Stress-free Christmas. Week 3: Work as meditation

Preparations for the Christmas holidays are in full swing. Wrapping presents, baking the last cookies, washing windows, cleaning, buying a tree and a carp... No time for meditation or a break? No problem. Try to do everything as if you were meditating.

Meditation and work don't have to be contradictory. Especially if it involves manual work, such as washing dishes, baking cookies, hanging laundry, washing windows, cleaning, sweeping or shoveling snow. It can also be routine activities such as getting dressed, brushing teeth, showering... In such cases, it helps if you decide that the time associated with this activity will be understood as meditation.

How to do it?

Instead of planning and thinking about what still needs to be done or bought for a selected activity, focus your attention on the present moment, on how your hands touch the hot or cold water when washing the dishes, how the water in the shower hits your skin, how the tray of freshly baked cookies smells, how the wrapping paper rustles under your hands... When it comes to annoying routine activities like cleaning or sweeping that will need to be repeated soon, try approaching them as a kind of exercise, during which you do not attach yourself to the results of the work, but focus fully on the process, whatever it may be.

If thoughts come during the process, simply bring your attention back to what is here and now - the present moment. The best anchor to the present moment is your breath and your senses.

Author: Veronika Veselá