Doing or Being Mode

The head mind is the logical and practical part of ourselves that goes about the daily business of surviving, living, thinking, and analyzing.. The head is however prone to worry and overthinking. The solution is to become fully present, to live in the here and the now. Three ways to do this are tuning into your body, exploring your senses, and becoming mindful of your surroundings.

Doing Mode and Being Mode

According to the four authors of The Mindful Way through Depression, when people feel depressed or anxious, they naturally try to get rid of their feelings by reasoning them away. They think up one solution after another and, before long, start to believe that there is something fundamentally wrong with them for being unable to find their way out of their despair. 

There is an answer though, and that is shifting from Thinking Mode into Being Mode. 

The authors describe Doing Mode as similar to being on automatic pilot. You drive, walk, eat, and even speak without being aware of the present while your mind is somewhere else, focused on achieving this goal or solving that problem. 

Being Mode, on the other hand, is intentional rather than automatic. In this Mode, you inhabit the present moment and become fully conscious of your life. Being brings freshness to your perception, and you become fully alive and aware again.

The Mindful Way Through Depression is a truly superb book that tremendously influenced my thinking. I must admit that it had a life-changing effect on me. I remember coming home from work and slipping the attached CD into the player each day so that I could relax and listen to the mindfulness exercises. I think you'll love the book if you have an analytical mind and need to understand the nuts and bolts of the theory. The Mindful Way Workbook is less technical and theoretical, as workbooks tend to be. If you prefer a practical, no-nonsense approach, this is the book to get. It's laid out in a way that makes the exercises easy to follow.

One Minute Exercise

Here is a short exercise adapted from The mindful way workbook. It will give you a feel of what to expect. 

• Put down your phone, pad, or computer.

• Sit without doing anything for a minute.

• Pick up your device and start reading again.

Where was your mind in that minute? Was it right there with you, fully engaged with the present as it unfolded from one moment to the next? Or did your mind take you far away from this time and place? Did it take you forward to the future or back to the past?

If your mind was with you in the present, you were in Being Mode, but if it took you to the past or future, you were in Doing Mode.

Samuel Hahnemann, the rebel doctor who founded homeopathy, once wrote that many chronic ailments are “diseases spun by the soul.” In other words, illness often begins as a tangle of thoughts or feelings long before it shows up as pain in a joint or rash on the skin. That idea might sound poetic, but modern mindfulness practice proves how true it is: the moment we bring kind attention to our inner weather, the body starts to relax and reorganize itself.

Think of your head-mind as the practical manager who plans, reasons, and occasionally keeps you awake at 3 a.m. rewriting the past. Left unchecked, it can whirl itself into worry. Mindfulness invites that busy manager to put its feet on the ground, breathe, and notice the simple facts of “right now”—a cool breeze on the cheek, the rhythm of a heartbeat, the scent of coffee drifting from the kitchen.

Psychologists call this shift the move from Doing Mode to Being Mode. In Doing Mode we run on autopilot, chasing goals or dodging problems while scarcely tasting breakfast. Being Mode feels like pressing the slow-motion button: colours pop, sounds brighten, and a hint of ease returns. Years ago, when I first read The Mindful Way Through Depression, I would rush home from work, pop the companion CD into the player (yes, a real CD!), and let the guided body-scan melt the day’s knots. It was eye-opening to learn that “fixing” my mood with more thinking only tied the knots tighter; simple presence untied them.

Homeopaths have known this for over two centuries. Hahnemann asked his patients to describe not only aches and fevers but also their fears, dreams, and cravings, because those were the threads that revealed the perfect remedy. His student James Tyler Kent took the idea further, cataloguing pages of “Mind” symptoms—everything from homesickness to sudden bursts of joy. In the 1930s, Edward Bach wandered the English countryside meditating under trees; he created his famous flower remedies after noticing that each blossom seemed to soothe a specific mood.

Fast-forward to today’s Heilkunst practitioners: before we drop a sweet, potentised pellet on the tongue, we often invite a minute of quiet sensing. How does your chest feel as you breathe? What images float up when you close your eyes? This tiny pause acts like tuning an old-fashioned radio; it clears the static so the remedy’s signal can come through loud and clear. After you take a dose, keeping a mindfulness journal helps catch subtle changes—an unexpected dream, a lighter mood, a nagging pain that suddenly feels less bossy.

All of this is wonderfully down-to-earth. You don’t need a mountaintop or a yoga mat. You just need curiosity about your own experience. The pages that follow will guide you through body-sensing, sense exploration, and environmental mindfulness—three playful doorways from Doing Mode into Being Mode. Try them before a remedy, after a remedy, or anytime you feel your head-mind revving too high.

Homeopathy supplies the spark; mindfulness keeps the engine purring. Together they honour Hahnemann’s simple yet radical insight: true healing moves from the inside out, and the soul loves to lead the way when we pause long enough to listen.