–Practicing Beginner’s Mind, which means opening your thoughts and perceptions and seeing students, lessons, resources, and your own teaching practice as if for the first time–the same way beginning students will see it.
–Remembering that Breathing is the Life Force that will focus your energy, clarify your thinking, and calm the white noise and chaos around you.
–Allowing Meditation and Reflection to still your mind and create peace within you.
–Embracing Compassion and Empathy in order to connect with (and learn to love and care about) your students, your colleagues, your subject, and yourself.
–Immersing yourself in Detachment, which allows you to disconnect your expectations from any particular or anticipated outcome. This moment is exactly as it should be.
–Enjoying Present Moment Awareness by pausing to participate in your life at any given moment and experience it fully or, as Ram Dass says to “Be Here Now.”
–Experiencing Mindfulness as a technique that allows you to experience The Now—whether it’s teaching a lesson, walking the dog, or putting on your shoes. Yesterday is a memory. Tomorrow is a wish. There is only now.
–Insisting on Space by decluttering your classroom, your home, and your mind. Too much “stuff” can be suffocating and then the breath – the Life Force – is compromised.
–Learning Acceptance of all things – our friends, our foes, our loved ones, our world, ourselves and, perhaps most importantly, our own limitations.
–Inviting the Simplicity that defies the modern status quo of haste and excess, but that can lead to a greater, deeper, and longer lasting joy. TZT