Mindfulness Reflections

Surprise! We are much more than our opinions, our to-do lists, or our reactions to the static of the day. We are much more than the roles we play or the stories we tell ourselves; we are a living, breathing wonder. When was the last time you brought your full and sustained attention to your breathing? Did you know? Our breath is our closest, most intimate friend, yet we often treat it like a background utility. It is the bridge between our mind and our body, the secret ingredient for a kind of mind training that changes our outlook and our life. Why do we need mind training right now? Because without it, our minds are wild and unpredictable. We are currently bombarded by a constant feed of information and chaos designed to keep us fragmented, incohesive, and purely reactive. This tumult is engineered to feed the algorithm and keep us clicking, rather than to feed our true understanding of situations. When our mind is not trained, we are easily swept away by the collective agitation and...

  A is for Awareness: What are we watering? In our modern world, we are often told that to be "aware" is to be informed about every crisis, every injustice, and every online debate. But when we practise mindfulness, we learn that awareness is always awareness of something. Many of us are deeply aware of our suffering, disagreement, and frustration. We see a headline or a social media post and feel an immediate spark of anger. We feel justified in that anger. After all, the world is full of reasons to be upset. But when we focus exclusively on these feelings, we inadvertently "water unwholesome seeds" within ourselves. We think we are looking at the world, but we are actually feeding the frustration inside us. The current global climate of polarisation, where everyone feels they are "right" and the other side is "wrong", is the perfect example of this. We often forget that the discomfort we feel isn't just "out there" in the news, it...