Are you in? We’re taking the below 15-minute challenge for 3 months. Comment below if you wish to participate with us.

What to do:

1. Find a place in the house that is quiet, dim, and free of distraction.
2. In the room, find a place to sit where you can be alert and can keep your back straight without any back support. (Examples: on your bed, the edge of a chair or on the floor).
3. Close your eyes. Keep your mouth closed. Keep your back straight.
4. Bring all of your attention to the area of your nose where your breath is entering or leaving your body.
5. Do not change the intensity or the duration of your breath. Keep your attention on your breath as it is operating naturally.
6. Keep your awareness strictly on the experience of breath entering and leaving your body for as long as possible.
7. As your mind has been trained to wander, it will naturally drift to day dreaming (i.e. it will think of conversations, past experiences, or possible future experiences). This is not a bad thing – it is the natural state of the mind to think. As soon as you become aware that your mind has wandered, bring your attention immediately back to your breath.
8. Do not concentrate on any deities, religious philosophies, God, mantras, light, colors, or vibrations. Keep your focus strictly on your breath.
9. Do not revel in ideas, stories, poems, or possible future projects. As soon as you become aware that your mind is doing something other than focusing on breath, bring your attention immediately back to your breath.
10. Do this for 15 minutes every day for 3 months. At the end of 3 months evaluate if this exercise has helped you and determine if you want to continue, extend to a longer period than 15 minutes or stop the exercise altogether.

Why do this:

• Transparency: When your mind wanders in this 15 minute silent space, you become exposed to what your mind is creating for your life.
  Context: Every word we say and every action we take is a product of our thinking. How do we know where we are headed in life if we do not know what our mind is creating for us. 15 minutes is very little time to observe one’s mind but at least it gives a shallow glimpse of what is most important to your mind at this time.
• Focus: As we shift our attention from our mind’s wandering back to our breath, we enhance our ability to focus on something even though our mind would rather wander.
  Context: In today’s world, there are many distractions competing for our attention. Our ability to stay focused is constantly being challenged. Focusing on breath, on the other hand, is an extremely boring thing to do as our body is already breathing without our awareness. This practice of letting go of distracting day dreams and returning to the boring empty space of breath helps strengthen our mind to avoid mental distractions in our day-to-day life.
• Letting go: The practice of letting go of more gripping day dreams in favor of returning to observing our breath also helps strengthen our ability to let go of certain thoughts when negativity arises.
  Context: Sometimes our mind creates very positive experiences for us: compassion for others, contentment, or general feelings of well-being. Those, of course, we wish to relish and retain. Sometimes, however, the mind creates very unhealthy experiences for us: fear, hatred, or obsession. We are largely at the whim of our mind’s tendencies when we slip into negativity. As we strengthen our ability to let go of thoughts to return to our breath, we increase our ability to let go of those negative thoughts when we are doling in them at a future stage.
• Mind-Body Connection. The more we shift our mental awareness and attention to our breath, the more we strengthen the connection between our overall mind and our overall body.
  Context: Our body is constantly communicating to our mind when it is experiencing pleasure or pain. Sometimes these messages are very subtle and unfortunately are missed because our mind is already occupied with much thought or noise. Many of our ailments or physical dysfunctions could be avoided if we became aware of our incorrect posture or incorrect activity at an earlier stage in life.
• Oneness: In those brief moments, when we are only focused strictly on our breath, we have effectively disassociated ourselves from our thought. In those moments, we may experience a state of emptiness or a state of inter-connectedness.
  Context: As we are living breathing entities, so too is the entire universe. The one thing that masks or separates us from everything else is just our thinking. Albert Einstein referred to this separation as a delusion: “A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires.”