Stoplight Meditation

Hi, welcome back to your Daily Mindfulness. In today's session, we're going to talk about something that I like to call stoplight meditation. Now, stoplight meditation is something that you can do in your car. So I'll talk about it in the context of while you're driving and then how to translate this into your normal life, especially if you don't drive. So stoplight meditation is very similar to what it sounds like.

Very simple, very straightforward. But every time you come to a stoplight while you're driving, instead of just sitting there or reaching for your phone or thinking about nothing, you use that as an opportunity to just take three breaths. You stop. You're waiting there, inhale, exhale, and you do that three times. Now, there's nothing radical about this, but when you think of all the times that you're going through town, you hit a stoplight or even a stop sign, these moments add up, and it's really cool to have a trigger, a cue like that, that invites us back into the present moment.

I know when I do this, I often notice that my mind has been wandering all over the place while I was driving. I was hardly even in the car. And so it brings me more into my moment to moment experience, and also brings me into an important experience, which is driving. But I also find that I'm not accumulating excess tension by my mind wandering off into worrisome things. So while it's a really simple idea, it can actually be quite a profound practice as we integrate it into our day.

So if you do drive regularly, this is a great practice you can use to bring some quality of meditation into your driving experience. But let's just say you don't drive, well, the stoplight we can perceive as any little trigger throughout the day. And so maybe for you it's it's when you brush your teeth or anytime you walk through a door, you use that as an opportunity to take a deep breath, or anytime you finish an email that becomes your trigger to stop, take three deep breaths and then go into something else. There are lots of little things based on how our day usually unfolds that we can use as the metaphorical stoplight. So stop, take a few deep breaths and then proceed.

And the main point of this Daily Mindfulness is, is to highlight that by peppering those moments throughout the day, where we're a little bit more intentional, where we take five to 10 seconds just to reconnect to our breath, reconnect to our moment can actually accumulate in a substantial way and prevent the other accumulation of mental stress and agitation. So try it out. Stoplight meditation, toothbrush meditation, email meditation, whatever works for you. Thank for your practice. And let's sette in for today's meditation.