The short version: the spaces you pass through every day can be places to practise. Use the lift ride for a short breath check-in. Notice the corridor on your way home. Sit at the void deck for five minutes now and then. Listen to the estate, and greet your neighbours.
I grew up in an HDB flat in Toa Payoh, and I passed through the same few spaces every day without really seeing them: the lift lobby, the corridor, the void deck, the path to the bus stop. For years I treated them as the bits in between, the places I rushed through on the way to somewhere that mattered.
I moved out a few years ago, and I miss those spaces more than I expected. Looking back, they were where my practice quietly began. They were always there, they were free, and they were full of ordinary life.
My mother kept a row of potted plants by our front door, including a money plant she rearranged whenever she felt the entrance needed “better energy.” As a teenager I used to roll my eyes at it. One evening after a hard day at school, I came out of the lift and saw the plants catching the last of the light, the leaves freshly watered, and I stopped. Someone had taken care to make the way home feel welcoming. Whatever you believe about feng shui, that care was real, and I felt it. I still think of that doorway whenever I water the plants by my own front door.
The lift ride
The lift was where it started. Waiting for it after school or training, I slowly learned to resist pulling out my phone. Inside, as it moved between floors, I would take one slow breath and check in: how was my body feeling, what mood was I carrying, was I bracing for something?
The ride lasted less than a minute, which is exactly why it worked. There was no pressure to meditate properly. I just noticed the slight drop in my stomach as it started and stopped, the hum of the motor and the numbers changing. By the time the doors opened, I had arrived a little more fully.
If I shared the lift with a neighbour, the practice changed. I noticed them, smiled or said hello, and held the door if someone was hurrying in. That counted too, and it still does in any lift I ride today.
The corridor
HDB corridors are full of small details that are easy to miss. Ours had potted plants carefully tended by an auntie down the row, shoes lined up outside doors, laundry poles, a bicycle chained to the railing and, most evenings, the smell of someone frying garlic for dinner.
On the walk from the lift to our door, I learned to slow down slightly and let myself notice: the light at different times of day, the breeze through the corridor, the sounds of television and conversation coming through open windows. I tried not to judge any of it, just to see it, the way you might look around a place you were visiting for the first time.
The corridor at dusk was especially lovely, with the sky changing colour beyond the railings, lights coming on in the blocks opposite and the estate settling into evening. It is the view I picture most when I think of home.
The void deck
Every so often I would sit at the void deck for five minutes before going up. I found a bench or a stone table, let my body settle and simply watched.
There was always something happening: uncles chatting over coffee or a game of chess, aunties catching up, children chasing each other after school, a delivery rider checking an address, a community cat asleep in the cool shade. I let my attention rest on the scene without commentary.
What struck me most was how much life passed through those shared spaces. Everyone was carrying their own day, their own worries and small joys. Sitting among it for a few minutes reminded me that I was part of something bigger than my own homework or to-do list.
At our void deck there was an uncle who did slow stretching exercises at the same stone table almost every morning, unhurried, as if he had all the time in the world. When I headed out early for a run, he usually gave me a small nod. For a long time I rushed past him. One day I stopped and joined in for a few minutes. He did not say much, only showed me how to move my arms more slowly. I still do his slow arm circles before my morning runs, and I think of him every time.
Sounds of the estate
An HDB estate is never silent, and over the years I came to hear its sounds as a kind of soundtrack for practice: the morning market setting up, a school bell in the distance, the rubbish truck, birds in the trees, a neighbour’s radio, rain drumming on the roofs during a storm.
Sometimes I sat by my bedroom window and did a short listening practice, noticing sounds as they came and went, near and far, without labelling them good or bad. It is a practice I still use in my apartment today, which I have written about in my piece on practising at home, noise and all.
Kindness as practice
Living close together meant we shared a great deal with our neighbours: walls, corridors, lifts, the void deck. Mindfulness, I slowly realised, included noticing the people I shared those spaces with.
That meant a nod or a greeting in the lift, helping someone carry groceries, keeping the corridor tidy or keeping the noise down late at night. These were small things, but they were acts of attention. They took me out of my own head and into the life around me, which is really what practice is for.
The more I noticed my neighbours, the more connected I felt to where I lived. The estate stopped being a place I slept and became a place I belonged. Even now, when I visit my parents, the walk from the lift to their door feels like coming home.
A week-long challenge
If you would like to try this, here is a simple challenge for one week. Each day, choose one HDB moment and give it your full attention.
Monday: one slow breath in the lift. Tuesday: walk the corridor slowly and notice three things you have never noticed before. Wednesday: sit at the void deck for five minutes. Thursday: listen to the estate from your window for two minutes. Friday: greet a neighbour you usually pass in silence. Saturday: watch the corridor or the sky at dusk. Sunday: choose your favourite of the week and do it again.
At the end of the week, notice whether home feels any different. For me, back in Toa Payoh, it did. The spaces did not change, but I started to see them.
