When anyone sits down to their daily practice, they’re not practicing meditation.
Ok, they are. Sort of.
But – the end game, as someone wise once said – isn’t to get better at meditation, it’s to get better at life… So when we sit, we’re practicing life, or if you like meditation in life, not meditation for the sake of meditation.
It’s sometimes hard to compute how this formal practice – the bit we do on the mat or chair or floor in our “neatly carved out” bit of the day we’ve set aside for meditation – has anything to do with the rest of our lives. It seems so dissonant, somehow. Normal life = noise, dashing, planning, remembering, doing. Formal meditation = quiet, sitting, focusing, forgetting, being.
What happens though, over time – and as you become used to this habit of sitting you’re developing – is that you’ll become more attuned to noticing, to attention. You’ll start to see the detail around the edges, stop yourself halfway through a meeting or a mundane task and take a breath and feel how it comes in and goes out. When you work with us, for instance on our MBSR course, you’ll find that we’ll sometimes look really closely at stress and will be gathering some tools – all based around mindfulness practice – to help us notice that coming, too.
We’re slowly building our attention muscle and as we do, the formal practice begins to spread itself slowly but surely into your daily life.
We can help this happen along the way with some subtle prompts.
Firstly, and most importantly, just keep on practicing, every day.
Secondly, try some cues:
- Pick a thing you do regularly and really focus on it. I have a “morning coffee routine” with my coffee machine – this has always been a good nudge to be more aware in that moment. I watch the steam rising from the cup, smell the beans and imagine where they have come from, look at the reflected ring of my milk jug on the side of the kitchen and so on…
- Focus on nature. Next time you are out and about, just notice what it is like to be where you are. Put down your phone, and be in the present moment.
- Set a watch alarm or your phone to go off hourly and use this cue to nudge you into awareness.
- Pick a thing you don’t really enjoy but have to do – emptying the rubbish, feeding the dog, washing the dishes – and really focus on it. What don’t you like about this activity? Why is there a dislike, and what does this dislike really feel like?
- Showering: be really in the shower. Try not to think about the day you have coming up, but instead focus on the feelings of the water on you, the heat, the steam, getting clean.
The other thing you can do is to take the raisin practice as an idea and take part in some mindful eating this week. How? Same as you may have done with the raisin practice – slow down and notice. What have you cooked? What does it look like? How does the light reflect off it? What does it sound like? (maybe be a bit careful listening to your food, especially if it’s hot or your family is looking at you in a strange way…) – What does it really taste like? What, in fact, is taste?? How does it feel when you’ve finished? And so on….
Don’t forget to have fun with it, too. This can become over-serious and heavy – just be light, and gentle with yourself, always.
“It’s a little like that Persian story where Nasruddin is looking for his house key under the streetlamp and others come to help him and finally they ask him “Where did you lose it?” and he answers, “in my house, but it’s dark in there and since it’s light out here this is the best place to look.”
(from “Be Here Now (Enhanced Edition)” by Ram Dass)
Happy noticing.
