Portals to Mindfulness
My daughter recently caught me walking through the house with my head buried in my phone, watching TikTok. It was half hilarious and half mortifying that I couldn’t walk the literal 20 steps from a Zoom meeting to my lunch without mindless entertainment from the omniscient gods of the social media algorithm.
Clearly this was a mindfulness fail, but failures are growth opportunities, and it was a good time to consider what I might be missing by overlooking those transitional moments during the day.
In spite of an admitted addiction to my phone, I’m actually pretty good at focusing on other things - reading books still works for my brain, as does writing, being with friends, and formal meditation sessions. So why am I trying - whether consciously or not - to fill those in-between moments with mindLESSness instead of mindFULness?
The Pali word for mindfulness, sati (smrti in Sanskrit), means “not forgetting ordinary things.” The idea here is that it's a lot easier to be mindful for extraordinary moments - reading a captivating novel, or eating a delicious meal, or sitting with a dear friend in their heartache - than it is to be mindful while walking 20 steps from one place in our home to the next, the same 20 steps we walk dozens of times a day.
What's the point of tending to the ordinary?
The point is to form habits of mind that enrich our lives on a granular and sustainable scale. These transitional moments in our days that feel like voids we need to fill with mindlessness could actually be portals from one mindFUL activity to the next, and they can become mindful practices unto themselves.
We can learn to be micro-amazed. It could be a celebration that our body can still carry us forward; or a prayerful moment that the food we’re about to eat will nourish us well; or a chance to give thanks for the shelter we may take for granted. In this way, our lives might feel more enriched, more magical, more worth appreciating.
We hope that you find ways this holiday weekend to be present for ordinary moments, and we hope you'll re-join us this fall to use your yoga mat as a training ground for micro-amazement.
Wishing you a happy end-of-summer and a mindful start to September!
~ Annie Moyer and the Sun & Moon team of continuously micro-amazed teachers and staff