{"id":20173,"date":"2025-01-16T15:17:20","date_gmt":"2025-01-16T16:17:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=20173"},"modified":"2025-01-16T16:35:18","modified_gmt":"2025-01-16T16:35:18","slug":"what-thich-nhat-hanh-taught-me-about-mindfulness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=20173","title":{"rendered":"What Thich Nhat Hanh Taught Me About Mindfulness"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Thich Nhat Hanh classic is celebrating its 50th year in circulation. It also taught me to be OK with life\u2019s uncertainties.<\/p>\n

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In the fall of 2017, I moved into a pale green Victorian house in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco. I\u2019d recently left Chicago after a one-year stint \u2014 though it felt as if I had escaped.<\/p>\n

At the time, I was in the midst of an all-consuming battle with anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder, one that I was desperate to figure out. San Francisco, I hoped, with its Pacific vistas, endlessly green parks and people from just about everywhere, would give me the space to shift my life in a sunnier direction.<\/p>\n

I dropped my suitcases at my new apartment and decided to head outside. But as I walked around the neighborhood, passing a large purple mural of Jimi Hendrix, I couldn\u2019t appreciate my new home. I was too focused on willing my intrusive thoughts to stop.<\/p>\n

My O.C.D. is not like the one you see in movies. I don\u2019t check doors or wash my hands eight times before leaving the house. For many people with O.C.D., including me, it\u2019s more internal: Irrational thoughts enter the mind and remain there, festering.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The circular thought I experienced in front of that mural was absurd: that I would never live the life I wanted because I wouldn\u2019t be able to focus on anything except, well, worrying.<\/p>\n

But in that old Victorian house, I met Nate, and we quickly morphed from roommates into friends. We played guitar in the living room, prepared homemade dessert hummus and dissected our ongoing exoduses from the Judeo-Christian faiths in which we\u2019d grown up. Not only that, Nate was a meditation teacher and he gradually became mine.<\/p>\n

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The Thich Nhat Hanh classic is celebrating its 50th year in circulation. It also taught me to be OK with life\u2019s uncertainties.In the fall of 2017, I moved into a pale green Victorian house in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco. I\u2019d recently left Chicago after a one-year stint \u2014 though it felt as if I had escaped.At the time, I was in the midst of an all-consuming battle with anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder, one that I was desperate to figure out. San Francisco, I hoped, with its Pacific vistas, endlessly green parks and people from just about everywhere, would give me the space to shift my life in a sunnier direction.I dropped my suitcases at my new apartment and decided to head outside. But as I walked around the neighborhood, passing a large purple mural of Jimi Hendrix, I couldn\u2019t appreciate my new home. I was too focused on willing my intrusive thoughts to stop.My O.C.D. is not like the one you see in movies. I don\u2019t check doors or wash my hands eight times before leaving the house. For many people with O.C.D., including me, it\u2019s more internal: Irrational thoughts enter the mind and remain there, festering.The circular thought I experienced in front of that mural was absurd: that I would never live the life I wanted because I wouldn\u2019t be able to focus on anything except, well, worrying.But in that old Victorian house, I met Nate, and we quickly morphed from roommates into friends. We played guitar in the living room, prepared homemade dessert hummus and dissected our ongoing exoduses from the Judeo-Christian faiths in which we\u2019d grown up. Not only that, Nate was a meditation teacher and he gradually became mine.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20175,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20173"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20176,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20173\/revisions\/20176"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}