This piece comes from Episode 02 of ‘the Inner Practice’ podcast.
Small annoyances can rile us up, and it’s often easier to just let them pass. But that’s exactly why they’re worth paying attention to. The small stuff never asks much of us, which makes it the safest place to build a skill that matters a great deal once life sends something far bigger our way.
Someone cuts in front of you in a queue, or a marketing call rings through at exactly the wrong moment, these are the moments to practise noticing the feeling instead of reacting to it. Notice where the annoyance actually shows up in the body, the chest maybe, or the belly, and just stay with it. Don’t narrate it, don’t run the story of what that person did and how irritating it was, the story is what keeps the emotion alive. Just the sensation itself, and it disappears on its own within a minute or two.
That staying is the whole practice. Every time we do it instead of feeding the story, the trigger loses a little of its grip. Do it enough times, and the thing that would have completely thrown us a year ago barely registers at all.
This is also what a morning yoga practice already gives us, that connection to the body, and the confidence that comes with instantly feeling when something isn’t right. It’s strongest right after practice, so all it takes is keeping a thread of that awareness going through the day, in the physical heart, the palms of the hands, wherever we can feel it. Because the body reacts before the story does.
Without that connection, the first we hear of it is once we’re already deep into the argument in our head. And skipping past the feeling doesn’t get rid of it, it just leaves it waiting for the next thing that provokes it.
