A Practice to Remain Present
Can you stay mindful and peaceful when your thoughts and life get bumpy?
A Simple Practice
For a few breaths or longer, try the simple practice below. It will help you open to your experience, let it flow, and accept a changing world. You can do this as part of a meditation or in everyday life while you’re in a meeting, stuck in traffic, or watching the news.
- Focus on the sensations of one or more breaths from beginning to end. Sensations around your nose or mouth, in your diaphragm, and in the rising and falling of the rib cage.
- Stay aware of the feeling of breathing as other sensations move through awareness, staying aware of breathing as sounds change around you and as thoughts and feelings come and go.
- Stay in touch with the sensations of breathing while letting all experiences flow through awareness.
- Get a sense of your body as a whole as you breathe. If your attention focuses on just one part of it, keep widening your awareness to include the whole body. Relax and abide as a whole body breathing. Thoughts and feelings pass through awareness without pushing them away or following them as you rest in the sense of your whole body.
- If you like, open to any nagging concerns or pushed away emotions in the back of your mind and let them come forward, letting them flow as they will through awareness, accepting them with compassion for yourself. Let tension flow out of your body, letting thoughts and feelings come and go in the open space of awareness—perhaps uncovering more sensitive or younger material such as hurt beneath the anger, and letting this flow as well.
- When you want, return to a simple sense of being present as a body breathing, at ease.
