It wasn’t until I stumbled clumsily toward a daily mindfulness practice in my mid-thirties that I discovered that there were ways I could get better at feeling my feelings.

Before intentionally working on my attentional skills, I had no idea how often I escalated my unpleasant feelings and zipped past the pleasant and subtler ones.

The kind of self-awareness that mindfulness exercise develops has helped me become more objective about my subjective experiences.

Flying provides a steady stream of frustrations: the crowded isolation of DIY check-in, the sock-footed walk on eggshells through TSA, the hypervigilant tracking of an elusive ETA.

All the inevitable discomforts of air travel make it a fertile attentional fitness opportunity. I’ve been developing a strategy that transforms the situation from hell into heaven.

Okay, maybe more like a really productive purgatory.

When remembering to notice that we're alive becomes a habit, we begin to erode the internal friction that obscures our view of the richness we're swimming in every day.

Three big obstacles to establishing a consistent mindfulness routine are finding time to practice, being distracted by thoughts, and feeling bored. I discovered an exercise that obliterates all three simultaneously, but I’m pretty sure you’re going to hate the idea of it.

Birds lack the words to get tangled up in the whys. 

An attention exercise on the theme of rest barely disguised as a poem.

When you begin a walking or running program, there are several details you can track as evidence of improvement. Your step count. The length of your stride. Your pace. The amount of time it takes your heart to return to its recover its baseline resting rate. But how will you know when you’re getting better at noticing perceptions? 

Any perception you can observe directly in real time can be used to train a variety of attention-related skills.

I like to make a game out of turning ordinary activities into opportunities for practice.

There are a number of exercises I use when watching a film — whether it’s one I enjoy, dislike, or have seen before.  

"You don't have to analyze it. You just have to feel it." 

Dan Harris

What keeps us holding out for these perfect, comfortable lives that we imagine? And how can training your attention help address these habits?

Mindfulness involves cultivating familiarity and intimacy with aspects of everyday experience that we often take for granted.

Jon Kabat-Zinn

What makes it so difficult for us to pay attention at any given moment? It seems like it should be easy.

Thinking your way through unpleasant emotions takes time while a single repetition of any mindfulness exercise only takes a few seconds. The skills of attention strengthened by mindfulness practice enhance both the resolving of unpleasant emotions and the acceptance of them.  

One of the things I’ve found so remarkable about the approach to mindfulness I practice and teach, is the way it has gradually, yet significantly changed the way I relate to the physicality of my emotions—including the unpleasant ones.

A mindfulness teacher needs to sell you on the possible outcomes of consistent practice but also has to steer you back again and again to the slippery path that leads to them.

yù yī - 玉衣

n. the desire to see with fresh eyes, and feel things just as intensely as you did when you were younger—before expectations, before memory, before words.

"Nothing will tell you
where you are.
Each moment is a place
you’ve never been."

~ Mark Strand

It seems like stepping outside for a walk should be enough to clear our minds, but when we head outdoors, our attention tends to stay anchored in our heads. What we need is a practical focus strategy and more realistic expectations about how our minds respond to such a challenge.

When you catch yourself absorbed by some immediate aspect of your environment, try to yield to the observation fully for a few seconds.