COMING HOME, A MINDFULNESS PRACTICE
I am grateful to have had the opportunity to travel and visit friends and family over these summer weeks. And as my travels wrap up, I feel a longing for home. I recognize my own need to return to the routines and structures of my regular life and feel the pull to settle in and be still. I am reminded that returning home does not require the actual physical act, returning home is a practice of mindfulness.
Coming home is settling into the body, finding our breath, climbing down from the activity of the mind to find that familiar place of stillness that is the source of peace and joy.
Coming home means that we can suspend the unknown future, let go of the fixed past, and create space to be present with what is. Bringing awareness to the breath grounds us in the present moment. Feeling the breath in the body reminds us that our first home is in this body. When we are truly present, we can feel our body being breathed, effortless, from a deep wisdom and familiarity that is home. The body can be breathed, wisdom can emerge.
At times, on the way home, we encounter turbulence in our inner life that has not been tended to, and we must remember that sometimes coming home is like this. We may come home to emotions, hurts, discontent that need care. When we arrive home to ourselves and notice unsettled feelings, we do not need to judge or to compare, we first need to meet that part of ourselves with kindness and care. "Right now, it's like this" and I care for this home inside myself.
We have to first come home to be nourished if we are going to meet the world around us. We must touch that place of stillness, grounding and presence so that we can serve others. When we intentionally return home to ourselves, when we first tend to what is present for us with care, we begin to soothe the sharp edges of our hearts, soften any layers of hard protective covering, open to that deeper stillness, and begin to discover the source of joy and kindness we can share with the world.
Thich Nhat Hanh”s Walking Meditation Gatha offers this simple profound verse, a practical and applicable meditation: I have arrived. I am home. In the here, in the now. I am solid, I am free.
As summer's freedom gives way to the quieter rhythms ahead, I'm grateful for this practice of coming home, the ground from which I can meet the world around me. It's from this stillness, this rootedness, that anything else — joy, connection, inspiration— becomes possible.
