Muse Miao

Unified Mindfulness Guide | I help busy professionals design mindfulness into their demanding daily life, easing anxiety and nurturing simple joy

[Muse Miao @IAmMuseMiao]

Feel free to do any positivity exercise, but know you are not becoming a better you; you are trying to remember who you really are.

[Muse Miao @IAmMuseMiao]

You dislike your job.

Then a colleague you like comes over and makes a joke.

You laugh together for two minutes.

But internally, you're still thinking:

“I hate this job.”

“I don't want to be here.”

Something genuinely pleasant is happening, but most of your attention is somewhere else.

Sometimes happiness isn't absent.

Our attention is.

[Muse Miao @IAmMuseMiao]

How Mindfulness Can Make You Happier Without Changing Your Life https://t.co/brBLPO8HPO

[Muse Miao @IAmMuseMiao]

Knowing meditation techniques is useful.

Understanding the principles behind them is even more useful.

If you only know the technique, you know what to do in one situation.

If you understand the principle, you can create practice in many situations.

That is why understanding meditation as attention training can be so powerful.

[Muse Miao @IAmMuseMiao]

The point is not to collect meditation techniques like Pokémon.

The point is flexibility.

Different minds.

Different situations.

Different emotional states.

Different stages of life.

A technique that works beautifully today may not be what you need tomorrow.

[Muse Miao @IAmMuseMiao]

https://t.co/SS4JMUk4dK

[Muse Miao @IAmMuseMiao]

Imagine two people chanting exactly the same words.

Outwardly, they are doing the same practice.

But inwardly, something completely different may be happening.

One may be hoping to receive some personal benefit.

The other may be filled with genuine reverence and love.

Same words.

Different heart.

[Muse Miao @IAmMuseMiao]

https://t.co/HsVAyI8ROH

[Muse Miao @IAmMuseMiao]

You can read a hundred books about impermanence.

You can understand perfectly that everything changes.

But then one day, you sit with an unpleasant sensation without interfering.

It moves.

It breaks apart.

It disappears.

Suddenly impermanence is no longer something you believe.

You tasted it.

That is the difference between understanding and realization.

[Muse Miao @IAmMuseMiao]

I think spiritual practitioners roughly fall into four types:

The intellectual type.
The ritual type.
The devotional type.
The integrated type.

This is not about saying one is good and another is bad.

But personally, I think the fourth offers the most complete path:

understand it, practice it, experience it, and open your heart to something higher.

[Muse Miao @IAmMuseMiao]

Formal sitting meditation is valuable.

But if meditation only happens when you are sitting quietly on a cushion, you are leaving a lot of practice time unused.

Walking.

Commuting.

Driving.

Waiting.

Cleaning.

Working.

Ordinary life contains hundreds of small opportunities to train attention.

[Muse Miao @IAmMuseMiao]

One beautiful thing about bringing mindfulness into ordinary life is that annoyances can gradually become practice opportunities.

Someone cuts you off?

Equanimity practice.

Crowded subway?

Concentration practice.

Walking to work?

Sensory clarity practice.

Life keeps giving you meditation exercises for free.

[Muse Miao @IAmMuseMiao]

Road rage is actually an interesting place to practice mindfulness.

Someone does something stupid.

Irritation appears.

Instead of immediately feeding the story, notice what irritation feels like in the body.

Tightness.

Heat.

Pressure.

Energy.

You don’t have to suppress it.

Just experience it without adding more fuel.

[Muse Miao @IAmMuseMiao]

Someone cuts you off in traffic.

Immediately:

anger.

Your chest tightens.

Your face gets hot.

Your hands grip the steering wheel.

Normally, the next step might be swearing or mentally attacking the other driver.

But now you have another option:

observe.

The person who cut you off has accidentally given you an equanimity exercise.

[Muse Miao @IAmMuseMiao]

Driving contains countless physical sensations we usually ignore.

Your hands touching the steering wheel.

Your arms making tiny adjustments.

Your foot pressing the accelerator.

The pressure changing as you brake.

Mindfulness doesn’t always require adding something to experience.

Sometimes it means finally noticing the experience you already have.

[Muse Miao @IAmMuseMiao]

We miss a surprising amount of life because we are thinking.

You may drive along the same road every morning without really seeing it.

Then one day you actually pay attention.

The trees are incredibly green.

Sunlight is moving across the leaves.

People are walking along the sidewalk.

The ordinary world becomes much more interesting when you are actually there for it.

[Muse Miao @IAmMuseMiao]

Driving can be meditation too.

But the meditation should never compete with driving.

Safety comes first.

So instead of turning attention inward, make driving itself the meditation.

Actually see the road.

Actually feel the steering wheel.

Actually hear the traffic.

Be fully present for what you are already doing.

[Muse Miao @IAmMuseMiao]

Practicing mindfulness on a noisy subway may sometimes train attention more than practicing alone in a quiet room.

People are talking.

The train is moving.

Someone bumps into you.

Your phone is in your pocket.

There are dozens of things competing for attention.

And you gently keep coming back.

That is concentration training in real life.

[Muse Miao @IAmMuseMiao]

You don’t have to sit down to meditate.

Standing on a crowded subway can become a surprisingly rich mindfulness practice.

Feel your feet pressing into the floor.

Feel your hand holding the rail.

Feel your body constantly adjusting as the train moves.

Even trying to keep your balance can become meditation.

[Muse Miao @IAmMuseMiao]

If you spend twenty or thirty minutes on the subway every day, you already have a potential meditation period built into your schedule.

Ten minutes with the breath.

Ten minutes scanning the body.

A few minutes simply noticing sounds and physical sensations.

You don’t necessarily need more time.

Sometimes you just need to use the time you already have differently.

[Muse Miao @IAmMuseMiao]

A lot of people say:

“I don’t have time to meditate.”

But sometimes what they really mean is:

“I don’t have another thirty minutes to sit alone in a quiet room.”

Those are not the same thing.

Your commute may already contain the meditation time you think you don’t have.