Mindfulness Practices for Relaxation & Connection

During the five years I spent living monastically at the Zen monastery, I studied and trained in numerous practices. Over the years, I’ve found that I come back to the same root practices day after day, moment after moment.

The core principles of interconnectedness and impermanence are woven throughout the fabric of Buddhist teachings. These realities are now coming to the foreground for many during the covid pandemic. Cultivating a mindfulness practice can be supportive in navigating these challenging circumstances.

I would like to share a post with some of the simple (yet difficult to master!) mindfulness practices that serve as the foundation for living a more connected and nourishing life.

Here I will introduce mindfulness in an accessible way, offering practices that can be done in everyday life. These practices can be done at home, on a break at work, or while you’re out for a walk. They are written for both beginners and those with an established practice. Some of the mindfulness topics explored include:

• Practicing dropping into your body and releasing your thinking
• How to start a Meditation Practice
• How to stay relaxed and feel more connected to your environment
• How to incorporate mindfulness into everyday activities like sitting, walking, and drinking tea

How to Drop into Your Body & Release Your Thinking Mind

Mindfulness simply means to be aware of what is happening moment to moment.

Due to the constant bombardment with information that we face day to day, many of us struggle with over-thinking, over-analyzing, over-researching which can translate to added anxiety, stress, and depression. I’ve heard many people say, “I can’t turn off my brain.”

Well you’ll be happy to know – it’s possible to not think! You can just be. Just be an alive, breathing, human without thinking. It takes a strong commitment to training the mind!

A good starting place is to learn how to drop into your body. Why? The body is always located in immediacy. Our minds can easily drift into thinking about the past or future, often without being consciously aware of it.

Dropping into the body means to notice your experience through your 5 senses. We will dive more deeply into how to cultivate a sense practice later on. Simply put, bring your attention to what you currently see, smell, taste, touch, or hear.

When you notice a thought arise, let it go and bring your attention back to your senses. This is what it means to drop into the body.

While you are beginning to cultivate your attention and this practice, it can be helpful to still the body and sit in meditation or quietly on the couch. Then you can begin to try experimenting with this while going for a walk by yourself. What do you notice about how you feel before and after? Do you engage with the world differently?

How to Start a Meditation Practice

When you still the body through sitting meditation, the mind begins to still. This makes the practice of dropping into and staying located in the 5 senses a bit easier. If you have not meditated before, no problem! Check out this post about how to start a meditation practice.

Following Your Breath

Following your breath is one of the most basic techniques taught in meditation. The practice is simple but not easy!

Stilling the body through either sitting quietly or in meditation will help you develop the ability to stay with your breath.

Don’t get discouraged! It takes years of daily practice to cultivate a deep attention to simply stay with your breath and not think. In Zen monasteries, they say, “give it 10 years.” There may be truth in that, but noticing the fruits of this practice comes much sooner. The fruits are individual, and are not to be compared with another person. Only you can have your experience.

If you’re new to meditation, simply make a commitment to sitting for 10 minutes each day for 30 days and notice what happens. How do you feel before and after meditation? How do your relationships shift? …..

A simple practice for following your breath:

• Count to 10 – an inhalation and exhalation is one count
• If you notice a thought arise, let it go, and start again at 1
• When and if you get to 10, start again at 1 – repeat
• For example – if you count to 2 and then you have a thought about being hungry or what you will do after, let the thought go and start again at 1.

This will teach you A LOT about your own mind. Which is helpful to notice AFTER meditation.

Remember: you’re releasing thinking in meditation! Do you have to start over again after 2 breaths? Do you accidentally count way past 10 and notice at breath 37? Are the thoughts you are having about the past and future.

The practice is simply to notice, bring your attention back to your breath. Be kind and patient with yourself.

The 5 Sense Practice

While our mind’s are often drifting into thinking about the past or the future, our bodies are always located in immediacy. This is an important realization.

When we come back to our bodies by engaging the five senses, we are locating ourselves in the present moment.

Our minds can often not be trusted, particularly while we are still training them to stay located in our five senses. This is why the practice of dropping into the body is supportive. When you notice a thought, come back to the body. What do you smell? See? Taste? Feel? Hear? Fully engage your senses. How is the light changing in the leaves of the trees? Notice the sounds your fingers make while typing on the computer and the silence in between key strokes. This is what it means to drop into the body.

It can be helpful to isolate the senses while you practice this. Take a few minutes and stay with what you hear. Then switch to what you smell, and work your way through the senses.

The visual sense is dominating for most of us. So it’s okay to close your eyes while you learn how to bring and hold your attention on the complexities of what the senses are taking in each moment.

Don’t get discouraged if you notice many thoughts arising as you practice. This takes A LOT of repetition. It’s retraining the mind to not be lost in discursive thinking, but rather to stay located in immediacy. When you notice yourself thinking about the past or future, notice the thought, let it go, and come back to the body. Now repeat this a hundred of times each day. 🙂 It will teach you a lot about your own mind.

Practice Mindfully Drinking Tea or Stretching

Mindfulness does not only need to be practiced while sitting quietly or in meditation. Although this is a helpful way to begin to cultivate your attention.

Once you have a feeling for these practices and they become embodied, you can bring them into your daily activities. Starting with already slow and gentle activities supports the body and mind to be able to stay with the mindfulness practice. Two of my favorite ways are to practice mindfully drinking tea or stretching and staying with the breath.

Create a supportive environment – light a candle, turn on a salt lamp, keep the room silent or listen to some soft music and simply notice what is going on in your body. Drop into your 5 senses.

For stretching – Do you notice pain or tightness anywhere? Be specific. Possibly fluidity in your neck? Tightness in your shoulders? Relaxation when you stretch your feet? This is your time to connect with yourself and it can feel so so good after a long day.

For drinking tea – Dropping into your senses – notice the steam with your eyes coming off the cup, the warmth of the cup in your hands, the feeling of the liquid going down your throat, the smell of the herbs, the taste of the tea leaves, the sounds of the kettle boiling. Try and take at least 10 minutes to just mindfully enjoy a cup of slow tea.

If these practices don’t resonate with you – think of a relaxing or calming activity that you enjoy and mindfully bring your attention to it by dropping into your 5 senses. What do you notice?