Meditation to Live More Fully

Giving a name to what you're experiencing gives you breathing space.

Pausing to acknowledge sensations interrupts your busy mind and allows you to rest for a moment. Such pauses in the frenzied speed of our everyday lives can be a great relief — like a breath of fresh air.

Mindful pauses also allow you to experience brief moments of beauty or intensity that you may have been too distracted to notice. For instance, you may stop at a red light and glance up to notice the sun peeking through the clouds, or you look up from the kitchen sink and catch your daughter dancing by herself in the backyard. Perhaps you take that first bite of a juicy peach and close your eyes to savor its sweetness. I view these brief moments as glimpses of being fully alive.

Such glimpses are happening all the time, and with practice, you'll start noticing them in every corner of your life. Glimpses are not just feel-good moments. They are like arriving on the threshold between a moment ago and a moment from now. They are your direct experience in this exact moment.

Experiencing High-Voltage Living through Glimpses

Glimpses invite you to experience how you're always awake and fully alive. Like a whisper in your ear, they remind you that you already have everything you need to experience your life fully and that you already know how to show up and shine.

Your life is too precious to treat it like a spectator sport, so don't be content to sit courtside watching the game happen in front of you. Why not directly experience your life fully? Let's explore high-definition, high-voltage living. Let's directly experience living on the edge by rekindling your curiosity of tuning into your sensory experience of the present moment.

I stay on the lookout for high-voltage moments throughout the day. Sometimes I feel lit up in conversation with one of my daughters or a good friend, and other times I feel charged with insight while writing or creating new content. There are times when those electrifying moments happen when I practice yoga or pump weights.

Sometimes those glimpses when I feel fully alive drop into my lap and are a total surprise. I love those the best.

Whenever you need to connect back to your direct experience of the present moment and rekindle your curiosity for what it holds, try this one-minute mini-meditation.

A One-Minute Meditation for Exploring Your Senses:

Feel your feet resting on the ground.

Take a deep breath in and out.

Tune into any sensations in the body.

Is the body comfortable? Is it feeling steady and strong? What is the temperature of the air as it meets your skin?

Now, notice any sounds in the room or space you are in. Listen for a moment to the sounds of life happening around you.

Then, bring your attention to smelling the air or aroma of the environment.

And bring awareness to the taste of saliva in your mouth.

Take one more deep breath and open your eyes to take in the sight of your surroundings.

Glimpses are happening all of the time. I share one of my favorite practices for experiencing a glimpse in session 3 of my course, Building Mental Fitness. You check in with yourself internally, yet you also spend time checking in with how your body is being, sitting or resting in that very moment.

Through practices like these, you will recognize that you are always on the verge of realizing you are awake and fully able to connect to the aliveness of the present moment. 

Learn how to incorporate more mindfulness into your daily life, with this course, A Modern Guide to Mindfulness by meditation teacher Curtis Smith.