Hi, it's Vidyamala here and I've been asked to answer the question, how do I find inner peace with a very demanding schedule and a stressful life? Great question. And I can totally relate to this as it's been a question for me for a long time. And I'm guessing it probably is for you too, if you're taking the time to listen to what I've got to say. I'll try and keep this answer quite brief, because if you've got a busy, stressful life, you're probably quite time pressured. And yeah, I'm just aware how many of us lead really busy, stressful lives these days.

And how many of us have got really big challenges. Lots of pressures, financial health, big responsibilities, and so on. Many of us live a very fast pace, and inner peace can seem like a far off fantasy. So I'm hoping to give you hope today, give you something quite optimistic. And that is that inner peace is always available to us in this very moment.

It's not some far away goal of a perfect life, but every moment that we use our awareness to step out off the hamster in the wheel, even for just a moment, come into the body, come into the breath, rest the body in gravity, settle, we have a little taste of inner peace. So the main message in this particular talk is to take a break. Take regular breaks. And I'm not talking about, you know, going and sitting down for half an hour. I'm talking about taking a break for one minute, two minutes, three minutes, regularly, throughout the day.

Maybe even just 30 seconds, just hitting the pause button when we're getting really overwhelmed and stopping and settling and resting and breathing. That in itself can be really helpful. A little saying that I sometimes use in my teaching is, take a break before you break. Or take a break before you need it. So you're not always functioning at the very end of your resources, see if you can leave a little bit of juice in the tank and have these regular breaks throughout the day.

And during the breaks, what can be really helpful is to move from conceptual mode to experiential mode. Most of us are very caught up with thinking dominance during the day. We're very heady. And we're not so aware of our senses, but we've got the five physical senses always available to us, seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, and smelling. And if we drop our awareness inside our senses, then that lessens the tendency for conceptual dominance.

There's been some studies with very advanced Tibetan meditators. They're called the Olympic athletes of meditation. And they've all got at least 10,000 hours under their belts as it were. And their brains have been scanned and their brains are really quite profoundly different through the training that they've engaged in, in meditation and awareness and compassion training. And one of the main differences or one of the profound differences is they've moved from evaluation mode to experiential mode.

Which means they've moved from a conceptual thinking dominance to a direct experience dominance. So they're in their experience as it happens rather than ruminating and worrying about their experience. So the tip today or the practice today is to simply take these regular breaks, drop into your senses. And that might mean going to the window and looking at the sky for 30 seconds, one minute. It might mean stopping and smelling a flower in the garden.

It might mean really tasting your cup of coffee. That will be an amazing practice. When you're having a cup of tea, you're having a cup of coffee, just have the cup of tea, just have the cup of coffee. Put your phone down. Pause, rest, settle.

So that's the main tip I'm offering today. Take a break before you break and drop into your senses. And this can be really quite profound in terms of accessing more stillness and more inner peace, even if you live a very demanding, hectic, stressful life. I think your brain, your nervous system, your heart, your mind, your soul will be grateful if you introduce this idea of regular sense-based breaks into your day. So, thanks so much for giving me the gift of your attention to listen to this talk, especially if taking five minutes out to listen to this is actually quite a significant step for you.

I hope you found it helpful and please know that I'm walking beside you. So when you're having your breaks, even if it can be so hard to stop, just know that I'm trying to do the same thing as well and my own life and there'll be many other people who've listened to this talk who will also be trying to introduce these present moment sens-based breaks into their day. So I wish you all the very, very best and thanks again for listening.