Once in a while I would have conversations with old students (those who completed the 8-week courses) who reach out to me to get some advice to help them decide whether to move into mindfulness and compassion teaching. This genre of conversation sometimes come up too when I run the MBSR and MSC classes when participants wonder what it means to have a "practice" or the way I practice in my own life.
I often have to start with re-explaining what a practice is - not just sitting on the meditation cushion or engaging in any formal practices such as walking meditation or lying down body scans.
I would find myself also having to share abit more on the way I live my life or my understanding of how some of the wise teachers would live theirs. Although most of them live in the monastic settings, the way they practice in daily life is not much different from ours - it is about remembering the "present" throughout the day, whether you are opening the door, queuing to get your food, sweeping the floor.
It is the way of life.
One way is how I tend to spend my time during vacation. I remember after getting into meditation practice for a couple of years and found myself becoming more and more curious and started going on silent retreats. I was still in my full-time hectic consulting job back then and had vacation days to clear. I started to notice that my vacation was planned around trying to get a space into (yes, spaces can be limited!) and attending silent meditation retreats, rather than trips involving shopping or eating.
Being at Silent retreats is a different way of life than what most people knew. Over the years, I had become used to the astonished (or empathetic) looks on friends' and relatives' faces when I told them what I 'do' in retreats - meditating 7-10 hours a day, not talking with others, perform cleaning duties, eating two meals a day, not touching any technological devices (which are often deposited away).
It is just the way it is. When one had experienced silence, and fall in love with the silence, and choose to come back to it over and over. You choose to leave the city and the mundane life behind, and whatever your identity is..... to simply dwell in the heartminds from within.
And in daily living, I found the the gradual disinterest of spending time on Netflix and TV programs other than intentional watching. More tuning into Dharma talks, spending time in nature or anything that teaches me about the nature of life. It is a choice of what you feed the mind with. The practice is seeing the choice.