It seems life is full of problems. We go from solving one to worrying about the next. We’re all familiar with this situation, and it seems normal in this day and age when we often feel overwhelmed with to-do lists and responsibilities. It’s almost as if we don’t have time to breathe.

Even if you have a meditation practice, and you can at times access a state of peaceful awareness, you may not be able to bring this state into your everyday life. Meditation is not meant to be an escape, rather a tool to help you catch sight of a clearer, calmer way of being amidst your daily activities. If you just get a hint of this feeling, this is enough to create a momentum that will carry over into the problem-to-problem mentality.

When you experience challenges in your life, bring them into your meditation practice, and bring your practice into the problems.

For example: when you are meditating and have the thought of a difficult or intractable situation, instead of simply noticing it and returning to the breath or another object of meditation, actually focus on it and then breath it out. Imagine it appearing as dark smoke, inhale, select, and exhale it out.

Do it as many times as you like, until you get a sense of relief. You won’t ‘lose’ the situation; it will still be in your life at the end of your practice. But you will have created some space around it, and opened the door to a new way of viewing it. And you will have loosened the ‘hold’ it has on you. An insight may come to mind on how to deal with the problem, either immediately or later on.

Similarly, during the course of your day when you get caught up in things, take a few moments to breathe mindfully, become aware of your body and how it feels, try to consciously let go of tension. Then return to your work.

You don’t solve problems by endlessly dwelling on them, but by allowing some space for new information to arise, a new perspective.In this way, you integrate the practice with your life, and you will eventually achieve results.

“Meditation must be continuous. The current of meditation must be present in all your activities.” – Annamalai Swami

“Mental problems feed on the attention that you give them. The more you worry about them, the stronger they become. If you ignore them, they lose their power and finally vanish.” – Annamalai Swami