Thich Nhat Hanh’s Simple, Powerful Method for Staying Centered

Shocker: It’s about breathing.

Photo by ActionVance on Unsplash

[Note: I will add the voiceover version of this article on Monday.]

Let’s face it, most of the time we feel we have as much control over our lives as a pinball being flicked around a pinball machine. Bing, bing, bing. Click, click. Off we go again, the vicissitudes of life constantly interrupting any sense of sustained centeredness.

That feeling of general instability ruling the roost in our inner worlds isn’t fun. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that it doesn’t have to be that way. Practices like meditation and mindfulness can, if performed regularly, go a long way toward stabilizing our inner worlds.

The maestro of mindfulness

Today, I want to focus on the simplest of simple mindfulness techniques that can help with this. It comes from the maestro of mindfulness himself, the late Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh.

Here is how the great master described his technique for staying centered:

“Conscious breathing is my anchor.”

Yes, that sounds utterly basic, to the point that you might dismiss it as meaningless. Hear me out.

First, what does he mean by ‘anchor’? Well, the function of an anchor is to hold something in place, usually a boat. If you want to fish in a certain place and not drift away, you throw an anchor in the water and let it drop to the bottom.

A personal anchor is something that keeps our psyche, our being, in place, in the moment. It keeps us centered.

Thoughts unmoor us

If the wind or currents are what cause the boat to drift, thoughts and feelings are what cause our personal center to become unmoored, leaving us feeling unstable and anxious.

How about Thich Nhat Hanh’s use of ‘conscious breathing’ ? We breathe all the time. If we don’t, we’re toast.

But it’s not often that we’re aware of our breathing. Conscious breathing is when we place all of our attention/awareness on it.

So why is this important? Why should any of us care about using ‘conscious breathing’ as an ‘anchor’?

Why this is so useful

Because it is life-alteringly useful. How? To answer that I’m going to reference an interview I saw years ago that left me gobsmacked. It’s the inspiration for this piece.

It was Oprah Winfrey interviewing Thich Nhat Hanh, two souls, both beautiful in their own, unique ways, interacting on camera.

And Oprah being Oprah, she had to satisfy her curiosity about how this world-famous Buddhist monk handled basic things in life. She asked him something to the effect of:

“So you must have some stress in your life, maybe with people wanting you to do certain things or feeling overwhelmed with commitments or what have you. So how does someone so spiritually advanced like you handle stress?”

His answer, which won’t surprise you, was:

“I simply come back to my breathing.”

That was it. Not a lot of embellishment. None required.

Oprah’s response was something akin to, “Oh. Okay. That makes sense.”

No big deal, right? Just return to your breathing.

It is a big deal in the sense of how powerful a tool we have right in front of us…at all times!

The stresses of modern life

We 21st century Earthlings constantly battle with the stresses of everyday life. Dealing with our kids, spouses, significant others, coworkers, bosses, other drivers, Costco madness, and on down the line.

These are what I mean by the vicissitudes of life. It comes with the territory of living in the modern world.

And too often we let these mostly little stresses knock us off our center. Well, we don’t have to let that happen. We can use our conscious breathing to anchor ourselves.

If your boss says something shitty, go back to your office and take several conscious breaths. Ditto if that’s your husband, teenage kid or the airline that keeps you on hold for two hours.

Breathe…

Here’s another way Thich Nhat Hanh expressed it:

“Whenever your mind becomes scattered, use your breath as the means to take hold of your mind again.”

As with virtually every powerful spiritual teaching, this is ultra simple. Just go to your breathing. No big whoop, right?

But, as Mr. Shakespeare so eloquently wrote, therein lies the rub. It’s the conundrum that every single spiritual seeker faces. What is that?

The difficulty of fixing our attention on the simple. Why is it so hard to simply go to our breathing when bothered by something?

Mostly, it’s because our minds are taught to be complex. We’re taught to analyze and complicate matters.

If our sales manager at the car dealership asks us for our sales strategy for the first quarter of the year and we hand in a memo that says, “I’m going to focus on selling as many cars as I can,” he or she will be one unhappy boss.

As I’ve written before, the key to life is to continually move downward on the education track – from the complicated Phd mind we all have all the way down to the simple, kindergarten mind. Because that is the place that we can use the brilliance of our minds while also maintaining equanimity within.

To quote one of my favorite bands from childhood, The Beach Boys:

“Wouldn’t it be nice?”

The takeaway

This is so doable. Use it. It’s there. Every moment of every day.

If you find yourself upset – a little, or a lot – go to your breathing.

It will relieve a boatload of stress.

A final thank you

I’ll close with a paean to Thich Nhat Hanh:

Wherever you are in the mystery of the afterlife, thank you for all of the beautiful, useful, compassionate wisdom you bestowed on all of us during your 95-year stint on our little rock called Earth.