make a medicine song playlist

here is a good thing to have in your emotional medicinal closet — a personalized playlist of medicine songs. by that i mean: a short curation of songs to listen to when you're feeling especially terrible, and need to self-soothe, ground, or remind yourself that the apocalyptic world in your head — is not the end-all-be-all version of reality. sound — and music — is so healing, and requires no effort to absorb. you just press play.

take a bath

when i don't know what to do or how to deal with life — sometimes i drop everything and take a bath. taking a bath is like the opposite of taking a walk — a walk means movement, air, earth, sun, light. a bath means stillness, settling, soaking and sinking in oneself — a retreat into physical or metaphorical darkness; the 360 degree embrace of water.

wellbeingKening ZhuJune 16, 2021wellbeing tools, soothing room, the body, loving yourself

do simple things everyday

i've returned from two months of sleeping on friends' couches in new york city back to berlin — to an unrecognizably beautiful, green summer, and it feels like becoming a newborn again — like opening my eyes at each new day, and asking myself: what do I want to do with myself? how do I wish to be?

wellbeingKening ZhuJune 9, 2021centering rituals, wellbeing tools, process, rituals

hello darkness, my old friend

I turn thirty this year. looking back at the last ten years, I can see clearly how the process of growing up, growing older, growing wiser, growing deeper into myself and into my own skin — can be distilled down to the practice of embracing my own extremities of darkness. of welcoming it as a friend, rather than trying to push it away as an enemy. because the more you build fortresses against yourself, the greater and more insidious the enemy becomes — it finds cracks and holes to seep through while you sleep. I could never compartmentalize myself or my anxieties the way I wanted to. I could never control it, I could never contain the chaos, never silence my needs, nor suppress my obsessions. instead, my life has always existed between storms, and through storms. and it's taken me a long time, but finally I'm at a place of gradual acceptance, and surrender. now, when the darkness descends upon my mind like a choking fog, I only need to small-smile at myself, and say, ah, yes. hello darkness, my old friend. I wonder how long you'll visit me this time.

notes on the journey, wellbeingKening ZhuMay 25, 2021dark places, wellbeing tools, philosophies

write yourself love letters

part of the personal journey of becoming my wise woman self is knowing when — and how — to write to myself. how to write deliberately and passionately for an audience of one.

wellbeingKening ZhuMay 7, 2021wellbeing tools, loving yourself

the journey of life in a diagram

lately, observing my own stormy weather, i realized that life is just this cycle — the above diagram — repeated over and over again. sometimes in the timescale of a day. sometimes over a month, year, or decades. and as long as we don't get stuck, we will grow and evolve in circles. until we die. (and even death is just a journey into a new place, no?)

if the only constant in life is change, chaos, and unpredictability — then the effort of trying to resist is what causes the most suffering. paralysis is the worst. getting stuck causes suffering — whereas movement through each part of the journey is what allows us to evolve, shed layers, grow.

notes on the journey, wellbeingKening ZhuMay 6, 2021wellbeing tools, life journeys

swallow the bitterness savor the sweet

some minimalist instructions for life — for my past and future self to remember and recite back to me, when I need it most. it could also be: swallow the sweetness, savor the bitter. because bitterness, too, can be truly appreciated as a portal for wounds and its transformation. what is light without dark? nothing. and that, for me, is the whole point of making art — to be still and present with yourself enough to feel the feelings, no matter how overwhelming they are, and to witness them, and yourself — as you are. in making art, we move emotions and experiences through us — and into its own form, into something that can be held, released, shared.

wellbeingKening ZhuMarch 31, 2021dark places, philosophies