Sometimes life can become disorientating and during these times it can become hard to keep our daily life practice going. This discombobulation can drag on and if left unattended can become the new habit, superseding our regular practice habit. There is no shame in this but it is not skilful to allow it to remain unaddressed.

One way to get back into our practice in daily life (mindfulness as some call it) is to adopt a particular discipline which allows us to focus on just one or two things which helps us de-clutch from those long thought streams and to come back and rest in the here-and-now.

Here are some suggestions to help you get back on track.

There is the well-known story about a novice monk who goes to a training monastery and asks the abbot for some advice to see him through the duration of his training. The abbot replies with two suggestions: to say “Yes” to everything, and always to walk noiselessly.

As we are not in a training sodo, saying “Yes” in our life is instead to bow into the timetable and into the everyday situations and duties that make up our day, whether or not we feel like attending to them right now.

The walking noiselessly part is also certainly something that we can apply ourselves to. Just treat it as if you are playing a game with yourself; see how well you can be aware of when you become noisy and then restrain this impulse as it arises using the body. We might find that those moments of impatience that create slapdash carelessness are realised, worked with and restrained, and finally transformed into a more open hearted and less rushed (and less stressed) attitude.

One Christian saint practiced the careful closing of all doors with full attention and with love.

Perhaps we can remember the words of Sokei-an when he said that it is dignified to always keep ‘good form’, and that even though there are formal, semi-formal and informal circumstances even the informal has a certain form that retains dignity. What would that informal form look like? Perhaps this gives another area for exploration and experimentation.

Allowing the heart (focus of attention), to sink into the lower abdomen is a practice that was advocated by Master Hakuin. He famously wrote about imagining a knob of butter the size of an egg melting from the top of the head and running down through the body to collect in the lower abdomen or feet, the important point being that the heart gradually sinks from the thinking centre into the lower part of the body, which is immediate and ever-present.

Taking a couple of breaths into the lower abdomen, we relax and open up awareness to take in the 360º surroundings. In this mode, the heart is spacious, and a container for all the sights and sounds and mental states that arise, which blow in and away like smoke without affecting that heart. Just a few moments of this can reinvigorate and deliver us into a sense of presence of this very moment - the eternal moment.

Perhaps you might come up with some experiments for yourself.