Whenever I teach workshops, I always hear this question: "How do I fit spirituality into my life?" We're all so busy with our families, jobs, and social lives that it's challenging to find time for regular spiritual practice, such as meditating. People seem to have the mistaken belief that spiritual exercise, like physical exercise, requires setting aside 30 minutes to an hour a day. But as long as you're trying to fit your spiritual practice into your already packed life, it'll probably never happen—at least not in a rewarding way.

Don't stress about the fact that you can't find a half hour of free time each day for meditation and contemplation. Here's an alternative: Take tiny moments throughout your day to give thanks, empty your mind, become aware of your body, acknowledge feelings, or become a vessel for divine energy. Practicing spirituality this way is easy and highly satisfying. You will feel calmer and your mind will be sharper. You will feel energized. You will sense a greater connection with others, and you will even find that you are more positive and productive at work.

To the harried and hurried, I suggest turning the question upside down. How do I fit my life into my spirituality?

You can begin to do this by thinking of spirituality not as something you do, but rather, as a way of life.

Spirituality is not something you learn, something foreign to your soul. It is your soul's natural state of being, all day, every day, no matter what you are busy doing. It is an unseen force, an energy that flows in and around us at all times. Your task, then, is simply to engage in small exercises or activities that allow you to become aware of that energy and to tap into it.

I call such an awareness intuitive awareness. Intuitive awareness is a talent that everyone has to some degree, and which can be developed to guide and direct our lives in powerful and transformative ways. Intuition is a manifestation of our spiritual energy. Spiritual energy acknowledges that there is profound knowledge and wisdom available to any of us all the time. We simply must turn our awareness toward our connectedness with the universal consciousness.

Think about the unseen forces in our lives, such as radio waves and electricity, which 150 years ago would have seemed pure fantasy. Today, not only have we accepted and incorporated the reality of these unseen energies into our daily lives and become more dependent on them, we have built whole technologies upon them and altered our daily lives accordingly. If we accept these unseen forces as coexisting with our physical reality, why not allow our perspective of day-to-day reality to include the mystical forces of the universe?

The first step toward living in your intuitive awareness is to remind yourself throughout the day that you are connected to a divine source of wisdom. This requires disciplining your thoughts. However, disciplining your thoughts does not have to be an added time commitment in your daily schedule. It can take less than 60 seconds to do. Partaking of the peaceful spiritual energy that results is a bit like dipping a cup into a flowing stream, letting it fill up, and drinking.

Here are six exercises you can use throughout your day, each of which can be performed in a minute or less.

1. Hold a vision. Take advantage of "mindless" time—such as standing in the shower, driving to work, or downloading new software—to picture something beautiful and hopeful for yourself. Once you form the vision, make a conscious effort to hold it, keeping it at the front of your mind, without letting other thoughts intrude.

2. Begin the day with breath. Right after your alarm goes off in the morning, but before you jump out of bed, take one minute to breathe deeply. Pay attention to each in-breath and each out-breath. Focus only on your breath, not your to-do list.

3. Open the third eye for clearer perception. Focus your gaze on the tip of your nose for 30 seconds. Your eyes will cross and you will feel pressure at the third eye (located just above and between your eyes in your forehead). Then relax your eyes. Next, shift your focus on the bridge of your nose, directly between your eyes, for 30 more seconds, then relax.

4. Who am I right now? Take a few breaths to enter a calm state. Then, ask yourself: Who am I right now, in this exact moment? Allow the response to come as thoughts, words, feelings, images, colors, or sounds. Make no judgment about what comes to you. Write down your answers.

5. Release emotional blocks. With your dominant hand, write the question: How does it feel to write with my nondominant hand? Then write the answer with your nondominant hand. With your dominant hand, write: Please tell me who I am. Answer with your nondominant hand. As you write each answer with your nondominant hand, respond to the answer with another question with your dominant hand. Be curious. Your intuitive mind will guide you if you let it.

6. Find your rhythm. Take just 60 seconds to close your eyes and become aware of your breathing. You may want to take a couple of deep breaths at first. Then allow your breath to gradually find its own steady rhythm. This simple exercise will keep bringing you back to your natural, inner rhythms.

Each of these exercises will help you get back into alignment with your spiritual energy and your connectedness with a universal consciousness. How often do you spend more time than these exercises take in fretting over how overwhelmed you are with the demands of life? By sitting in the stillness of your breath and the expansiveness of your soul, you will discover that solving problems becomes easier and quicker. It will actually save you time.

You may also find that when you are faced with a situation during the day that calls for you to be emotionally calm, use sound judgment, or be circumspect, you will be better prepared to do so. Hopefully, the next time your supervisor calls you in for a conference, for example, or you get an unexpectedly hostile phone call from your spouse, or a friend hurts your feelings, you will be able to call forth a spiritual energy and wisdom that you've practiced accessing throughout the day, and this will underlie your response. You may start to notice subtle and positive shifts in the energy between you and those other people.

Make a conscious choice to be the keeper of your life, rather than letting your life be the keeper of you. Choose to live in your bigger, more expansive self, rather than your smaller, more closed self. You'll be amazed at how your life starts to fit into your spirituality and brings you a richness of being that you never imagined.