Be Where Your Hands Are

It is easy to move through the day with your hands doing one thing while your mind is somewhere else entirely—replaying what happened, anticipating what comes next, or searching for something that was right in front of you all along.

In this episode of Empowered Wellness Radio, Jeannie explores a simple, practical way to return to the present: be where your hands are. Through everyday stories and observations from the treatment room, she looks at how attention affects the way we move, work, listen, and connect with our bodies.

Presence does not require an empty mind or a perfect state of calm. Sometimes it begins by noticing what your hands are already doing—and returning to the moment you are actually living.

Transcript

Today on Empowered Wellness Radio, Presence doesn't have to look like sitting still and breathing. Sometimes it looks like knowing what is in your hands before your mind has already moved to the next room. Being present can be a high leverage skill for people who actually have a lot to get done. Welcome to Empowered Wellness Radio with your host, Jeanne Smith. Jeanne is a board-certified massage therapist, Wellness educator, And former broadcaster with a practical, Whole-person approach to health and well-being. Each episode brings you useful information, Thoughtful conversation, And simple, Effective ways to better understand your body, Care for yourself, And take an active role in your own well-being. And now, Here's your host, Jeanne Smith. So I have one day off each week, And on that day I do everything. Landscaping, Gardening, Laundry, Cooking, Homesteading, Business work, Everything. There is no other time, So the pressure is real. Even when I'm doing one thing, I'm aware of all the other things waiting for me. The laundry isn't simply sitting in the hamper. It is keeping time. The food needs to be prepared. The yard needs attention. There's always something involving the business that I couldn't get to during the week. Before I've completed the first job, My mind is already arranging the next five. This morning, I decided to start with the roses. Prune the bushes. Part of the bigger landscaping list. Simple enough. I went to get my gloves. I looked at the usual places. They weren't there. I looked a little harder. Still not there. While I was hunting for the gloves, I set the clippers down somewhere. Then I couldn't find the clippers either. The very tool I needed the gloves for in the first place. My husband walked up, Saw me spinning in circles and asked, How do you fix this? I said, By that point, I had spent enough time looking for everything that I could have finished the job, And I was just starting it. That's how it happens. It was three, Four, Five steps ahead. Finish the roses, Move to the rest of the landscaping, Start the laundry, Think about food, Handle the business work. My body was still holding the clippers, But my attention was managing the entire rest of Sunday. That is a practical cost of living ahead of yourself. We talk about being present as though it is something soft and spiritual. Breathing. Appreciating the moment, Sitting quietly and becoming aware of the world around us. Those things matter. But on a day when you have to accomplish an entire week's worth of life in a few hours, Presence is also functional. It keeps the chain from breaking. Every physical action has a small sequence. You pick something up, Use it, And put it somewhere when you finish. When your attention stays with the action, The sequence closes naturally. But when your mind has already moved into the next room, The sequence gets interrupted. You pick something up, Begin using it, And then think of something else. You set it down just for a second while you go take care of another task. That object is no longer part of a completed action. It has become part of an interrupted one. Later, You remember the original task, But not the moment when you stepped away from it. Now you have to reconstruct your own movements. Where was I standing? What did I notice? What made me leave? Where would I have put this? Then you begin checking places where the object belongs, Even though you probably didn't put it where it belongs. You placed it wherever you happened to be when your attention moved on. The clippers may be beside the laundry detergent because you remembered the washing machine while you were carrying them. Your phone may be in the garden shed because you stopped to answer a message. The coffee you reheated may still be sitting in the microwave because you walked away while it was warming. When an action is interrupted, Objects become temporary. And somewhere temporarily is where useful things go to disappear. This becomes even easier when we are missing the little systems that ordinarily support us. I usually wear cargo pants or shorts with plenty of pockets. Those pockets are quiet helpers. They give things a temporary home. Clippers go in one pocket. Gloves go in another. My phone has a place. Today I had no pockets. No easy place to put anything. No external landing places. Just erasing mind and disappearing tools. It would be easy to dismiss that detail. They're only pockets. But those pockets reduce the number of things my mind has to keep track of. I don't have to remember where I set down the clippers because I know where I put them. That is an important part of being present that we don't discuss very often. Presence is not only an internal mental skill. It is also something we can support through the way we arrange our environment. With you. An apron can provide the pockets your clothes do not. These things aren't even evidence that we should be better at remembering. They are useful systems that reduce how much remembering is required. When people are overwhelmed or distracted, The advice is often, You just need to pay more attention. But attention is not an unlimited resource. When your mind is tracking appointments, Unfinished work, Household responsibilities, Other people's needs, And the relentless passage of time telling yourself to pay attention may not be enough. Sometimes the better question is, What would make paying attention easier? How can I support the action I'm trying to complete? How do we actually fix this without turning presence into one more thing we fail at. I have three small practical moves. The first is the hands check. Before you turn away or walk toward the next thing, Stop just long enough to notice what is actually in your hands and decide where it belongs. Five seconds. That's it. What am I holding? Where does it go? You don't need to stand in the garden and practice 20 minutes of perfect mindfulness. You only need to register that the clippers are still in your hand before you walk into the house. If you're interrupted, The hands check becomes even more useful. Before responding to the interruption, Notice what you're holding. Put it somewhere deliberate, Not somewhere convenient for one second. Somewhere you will be able to find it again. That five-second pause may feel as though it is slowing you down, Especially when you were already feeling rushed, But it takes much longer to search the house, Retrace your movements, And question everyone nearby about whether they have seen the thing you were just holding. The second move is to give your attention some support. Create simple landing places. Use the tool bucket. Wear the apron. Put on the cargo pants. Choose one place for the keys and return them to that place. If you're moving among several areas, Take a container with you. If you know you will need three tools, Gather them before you begin and keep them together. The point is not to engineer a flawless organizational system for your entire life. That would only create another project. The point is to remove one or two predictable problems from the path of your attention. If you frequently lose the same object, Perhaps you don't need to become more vigilant. Perhaps that object needs a better home. Presence is not only about what happens inside your mind. Sometimes it is environmental design. Make it easier for your hands and your tools to stay connected. Is to close one physical action before you open the next mental tab. Put the clippers down in their place, Then let your mind move on. Finish the move you're in before you start rehearsing the rest of the day. This doesn't mean that other thoughts won't arrive. They will. You may remember the laundry while you were pruning the roses. You may remember an email you need to send while you're loading the washing machine. You don't have to chase every thought simply because it appeared. You can acknowledge it without immediately abandoning what your hands are doing. If the thought is important, Write it down. Set a reminder. Put it somewhere outside your mind so that your brain doesn't have to keep repeating it. Then return to the physical action in front of you and close it. This is different from pretending the rest of the list doesn't matter. It matters. The laundry is still real. Dinner will still need to happen. The business work has not evaporated. You are simply allowing those things to wait while you complete this one act. Action. There is also a difference between planning ahead and living ahead. Planning ahead is useful. It allows us to arrange our time and gather what we need. Living ahead means our attention has left the activity in front of us and begun experiencing the pressure of tasks we haven't reached yet. The body stays in the garden while the mind begins carrying laundry, Preparing dinner, And answering emails all at once. No wonder we feel exhausted before the first job is finished. Presence doesn't make the list shorter, But it can keep us from performing every task mentally before we ever reach it physically. These three moves, The hands check, Creating landing places, And closing one physical action doesn't require a meditation cushion or a perfect morning routine. They are practical habits for people who have a lot to do and very little time to do it. They can also help during smaller moments that may not look important. When you leave one room for another, Pause long enough to remember why you're going. When you put something down, Notice where it lands. When you feel the urge to begin another task, Ask whether the action in front of you is actually complete. Sometimes it will be. Move on. Sometimes you'll realize you about to leave behind an open cabinet, A half-folded load of laundry, Or a pair of clippers sitting on top of something that will make absolutely no sense later. This isn't about becoming rigid. Life interrupts us. Phones ring. People ask questions. Dogs need something. We remember urgent details at inconvenient times. The goal isn't to move through the day with uninterrupted concentration. The goal is to create a small point of return. When your attention leaves, Come back to your hands. What are they holding? What were they doing? What needs to happen before this action is complete? Here is a quiet payoff. When you stop losing the tools and restarting the same small tasks, You often get more of the day back, Not less. The irony is that trying to live three steps ahead usually slows you down. We rush because time feels scarce, But rushing fractures our attention. Then we spend more time recovering from the fracture. We search for the clippers. We return to rooms we've already left. We restart tasks that could have been completed the first time. Being where your hands are is frequently the fastest way to finish the list. It also changes the quality of the day. Instead of experiencing Sunday as one enormous simultaneous demand. You experience the roses while you are with the roses. Then you experience the laundry when you reach the laundry. The entire day no longer has to happen inside your head all at once. I see another version of this in my work. When people arrive at my office, They don't leave the rest of the day in the car. They bring it through the door with them. The unfinished tasks, The worries, The conversations are still replaying, And the things they need to do when they leave are all present, Even after they get onto the treatment table. Their body may be in the room, But their attention is still managing everything outside it. That is why I use simple language to help them arrive. I might say, Allow yourself a moment to be here. Feel the support of the table. Find your breath and follow it. For this moment, Allow yourself to be present right here. I'm not asking them to force their minds to become perfectly quiet. I'm giving them a point of return, The physical sensation of the table, The sheets, Or the movement of their own breath. For that hour, They do not have to live three steps ahead. They don't have to anticipate the next task or solve the next problem. They have an opportunity to inhabit the body that carried them through the day and to recognize that in this moment, They are being cared for. Presence serves a different purpose there. In the garden, It helps me finish what I am doing without losing the clippers. On the treatment table, It allows someone to stop doing for a while and receive. Both begin in the same place, Noticing where the body is now and allowing the attention to join it. So today, I'm still going to prune those roses with borrowed gloves that had holes in the fingers. And while the clippers are in my hands, I'm going to stay with the clippers. If this sounds familiar, If your attention is already three tasks ahead of your body, Try one small thing. Notice what you're holding. Give it a place. Finish the physical action before moving into the next one. Be where your hands are. Not sound profound, It is practical, And sometimes it is the simplest way to get the roses pruned without spending half the morning looking for the clippers. Thanks for listening. You've been listening to Empowered Wellness Radio with Jeanne Smith. Join us again next time for practical information, Thoughtful conversation, And simple tools you can put to use in your own life. Until then, Take good care of yourself.