Not everyone has time for a formal sitting meditation practice. For some of us trying to fit practice into our lives can be a daunting process. What I often recommend to my students is to begin using daily activities as the object of our mindfulness. This is an easy way to build a mindfulness into our routine without it having to be a ’special’ activity.

I have previously mentioned mindful eating in my posts. Let’s face it we all have to eat! If we choose one meal a day to be our mindfulness practice we will make sure that we build a practice into our lives. For instructions on mindful eating see this post.

Other activities that are appropriate for mindfulness practice would be simple activities that don’t require alot of thought and are quite routine. Some ideas…

1) Opening/Closing Doors
2) Washing dishes
3) Sweeping
4) Brushing our teeth
5) Making the bed
6) Walking to the train/bus
7) Changing diapers
8. Nursing (a great way to be present and connect with your child)

I’m sure you can come up with many many more!

When we practice these activities we are 1) paying special attention to our physical body how it moves to perform the activity and how we feel as we are doing it. We are attending with gentle presence to our sensory experience. 2) if we find we have drifted off during the activity we have chosen we gently bring our selves back. 3) We come back over and over again as we find we are distracted.

If you commit to practicing with one of these activities every time it comes up you will soon have a regular mindfulness practice grounded in your life.

The same benefits come with any of these practices that come with a sitting mindfulness meditation practice. Relaxation, increased concentration, a sense of being more connected to our lives… In some ways these practices provide a perfect way of beginning to bring mindfulness off of the cushion and directly into our lives. Even if you have a committed sitting practices integrating one of these mindfulness practices can help you begin the transition to embracing all parts of your life with presence and mindfulness.

For those interested in the Religious and Philosophical context of Mindfulnesss Practice:

The origin of mindfulness is from Buddhist philosophy and practice. Right Mindfulness is the 7th aspect of the Noble Eightfold Path(this link also leads to a nice site on Buddhism in general.) This is the way to the end of suffering explicated by Siddhartha Gautama the historical Buddha. Right Mindfulness is considered an aspect of mental development. The other aspects are Ethical Development, and Development of Wisdom. These other steps on the Noble Eightfold Path can be developed separately, but can also grow out of a mindfulness practice.

Mindfulness practice is a wholly effective practice on its own, without the religious context of Buddhism, and is often taught as a non-sectarian practice in the West. If one wishes to go more deeply into the religious underpinnings, it may deepen your understanding, but it is not necessary. This practice may be done by anyone of any faith or religion; it is merely training the mind and is not signing up for any religious belief system. Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction is a good example of a system of mindfulness practice that is presented as a non-sectarian practice.

Note to therapists: When and if you introduce this practice to your clients be sure to emphasize that mindfulness as a practice is NOT a religion, or religious practice, and is not in conflict with one’s present belief system.

The Practice

Let’s look a bit at what the actual practice is. I’d like to share an experience I had just yesterday.

My partner and I visited one of our favorite Chinese restaurants here in Boulder. We ordered our food, my name was called out and I went up to the counter to get the food. Before I knew it I was guzzling down my food, no pause in between bites, not even tasting it. My thoughts raced through various topics ‘This rice is delicious…why can’t I make rice like this…Oh I need a rice cooker, like those nice one’s I saw the other day at the Asian market’, ‘I need to make more contact with Jodie, she still doesn’t trust me, and I need to find an appropriate referral for a med evaluation,’ ‘Need to finish that blog post…’ Then I woke up…

I stopped myself, took a few breaths, and began again. First looking at the dish. Sunset light filtered through the blinds on the restaurant windows reflecting off the vibrant rainbow of vegetables: red peppers, celery, zucchini; the brown rice cooked to perfection creating a contrast to the colorful vegetables. The light sauce flecked with hot pepper flakes covering over 5 jumbo shrimp.

I noticed my partner next to me eating…the feeling of relaxation and gratefulness I had for sitting and eating next to her. The sounds of children laughing and eating in the booth next to us, and their mother bargaining with them to eat so they can get dessert. The clanking of the dishes in the kitchen. The man dressed in white wheeling around a cart busing the tables with a pleasant smile on his face, broad nose, friendly twinkle in his eyes.

Bringing my attention back to the food I started in with chopsticks carefully picking up a pepper examining it, the rich color the bits of red pepper and sauce clinging to it, I placed it in my mouth. I tasted the freshness of it, slightly sweet and a slow warm burn spreading through my mouth. I chewed slowly savoring the taste, texture, and gratefulness with which my body accepted this food. Pausing after I swallowed, visualizing the farm where this had been grown, the hands of the person who harvested it, the many hands that touched it with care before it arrived at the restaurant. The smiling Chinese cooks who cut it into careful symmetrical pieces, stir fried the shrimp and vegetables to perfection in hammered steel woks.

If you haven’t used your awareness to deduce that I love food by now I will now admit it. I LOVE food! That is not the reason that I have shared this story, but if you haven’t yet noticed the only two examples I have given, so far, of mindfulness have to do with food experiences. I promise this will vary in future posts.

The example I gave above, and previously are a practice known as Mindful eating. We may know that we are eating in daily life, but are we really experiencing the food or are we reading the newspaper, thinking about our day, watching TV? These things are not wrong, however from a perspective of mindfulness we are not doing ourselves any favors.

The mantra of mindfulness: One thing at time.

Initially I was eating very unconsciously. Then I woke up and started fresh. As human beings we have this opportunity in every moment. We can choose to present, attentive, and concentrated on our direct experience of life. We can be waking up from moment to moment, and this waking up is one of the most important part’s of mindfulness. The more we practice the more we are able to pull ourselves out of trance-like unconsciousness and into a vibrant experience of life and what it means to be a human being engaging with the world around us. This is true even in the simplest acts like eating.

I would like to conclude this post with an Mindful Eating exercise that can be practiced during meal time.

1. Create an environment free of distractions, if possible. Turning off the television, the radio, and sitting down to your meal with intention of just eating.

2. Before you take your first bite, take a few breaths and reflect on the source of your food. The earth where it was grown, or upon which it was raised, the various people who worked to produce the food, the steps it went through to be produced and the people who facilitated and labored in each step (Farmer’s, supermarket employees, etc.)

3. Look at your food appreciate the aesthetic beauty of it.

4. Take one bite at a time, pausing to taste the food, chewing slowly.

5. After each bite pause. Take a breath or two.

6. If you find that your attention and concentration wander to your thoughts or some other subject than your meal, gently allow your awarness to come back to the act of eating.

7. Eat until you are satisfied, noticing and listening to your body as you eat, don’t just finish your meal because it is there.

8. Be curious and present with the meal, and most of all allow yourself this time enjoy the food that sustains your life.

Helpful Hints:

• If you eat regularly with others ask them to engage in the practice as well.

• Designate an amount of time you will be silent for, 45 minutes, 1 hour, etc. My partner and I agree ahead of time when doing this practice so we don’t need to discuss this practice as we are sitting down to eat.

• Eat with chopsticks. This will almost always slow down the eating process…unless you have developed a proficiency with them already.

Upcoming Post: (What is Mindfulness? Part III – Clarity and Equanimity)