Practices

A practice for the doorways of a day — between two meetings, before opening the laptop, in the car before going inside.

Three breaths. The first one to arrive. The second one to soften whatever is held in the shoulders and the jaw. The third one to ask: what does this next hour actually need from me?

It takes under thirty seconds and it fits where nothing else fits. No cushion, no app, nobody needs to know you are doing it.

The gap between two things is where most of a day is lost. This is how you take it back.

Fifteen minutes, no earphones, no particular direction.

This is harder than it sounds for anyone used to walking as transport. The mind keeps asking where we are going, and when the answer is nowhere it eventually gives up asking and starts noticing instead.

That is the whole practice. Give the mind nothing to organise and see what it does with the time.

Many people find the walk is where the answer arrives that the desk could not produce. Not because walking is magic, but because you finally stopped interrupting yourself.

If you begin one practice from this circle, begin with this one.

One meal a day, eaten without a phone, a laptop or a television. No podcast either. Just the food and whoever is there.

It sounds small. It will not feel small on day one. Most people discover within two minutes that eating without input is genuinely difficult, and that discovery is the practice working, not failing.

You will taste the food. That is the first thing that comes back.

Start tomorrow. Tell us which meal you chose.