Yogi: I feel lots of pressure on week days and look forward to the weekend, but then it gets worse – I feel even less relaxed. What should I do?
Sayadaw: Rather than wait to do formal meditation like sitting once a day, you need to learn to meditate throughout the day – and to relax the stress every time you feel it.
The nature of practicing the dhamma is that you have to do it all the time. Meditation is not a part time, once a day, kind of thing. It is something we need to have in our mind all the time.
So, during the day, take moments out from your day and just be with the breath, or learn to recognize your feelings and tension, and relax.
As you are working, recognize again and again when tension is increasing so that you can relax and do your work, like building a different habit of doing your work.
Be careful of your motivation to practice – if it is to feel relaxed or better, that gets in the way of relaxing. We need to have the attitude that we’re practicing to cultivate wholesome minds and to learn.
When there is awareness, eagerness can’t overtake the mind – when we’re not aware, the desire to do things well, do things fast and to finish, all these desires overtake the mind and the mind gets tired from these expectations.
We should be mindful of all the desires and wanting in the mind – recognizing what is unnecessary at the moment like wanting to do something really well. We can lower our expectations, get what is necessary done first, and worry about the standard later – that will decrease the pressure.