The Mindful BAse

During the final year of my PhD, finding time to truly rest felt almost impossible. For three and a half years, my life had revolved around experiments, deadlines, students, publications, and the constant pressure to keep moving forward. Like many PhD candidates, I became skilled at postponing my own needs. There was always another experiment to run, another reason why rest could wait. The consequences accumulated slowly. I got sick several times. My vacation days piled up untouched. My days had became a race against time, and I had become a human doing. I convinced myself that focusing on finishing the PhD was more important than travelling, socialising, or taking a real break. Work became both my purpose and my excuse.

At the same time, I was trying to reconnect with myself. On weekends, I attended a yoga teacher training programme, something I chose purely for my own growth as a human being. While I learned about mindfulness, the power of breath, and balance, I had often been doing the opposite in my daily life. I had been pushing through exhaustion and treating my body like a machine.

Then, in November, my best friend invited me to visit her in Japan, where she had moved earlier. The invitation immediately filled me with excitement and a sense of guilt. Japan had been a dream destination since childhood, shaped by anime (Pokémon). Yet my first thought was not “yes”, it was “I don’t have time.”

At that point, my contract extension was still uncertain, my dissertation remained unfinished, and every voice in my head insisted that taking nearly a month off would be irresponsible. I nearly talked myself out of it several times.

I vividly recall a conversation with the department head. I sat in front of him in his office and told him that I wanted to take some time off. His response was practical and familiar within academia: “You can take a break after you’re done with your dissertation.” For a moment, I understood the logic. Finish first. Rest later. It was the same message I had been telling myself for years.

But this time, something in me resisted.

“My body and mind need the time now,” I replied, “not several months from now.”

Looking back, that conversation marked a turning point. I finally openly acknowledged that my well-being could not be scheduled for the future.

So, I bought the tickets and made a promise to myself to write every day until I leave for Japan. I wanted to arrive there without the feeling that I had abandoned my responsibilities. Slowly, writing became my way of making peace with the decision.

A few weeks later, I boarded my first long-haul flight and travelled to Japan.

The last days of the trip brought one of the most transformative experiences of all: diving in Okinawa.

It was a sunny day, but the wind made me shiver as I stood on the shore. The ocean stretched out endlessly. It was calm, blue, and inviting. I put on my wetsuit and diving gear, listening to the instructor’s explanations, trying to anchor myself in my breath. I wanted to stay open, curious, and present.

Then came the moment to submerge. As soon as I went underwater, panic took over. My breathing felt strange. It became mechanical, unnatural. “Am I going to suffocate down here?” my mind whispered. I could feel my old fears of heights and depths bubbling up, pressing against my chest.

I surfaced a few times, trying to decompress my ears and calm my racing heart. Each time, I repeated a quiet mantra: “Embrace openness”. Those words became my anchor.

After a few rounds of surfacing, breathing, returning to the water, and taking short breaks, something shifted. I stopped fighting the fear and started to observe it. The panic was still there, but I could hold it. Like holding a trembling bird in my hands without trying to make it stop shaking.

Learning to swim as an adult, I carried old memories of fear in my body. I carried the panic from childhood moments when I was suddenly dropped into the sea. Underwater, those memories returned through instinctive, jerky movements and an urgent need to escape. In my haste, I forgot to equalise the pressure, and pain filled my left ear.

Yet even through the discomfort, I stayed with it. With my best friend’s patient instruction and support, I went back under one more time. Accepting her help, this time slower, more mindful. And finally, I found it: a moment of stillness. A moment where I was simply breathing underwater.

In that silence, surrounded by blue and underwater life, I wasn’t a scientist, a diver-in-the-making or a human doing. I was just a human being. I was afraid, curious, alive.

Later, I realised why this experience stayed with me.

During my yoga and mindfulness facilitation trainings, I had learned about mindfulness and the distinction between “doing mode” and “being mode.” Most of modern life is lived in doing mode: planning, achieving, comparing, solving, and constantly moving toward the next task. It is useful, but when it becomes the default, life turns into an endless sequence of to-dos and obligations. We fall asleep exhausted and wake up already running.

For much of my PhD, I lived in that state. My days were measured by productivity, my worth by progress. Even rest became something to optimise.

Being mode, in contrast, invites us to temporarily suspend judgement. To stop fighting reality and meet the present moment as it is. Not to give up, but to see clearly enough to choose our response rather than react from exhaustion or fear.

Underwater, I understood this not intellectually, but physically.

The more I fought the fear, the stronger it became. The moment I stopped trying to get rid of it and simply acknowledged it, something softened. The fear did not disappear, but it no longer controlled me.

Japan, in its own way, offered the same lesson. It interrupted a pattern I had lived in for years during my PhD: the belief that life begins after everything is finished. The dissertation would still be waiting when I returned. The deadlines would still exist. The uncertainty would remain.

But something else had changed.

For the first time in years, I understood that my life was not something that would begin later. It was already happening.