On my walk through Central Park each morning, on my way to my office, I go under an overpass that is quite lovely.  For some weeks now, a woman has been there almost every morning, creating a painting of the overpass.  As I have watched, her painting has revealed increasing depth and intricacy as she works to capture the intricacies of the stonework and colors of the overpass.

Her constant return to the place where she creates this painting got me to thinking about how important it is to be willing to return to practices that help us change the quality of our internal experience.  This coincides with how our brains need repetition in order to create new habits, to generate neural networks that make new learnings more readily available to us.

For example, mindfulness meditation is called a "practice" because it's something we return to again and again.  Reinforcing the capacity to focus and to return to that focus as many times as necessary during the meditation period, generates neurons in the brain that support a sense of well-being.  Working with breathing practices that enhance our health also invites us to return, again and again, to these practices.

And so, for this week's experiment, I invite you to focus on a particular practice that you have found enhances your experience of being grounded, or happy, or filled up - whatever practice you've found that adds positively to the quality of your daily experience.  Then, I invite you to notice what happens if you notice even more consciously what it's like to return to this practice regularly, every day.  So often, once we get used to a practice, we may allow it to fall by the wayside now and then and, when we do, we miss the opportunity to continue to deepen a sense of well-being or whatever other qualities enhance the journey through our daily life.

As with all the experiments, there's no right way to do this one.  It's just one more opportunity to consciously choose what you want to be the focus of your daily life - to consciously choose the quality and tone of how you move through your day.  Please remember to bring curiosity along as your constant companion - curiosity that can support an exploration of how the consistency of practice shows us that we're not looking to arrive anywhere.  Instead, we're looking to touch our daily journey with whatever supports and activities add to the quality of our lives.

And, remember to leave all "shoulds" and judgments behind.  Patting them on the head and allowing them to move on through is its own practice.  You might notice what it's like to deliberately focus on them at times throughout the day, to see what happens when you build the habit of responding to them with open awareness and a commitment not to build on them when they do emerge.