“Sit 20 minutes a day and it will change your life” – Tanouye Roshi

At the end of January, we began a 90-day online training, called the Habit of Freedom. During this time, over 120 participants committed to practice zazen daily and replace a habit with one that was more life-giving. As further support, we also offered a series of zazenkai, online talks, and monthly meetup discussions around the theme of habits. While only a fraction will actually complete the training, participants have noted physical changes like improved hara breathing and more resonant voices, and awareness that their lives had become quieter and more spacious. The 90-days will culminate in Spring Keishin at the end of the month.

Whitelaw Roshi set the stage for our 90-day training with her talk called the Sneaky Work of Habits where she explained how habits conserve energy, with a cue that triggers a set routine which gives an expected reward. But, habits are sneaky in that they (1) limit possibility, (2) keep us stuck in the past, and (3) get taken as an identity, even if they’re not serving us. 

During the pandemic, a lot of bad habits crept into our lives that felt difficult to change, despite our best intentions. This was related to the disruption of the many ways we usually organize our lives over the past 2 years. My government job became even more sedentary as my new routine became overworking from home on a stressful COVID-19 public health response, making trips to the Virtual Dojo, and treating myself to late-night streaming TV. More insidious though was that this lifestyle reinforced my self-conception of being undisciplined, or if I was being kinder to myself, a person who preferred spontaneity over routine.

As we started the 90-day training, I was excited to take up a simple goal of doing zazen and movement everyday. Familiar with the benefits of zazen, I had more variable success with building an exercise habit over the first few weeks. I even asked Whitelaw Roshi for clues around her good discipline. She said, “When I find disciplines that make me feel good, I tend to stick with them.” She laughed. “So, my morning routine keeps getting bigger and bigger!”

I talked to my sister who referred me to podcasts on James Clear’s Atomic Habits framework, which I used as the basis for one of our meetup discussions. He suggested building identity-based habits and systems that make your habit obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying. From a Zen perspective, why couldn’t an undisciplined person be the kind of person that showed up for zazen and exercise everyday? I made the decision to start with exercise that I would enjoy. So, on top of my baseline of two hour-long personal training sessions per week, I began adding short hip-hop dance videos to my daily routine. Then, I started choosing videos with dance routines that were longer and more challenging.

Then I started adding outdoor walks. And then, I began climbing up the 10 flights of stairs to my condo after my walk each day. I also asked friends to join me on hikes of varying difficulties and weather, including the spring snow in the woods of Wisconsin and stretches of Georgia’s Appalachian Trail. A highlight was when I challenged Ryan Roshi, who used to play pro basketball, and her wife to a game of hoops, thinking “Hey, I used to really enjoy playing on my middle school team!” It was more fun than I could have imagined and made me remember all the other physical activities I enjoyed as a child. Before long, I noticed I was feeling younger and more alive in my body than I had in years. My kiai (vital energy) felt uncorked, and the element of play was spilling over into all areas of my life. I still felt the objective struggles and pain of the external world, but I was different.

Now, I’m a person that plans ahead to always get in their zazen and exercise routine because these activities bring their own reward. I’m a person that keeps myself accountable by tracking my good habits on a dry erase board. These are habits I hope to bring forward beyond the 90-days. And now I say, “Sit 30 minutes and do something vigorous that you enjoy to move your body everyday. See how it changes your life.”