Who's in the Shower with You?

When you are in the shower, are you thinking about your first meeting of the day or an interaction you had with someone yesterday or even something that happened 10 years ago? Who is there with you?

If you do this, then you are absolutely normal. Some of us do our best thinking in the shower and wish we had somewhere to write down these earth-shattering ideas.

This is what the mind does when it's not asked to focus on something. It goes into its time traveling, problem solving mode. Mindfulness the process of asking your mind to focus and be aware of what is going on in the present moment. And the shower is a perfect place to practice this.

There is one additional part of mindfulness that needs to occur for it to be effective. It needs to be free from evaluation and judgment. For example, if I'm walking down the road and I see a black mailbox, being mindful is saying to myself “There is a black mailbox”. I may then notice that my mind doesn’t stop there. It may say ,“Why does that mailbox have a dent in it? I bet the mailman ran into it. The mailman seems to be running into everybody’s mailbox is these days. What is going on with him?”. And now I am no longer calm and just noticing, I have judged the condition of the mailbox and created a story about it. I am off on a tangent that awakens my body with some sort of emotion, in this case, frustration. My story may or may not be accurate, but my emotion is there nonetheless.

With mindfulness we just want to stay with the description. There is no need to say something is good or bad, right or wrong. No need to fix or explain anything. As I notice my mind start to judge, I can simply guide it back to the present moment and say, “It’s is just a mailbox.”

So try this the next time you take a shower. Notice the feeling of the water on your body. Experience the temperature. Really smell your shampoo and soap, maybe even try to describe what sort of scent it is such as floral, citrus, lavender, etc. Listen to the water coming out of the showerhead and going down the drain. And when you notice your mind drifting away to the grocery store or to the first appointment of your day, just gently bring your mind back to the present moment and start to describe and notice the things that are happening again.

As a mindfulness exercise, do this for 1 week. To remind yourself to be mindful, you could use a dry erase marker on your glass shower wall or door to tick off the days. Rinse and repeat. : )