The Five Essential Practices
How do we learn to engage with the mind when it is helpful and disengage when it is not helpful? The skills needed to consistently engage and disengage with the mind can be found in the 5 Essential Practices.
These are the 5 practices that allow us to balance and more effectively engage with both the body and the mind:
Observe yourself – Cultivate the ability to observe what is going on within your body and your mind, so you have awareness of your thoughts, feelings, sensations, and knowing. This information is critical for knowing what’s going on and what’s important to focus on – what is true/right for you, as well as where you are stressed or noticing resistance.
Know your values - Know what is important and the interplay of these priorities in your life, and then use these to inform your plans and actions.
Do the stuff that's important – Your actions need to be in alignment with your values. If they are not, what is getting in the way? The challenge always is to find a way to move through/around/past the things that are impeding the alignment of your values and actions.
Calm yourself and carry on – Often when you are doing the important stuff, there will be moments where you will feel resistance, discomfort and/or overwhelmed. There is great power in being able to calm and soothe your mind and body so that you can continue to do the important stuff. There are lots of practices and methods for doing this, so find the ones that work well for you and utilize them as needed.
Redirection for unhelpful thinking – The mind can be a helpful tool in doing the important stuff (researching, learning, strategizing, planning, organizing, visioning, creating, problem solving). The mind can also be detrimental to doing the important stuff (unhelpful mental noise like worry, doubt, indecision, negativity, perfectionism, and self-criticism). In situations where the mind is not helping you to do the important stuff, you would be well served to redirect your attention to the present moment by connecting to your body, your surroundings, and/or the task at hand (the important stuff). Rarely do we get out of a mental trap by thinking more, even though that is what we often try to do!​
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These practices are deceptively simple.
The mind can read through this information, and “understand” it, and then dismiss the practices as unworkable or unhelpful for any number of reasons.
They are called practices, meaning that we need to practice them and apply them to our life in order to experience the profound impact that these practices hold for each of us. Understanding with the mind is not enough. The invitation is to apply, engage and practice.
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I regularly apply these Essential Practices in my own life, and I also work with my clients to do the same. My familiarity with these practices allows me to observe your process and help you to identify patterns of mental imbalance, and then support you in applying these simple, profound practices to the areas in your life where you are stuck, confused, and overwhelmed. Over time, you will develop a greater proficiency with these practices and you will become increasingly confident and adept at applying them in your own life. These are the fundamental human practices that allow us to successfully navigate and engage in life, and help us to create the life we want for ourselves.
Here is a simple example to illustrate how the 5 Essential Practices can be applied.
Assume that you have an important but complicated task that you want to complete. It aligns with your values and it is something that you know is important (Practice #2 – Know your values), but you feel overwhelmed because of everything that needs to be done. Because of this overwhelm, you notice that you are wasting time watching videos on your phone instead of engaging with the task. Assuming you pause from watching videos and take a moment to observe yourself and the situation you are in (Practice #1), you notice that you are feeling overwhelmed, and are avoiding this important task by distracting yourself with watching videos. Continuing to observe yourself, you notice that the feeling of overwhelm is caused because there is so much to do, there are many smaller subtasks, and it is hard to know what order to approach these subtasks. All of this confusion is making you feel tired and spacey, and you also notice these thoughts, “This is stupid.” “Why do I have to do this?” “I'll get started in a little bit.”
In this example, it is clear that your actions are not aligned with you values (Practice #3 - Do the important stuff), and so something needs to shift in order for things to move back into alignment. You know that it would help to shift your physical body, so you put down your phone, get off of the sofa, walk to the kitchen to get a glass of water to drink, and then go outside for a few minutes to connect with the day. Outside, you feel the sun on your skin, you see and smell the flowers, and you hear the birds singing and squirrels running through the trees. You also take a few slow, deep, slow breaths, and afterwards notice that you are starting to feel calmer and a bit more awake and focused (Practice #4 – calming yourself by connecting with your body, your breath and your senses).
After a few minutes outside, your attention returns to this complicated task that needs to be completed, and you acknowledge that the reason you feel so overwhelmed is because you are not sure where to start and what order to do things. You know that if you made a list of everything that needs to be done, and then put the tasks in order of priority, that you could move through the list one step at a time and that would feel more doable (practice #5 – use your mind in helpful ways). You also notice that the idea of creating this list is making you feel a bit overwhelmed again, so you take a few more breaths and decided to listen to some calming music (practice #4) and then you focus on the first step to creating a list by going and getting a pencil and some paper. Using practice #5, we engage the mind to write down all of the tasks that need to be done, and then we put the tasks in order by numbering them. Some people might want or need to reach out to a friend or family member to help them think through the challenge and come up with a plan. You don’t have to do everything alone, but do need to know when to ask for help. In whatever way you move through this process, you now have a plan!
Practice #5 also invites us to now start working on the first task on the plan, and focus on that task rather on the potentially overwhelming list of all that needs to be done. We continue to take relaxing breaths while we listen to our music and move through the list one item at a time. Just having a plan and getting started help us to feel more energized and positive.
You can see from this example that we will often move back and forth between the practices. Observing ourselves, calming ourselves, working with the mind in helpful ways, and then reconnecting with the body and the task we are engaged with. This movement back and forth between the body and the mind combined with the self-awareness of the observer allows us to more masterfully move through our life.
And if this example seems overly simple and easy because you have a natural talent for planning and organization, then imagine a similar situation that might be less easy/comfortable for you. Asking a stranger for help? Doing something that requires a lot of physical effort? Having to be honest and ask for your needs to be met? The 5 Essential Practices can be applied to any situation, and will allow you to move through that situation with greater ease and effectiveness.