Perhaps you’ve gotten into the groove of your new meditation practice and you’ve even worked up to sitting twenty minutes a day. Maybe you’ve started to see the benefits—noticing how calm you were when one of your direct reports failed to meet a significant deadline or how focused you were during the board meeting even though there was some unresolved drama brewing at home. As you’ve become more aware, however, you may also have started to notice places and times you check out, and you may even wonder if there are situations in which you are so unaware, you don’t even know you’ve gone unconscious.

During my years of practice, I’ve noticed it’s really easy to lose the thread of conscious awareness when making the transition from one activity or place to another. This can be particularly true in the transition from daily activity to sitting meditation practice, and from sitting back to daily activity. I could be busy, busy, busy; then yank myself over to the cushion, sit, breathe, sit, breathe, label thoughts, be, notice, repeat, the bell rings; and then yank myself immediately back into the email, text, reading, writing, talking frenzy. Or it could be as mundane waking up from sleep and getting out of bed. And there is always the “How did I get home?” Sometimes we’re so preoccupied with something mentally when we get in the car that we go on automatic pilot and somehow arrive at our destination, luckily usually unscathed. (To be honest, it amazes me that people don’t have more accidents.)

Why is this so much the case? I think it may be a combination of being so habituated to propelling our minds into the future—to the next thing we need to do and place we need to be—and the fact that we have procedural memory, which allows us to do things like drive without having to be completely conscious of what we’re doing to do them.  Consequently, I think practicing being mindful in the midst of transitions is a very fruitful place to practice.

You may identify one particular type of transition with which you want to practice. For example, it could be moving into and/or out of your meditation practice. It could be while getting dressed or undressed. Or what about after you’ve finished having a conversation with someone? It might even be something as simple as walking from one room into another and being aware of crossing a threshold. Find a way to remind yourself you are going to do this practice (strategically placed Post-Its work wonders). You might also set a broader intention (and leave a bigger “note to self,” so to speak) to pay attention to any transitions that happen to arise during your day.

As you are making the transition, pay attention to the sensations in your body. If you notice thoughts or feelings, allow them to pass through you, returning your attention to your body. Also, be mindful of your surroundings, for instance, using your senses to become aware that you’re in your car in rush-hour traffic on I-70 rather than at the 10am meeting where you’ll shortly be giving your pitch.

I’d love to hear about your experience of being mindful of transitions. Let us know about the types of transitions you’ve chosen to explore and what you’ve been noticing from doing this practice.