Zen In Household Chores ~ Discovering Peace In The Mundane

"Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water" ~ Zen proverd

When we become present and pay attention to the things we are doing, our actions become meditation and the mundane becomes interesting.

This session will guide you through beautiful reconnection through your senses, your presence and your life in the middle of doing the dishes, the laundry, and other such seemingly repetitive mundane tasks.

image: Kateryna Hliznitsova

Transcript

Hey,

Let's do some household chores together with some mindfulness and that actually means mostly paying attention to what we're doing.

So you can just do whatever it is that you're doing,

Maybe you're folding the laundry or vacuuming the house or doing the dishes or cleaning the windows.

Many things of course can be done in the house and to do it in a way that we are not going away from it allows it to become a meditation.

Meditation can happen at any moment when we are present with what we're doing.

And I first actually want to invite your attention towards your own self and then specifically how are you doing.

And the invitation can sometimes easily go towards our mind.

We start thinking about how I'm actually doing but I want to invite you not to think about yourself in answering this question but to look at yourself.

And the beautiful thing here is you don't actually have to answer,

You can just simply observe.

So maybe your standard reaction would be oh I'm tired,

I'm overwhelmed,

I'm stressed,

I'm depressed or something.

But what happens when you actually take a moment?

And a good way to take a moment is to take a breath.

Take a breath with some intentionality.

And just can you feel any sensations in your body right now?

And just simply note that.

We don't want to change the sensations that is tantamount to battling with ourselves but simply observe what are you feeling.

If that's difficult,

Sometimes it can be difficult especially when we're in a kind of a rushed place,

Then there are two things that you can do and we might just do it anyway.

So the first thing is to just simply check am I feeling more on the pleasant side of experiencing my body right now or am I feeling more on the unpleasant side of experiencing my body right now.

So I want to invite you right now to just take a breath and take it slowly and deeply and just without thinking about an answer,

Just feel into am I feeling a bit on the pleasant side or am I feeling a bit on the unpleasant side.

And whatever you're noticing,

I want to invite you to just let it be.

If you're feeling on the pleasant side,

Great,

You know.

Enjoy it.

If you're feeling on the unpleasant side,

Maybe not so great but let's still let it be there because either way it will change.

It always changes.

Sometimes we get tricked into thinking that our state doesn't change but it's actually always fluctuating.

It's always in movement,

How we're feeling.

And that becomes more obvious when we're actually tuning into it.

And I promised two things to do that are kind of an easy access point.

So whatever you're doing right now,

It probably involves your hands but I want to ask you to just take a little break,

If it's possible of course,

And just allow yourself to notice any sensations that you're feeling in your fingers,

In your palms,

In your hands right now.

So just be silent.

You don't have to put words on it.

In fact,

Don't even try that but just really feel.

Be the feeling that feels what's happening in your hands right now.

It can become a beautiful meditation object.

And maybe if you want to,

You can actually kind of breathe into your hands.

So just imagine that you're breathing specifically into your hands.

You can take like a longer,

Deeper inhalation and kind of direct it with your awareness,

With your intention,

Into your hands.

If it feels appropriate for you,

You can also,

In your own way,

In your own words,

Say thank you to your hands.

You could say that we are,

You know,

We're temporarily renting this body,

This body and it's doing so much work for us.

And when we're doing household work,

You know,

It's literal work and I'm not making any metaphysical claims but the body seems to really enjoy being seen and being thanked.

So take a moment to just thank your hands.

If only once in your life,

Thank your hands for making you so dexterous and so handy.

And then I want to just invite you to continue doing whatever it is you're doing because this is doing a chore while meditating.

And let's just pay some specific attention on our hands doing the things that they're doing.

And just noticing how does it feel to do this.

Maybe if you're doing the dishes,

Maybe you feel the water,

Or maybe if you're folding the laundry,

Maybe take an extra moment to feel the fabric.

And it can also help to just make your movements a bit slower.

And of course,

All my instructions are suggestions.

Don't do it if it feels weird,

Don't do it if it feels like you're doing something and of course all my instructions are suggestions.

Don't do it if it feels weird or if it kind of gets you into a mental place.

But just maybe you can do things a little bit slower to add some mindfulness.

It won't really cost you any time.

And let the slowness be a manifestation of your acceptance of the moment.

Sometimes household chores can become this thing that we don't want to do and then it becomes really kind of a suffering to do it.

But can you just completely accept it?

Can you deepen your breath?

You know,

Sometimes when we are subtly rejecting the moment we are not breathing deeply enough.

So can you allow your breath to be full and present and just enjoy doing the dishes,

Folding the laundry?

You know,

Another thing that might be kind of eye-opening is that these things seem so repetitive,

Right?

We mop the floors every few days,

We do the dishes every day.

I'm just talking about us right now.

You'll have your own frequency.

It seems to be repetitive but if you notice it's actually never happened before.

This specific thing that you're doing right now in this moment has never happened before.

It seems of course it looks a lot the same but you're not the same person.

The dishes have slightly changed.

You know,

Everything is always really in constant flux.

This is what they mean when they say you never step into the same river twice.

And that's actually true.

So I'm gonna give you now just some silence to slow down and to connect a bit more with your hands,

With slowness to what you're doing.

Sometimes there can be this subtle attitude of waiting for life to start or waiting for the right moment to really arrive in presence.

And seemingly repetitive tasks like household tasks can be a very strong invitation let's say to not quite be in the moment.

But life becomes so much more pleasant if you embrace it,

Embrace the mundane.

If we embrace the mundane and step into presence it's never mundane.

It becomes really enjoyable.

And so one way to do that as we've already seen is to slow down,

Take a breath,

Breathe deeper.

Notice how you're feeling.

We took the hands in this case.

But let's widen the scope and invite more of our body to join the party of the household.

So maybe you can smell,

Invite your nose to breathe a little bit more intentionally.

So are there any smells you are aware of?

And don't worry about liking the smell or not liking the smell,

But simply noticing that there may be some fragrance.

And if there isn't,

I invite you to look around and find something that probably does have a smell.

So it could be maybe a plant or maybe some food.

I have some pencils here at my desk I could grab and smell.

They have the typical pencil smell.

But I want to invite you to just smell something and invite this beautiful sense,

The olfactory sense,

Invite it to presence.

Activate it.

And more than that,

Enjoy it.

You know,

I have lost my sense of smell on several occasions,

Sometimes for very long periods of time,

And I really appreciate the sense of smell.

And I hope you have it and you can also appreciate it.

So slow down and step into presence through the sense gate of the nose.

And then next,

Let's also invite some of the other senses.

Let's see if there are any sounds that you're hearing right now that may be very familiar and,

You know,

The mind,

The brain is very good at filtering out things that it doesn't perceive as important.

And if you notice that there are some sounds that you're hearing right now,

The brain is very good at filtering out things that it doesn't perceive as important or a threat.

And then we don't hear it anymore.

Which is fine,

That's great,

That is an effective brain.

But let's just take a moment to see if there are any sounds that you can just also enjoy.

It may be the sounds that you're making while you're doing your chore.

And just really hear it,

Just for a moment,

Just for fun.

And do you notice that things just simply become enjoyable when you pay attention to it?

Things become interesting when you pay attention to it.

There's actually nothing that is not interesting.

It is our mind that somehow makes us dull.

Again,

For good reasons.

It wants to save up disk space,

It wants to save random access memory space.

But we can overwrite programming,

We can overrule rules.

Another beautiful sense gate,

Of course,

Are the eyes.

And when we are in our own homes,

The same thing happens.

We get,

You know,

The things that we are familiar with,

They disappear into the background.

So just take a moment,

Maybe you don't have to stop also,

But just take a moment to notice a bit more intentionally what you're actually looking at.

Can you see the colors?

Can you see the shades?

Maybe there's a shadow of some bushes rocking back and forth on the wall in front of you.

And specifically,

I want to invite you to look at one detail in front of you.

Maybe it's the fabric of the cloth,

Maybe it's the handle of the vacuum cleaner,

Or the bubbles of the soap.

And just really,

Really,

Really zoom into that.

So look at it as if you're studying a never before seen rare object.

And in a way,

It might actually be exactly that.

Have you ever really looked at those soap bubbles?

Yeah,

Maybe when you were three years old,

But when was the last time that you did that?

So find something,

And again,

You don't have to stop what you're doing,

But find something and really allow your eyes to receive that completely and see how much you can zoom in.

Do you remember when you were a kid and you used to do this kind of stuff all the time?

Just noticing and just exploring the world with your senses?

That's actually available to us all the time.

And things can become really interesting when you do that.

So just zoom in,

Pick one thing,

And maybe I want to challenge you to pick something that is really boring.

Like maybe there's just some white panel on your cupboard in front of you,

But then go towards it and look and see how not boring that becomes.

So take a moment to do that.

And then for a moment,

I want to invite you to another thing.

And that is that for one minute,

I actually do want you to stop everything you're doing.

Of course,

Again,

If it's possible,

Maybe there are kids running around,

Maybe it's difficult,

But whatever you're doing,

If you can stop for a minute and turn off any machines that are possible to turn off and see if you can notice the silence and the stillness.

And how to do that is to simply listen for it.

It doesn't mean that there cannot be any sound,

There will be some sound,

But can you notice the silence?

And when you notice it,

Don't try to hang on to it or grab it.

That is not possible and it will actually kind of make it go away.

But just if you want to,

Can you enjoy it and be grateful for that?

Take just one minute to find the silence.

Thank you.

And then the last thing I want to invite you to do is to just one more time,

You can just keep doing what you're doing,

But feel into your body.

Your body loves it so much to get your attention.

So can you maybe take a deeper breath and just notice,

Just simply notice,

What are you noticing in your body?

What are you feeling?

Don't tell anybody,

Don't tell me,

But just feel.

Feel using your feeling.

What is it like to be inside there right now?

So these were some of my suggestions for mindful household doings.

I hope you enjoyed it.

And I hope you can find mindfulness every day.

And I wish you a beautiful rest of your day.

Thank you.

Reviews

What a gift!! Folding laundry has never felt more like a sacred ritual. Appreciated this deeply 🙏🏼✨