Hi, I'm trying to figure out how to practice in daily life and wonder if you have any suggestions. I think that using the breath could perhaps be a good way to be mindful in daily life.
To be more specific my idea is to try to keep some awareness on the breath the whole time during the day. This enables to do other things. I'm not trying to ignore anything, I just use the breath to make sure I'm being aware of awareness and not wandering away in thoughts.
The benefits of this would be as I see it:
- be able to maintain this kind of mindfulness in daily life
- easy to become aware of mind wandering. no breath = mind wandered
- enables to do other things at the same time. I can for example write this text and still keep some awareness on the breath
- calming effect of breath awareness
Disadvantages:
- inefficient, because it requires divided attention. I assume it would be more efficient to just focus on a single task at a time
- less detail, also because of divided attention
So there are probably more advantages/disadvantages there but I just made a quick list. I think that Goenka recommended paying attention to the breath as a daily life practice, at least that's how I understood it. I have tried a number of different techniques for daily practice.
The problem that I see in some techniques is that I find it to be restricting in terms of what you are able to do. I mean for example if I take my bicycle to work I could choose to use this activity as a practice to be aware of physical sensations associated with that activity with as much clarity as possible (and maybe some attention on the road

). It would be a kind of formal practice I guess.
Of course it's important for me to do formal practice when the meditation is the primary focus of attention but I also value a lot the freedom to THINK and associate freely. Therefore I would choose to rather divide my attention on thoughts and breath at the same time to maintain mindfulness, OR I would try to be mindful of my thoughts. What do you think of that?