A · D A I L Y · P R A C T I C E
It is early morning. The sun is just rising, the birds are busy, and I am breathing. Nothing more than that. These are the moments I notice what it means to be truly present — no agenda.
What you see above was filmed in our garden on one of those quiet mornings. The movement is simple: arms rising with the inhale, lowering with the exhale. In Chi Gong, this synchronisation of breath and movement cultivates Qi — life energy. Inhaling to gather, exhaling to release. The shoulders stay relaxed, the arms soft. The movement follows the breath, not the other way around.
What I love about it is how the hands make the breath visible. You become aware of something that is always there — continuous, like the ocean coming to shore and pulling away. The air moving in and out, the hands connecting earth and sky.
Try it yourself – even just a few breaths, arms rising and falling. Notice what shifts.
In the previous article on the sense organs, we looked at how Ayurveda understands the Indriyas as instruments of perception. But how can we use them with awareness? How can we build a little pause in between our perception and our reaction?
Awareness
In his book The Creative Act (2023), Rick Rubin writes about awareness as something that moves differently from our usual mode of doing. In most of our daily activities, he observes, we set the agenda and work toward a goal. Awareness is the opposite: the program – the world – is happening around us, and we are the witness rather than the author.
What strikes me most in his writing is the distinction between noticing and studying. The moment we label or analyse what we are experiencing, we step out of pure presence with it. Awareness happens first — as a direct, unmediated connection with what is before us. Understanding can come later. As Rubin puts it: “If something strikes me as interesting or beautiful, first I live that experience. Only afterward might I attempt to understand it.”
This is an invitation to delay analysis. To let the first contact with something — a sound, a sensation, a rising sun — simply land, before the mind moves in to categorise it.
Rubin also notes that awareness is not a state you force. There is little effort involved, though persistence matters. It is something you actively allow — a presence with, and acceptance of, what is happening right now. And while we cannot always control what we are noticing, we can cultivate our ability to notice. We can expand awareness or narrow it, quieten the inside to perceive more on the outside, or reduce outer noise to hear what is happening within.
This is, in Ayurvedic terms, the work of tending to the senses — nurturing our capacity to truly receive what is before us.
A daily practice
The breath is perhaps the most available doorway into this. It is always there, requiring nothing from us except attention. Following it consciously — as in the movement above — is one of the simplest ways to land in the present moment.
Presence does not require a special moment or a quiet garden. It can be found in the most ordinary actions – washing dishes, walking to work, preparing food. When we bring full attention to these small acts, they become what Ayurveda calls Sadhana: daily practice as a form of devotion. A radical reorientation of how we move through the day – which directly benefits our sense of calm.
note: passages from Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act were shared with me by Kara Duval during the introduction of her movement class. I have not read the book myself, but these pages stopped me.