This
blog is rated PG-13 due to mild cartoon violence.
Today I
want to talk to you about stress relief.
We’ve all had those days, weeks, or months where no matter what we do,
nothing seems to go right… Maybe it’s because of work, maybe you’re in the middle
of a move, perhaps money is tight, you’ve got family problems, or you’re
planning a wedding. For my part, I’ve
had a stressful couple of months. A new
job, a move that ended up being more difficult than I expected, and in the last
couple of weeks, a tendency to put my foot in my mouth so often I’ve started to
see Nike swooshes on everything I eat.
Whatever
the case, sometimes you need to just take the edge off…
Now, since the stress has set in,
I’ve tried all kinds of different methods of stress relief… I’ve drank far too
much, I’ve begun exercising again (I walked at least 5 miles every day last
week). I’ve been re-reading one of my
favorite books, and you may have noticed that I’ve been writing more, a lot
more. However, through all of that, I
hadn’t partaken in the greatest stress relief method of all time, not yet, not
until just the other day…
I introduce you to!.... Mallowing!!
The name derives from a cat that
was at the SPCA for quite a while when I worked there. His name was Marshmallow and he was
awesome. Why we named it after him? Who knows?
Let me give you a little tutorial,
with pictures!
Ingredients:
A table or some other sort of
stand, in a wide open space.
Plenty of water bottles, filled as
full as you can possibly get them, so there is no air in them (or at least only
a tiny amount).
A Sharpie.
A baseball bat, or something
similar (the fabled Mallower itself is the haft of an old pickaxe, without the
head).
Step one:
Use the Sharpie to draw little
angry or sad faces on the lids of the bottles.
This is done so that you can focus
on that little bit of unhappiness.
Step two:
Pick one bottle at a time, set it
up, away from the others, in prime hitting real-estate.
Step three:
Wind up… I don’t necessarily mean
just winding up physically, though that’s somewhat important too. What I mean is to wind up mentally and
emotionally.
Whatever it is that is bothering
you, eating away at you, depressing you, or stressing you out; focus all of
that negative energy on that little unhappy face. Take all of the things weighing on your mind
and picture yourself pouring them in to that little, unhappy bottle. All of your fear, your anger, your shame, it
IS the water in that bottle, and if you don’t get rid of it, it’ll just find its
way back into your mind.
Step 4:
Swing baby swing! Keep your eye on the bottle, so you don’t
miss. But swing with all of your emotion
behind it. Hit that bottle as hard as
you can and send it flying!
Since you filled it up so full,
there is very little room (air) for the water to expand into. Therefore, the bottle has a tendency to break…
but that’s putting it mildly. If you’re
really putting all of your emotion into that swing, then that bottle will
explode. Case in point…
(Those two pictures were of the same bottle)
Sometimes the bottle will break
open, and other times that little unhappy face will break in two…
Step 5:
Repeat until you either feel
better, or you have run out of bottles.
Some of you may have already
realized that this is a beginner’s course.
Mallowing lends itself to all kinds of possibilities! Have a melon that is just going to waste in
the fridge? Want to see what happens
when you shake up a Red Bull and hit it real hard? Or a Coke with Mentos in it? Feel free to experiment…
That being said, if you want some
more assistance in simply picturing all of your negative energy in the bottle,
try adding a drop or two of food coloring, or writing a phrase that has been particularly
irksome to you on the bottle.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is
the world of Mallowing. Enjoy!
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