practices. Not too bad.
The photo above this post was taken by me, in Monte Frio, Portugal