Mindful Moments with Thai Mama

Did you know that opening your “sense doors” can bring you quickly to the present moment?

It’s far too easy for the human mind, with its bias towards negative stories, to get stuck in a cycle of rumination. This meditation allows us to practice the art of letting go. As Thai meditation master Ajahn Chah reminds us, “If you let go a little, you will have a little happiness. If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of happiness. And if you let go completely, you will be free.”

The Buddha said that the quality of one's breath dictates the quality of one's life. While the mind-body-breath connection remains an enigma to many medical practitioners, what we DO know is that savoring each inhale and exhale, with a sense of curiosity, can alleviate stress and invite a sense of ease into one’s experience.

It’s helpful to have some sort of anchor for your attention so your wandering mind has something to focus on. This way, you can keep your mind busy with the business of meditation. It then becomes easier for you to cultivate what Thai people call the “mai pen rai” mindset- a ubiquitous phrase that conveys, “it’s okay, no worries, be simple & easy.”

Thai buddhists believe that everything consists of the four primary elements of earth, fire, water, and air. Observing the presence of all four of these elements within us can be an important way of recognizing how our individual composition is the same as the composition of the rest of the universe. Plus, it can be wonderfully soothing to remember this fact: you are nature.

We are always breathing yet we are rarely aware of it. Let’s revisit this classic anchor of mindfulness- its beauty is that it is always available to us. As Buddhist scholar and activist Thich Nhat Hanh has said, “Our breathing is a stable solid ground that we can take refuge in... No matter what is going on, our breath is always with us, like a faithful friend.”

Use this informal “S.T.O.P” practice in the heat of the moment, to mindfully shift from a state of defensive distraction, to a place of calm, intentional presence. It’s like jujitsu for the mind!

Microsoft just released neuroscience-based research showing back-to-back virtual meetings are bad for our brains. Now we have proof of what many of us have intuitively felt over the course of the pandemic- a sense of overwhelm when rushing from one virtual meeting to another. It’s time to inject strategic “reset & recharge” time between meetings to protect our precious cognitive resources.

It’s common belief that stress starts in our mind, which then sends signals down to the rest of our body to tense up, with shoulders tight, jaw clenched, tummy unsettled. Modern neuroscience- and the Buddha- tell us that training our body to instead send messages upwards to our mind is a powerful yet underused approach to alleviating stress. Give this meditation, which encourages the body to send relaxation messages to the mind, a try- it’s one of my favorites!

Neuroscience tells us that naming your thoughts deactivates that “fight of flight” feeling sparked by the amygdala, and activates the more rational, calm, executive level prefrontal cortex. Here’s a simple practice that provides several ways to note, or NAME those thoughts that tend to reoccur as our “Top 10 Most Played”.