When I reflect on my role as a mindfulness teacher and tutor, I am drawn back to the beginning, my “origin story” as commissioners of films like to call our backgrounds.
I started practicing mindfulness in 2011 and up until I first plonked my derriere on a cushion, I had never given any thought to meditation. My GP had suggested I try mindfulness as a way of managing stress and anxiety but to say I was sceptical would be quite the understatement!
I was a “hardline sceptic”, someone who considered meditation as nebulous and esoteric at best (I’ll spare you the other judgements that ran through my mind when thinking of the subject). I was convinced it couldn’t possibly help me, but I had been suffering with stress and anxiety for so long that I thought “what have I got to lose?” And so off I went with a sceptical skip in my step to an 8-week course and despite my reticence, I stuck with it.
This decision to complete that 8-week course is up there with the best decisions I have made in my life.
Although it would be wrong to say that initial 8 weeks completely changed my life, it did sow the seeds of behaviours and practices that would change my life for the (much!) better. Within those 8 weeks I noticed changes that I wanted to develop. I was happier, I was responding to stress triggers differently and I was much kinder to myself in the face of my inner critic. I knew I had to continue so I signed up for the MSc Studies in Mindfulness and this time the course really did change my life.
Those three years were profoundly impactful. I developed my practice and built friendships in a community that shared this wonderful practice, that offered kindness and support. I felt more connected to my direct experience, had less stress and rumination and I was more content, happy even. Because of this I made the decision to abandon a safe career in the NHS and to teach mindfulness to others.
I wanted to offer other people what my mindful teachers had given me, to share with them the simple yet profound capacity of this practice to change your life. It soon went beyond reducing my stress and anxiety and opened up a whole new way of experiencing life. I meet the richness of life and appreciate the good and ride out the difficult and painful in a way that I would never been able to if I’d not sat down on that cushion, close my eyes and breathed.
Each time I now sit, I remember that first step (scepticism and all!) as part of my ongoing journey. Why not connect with your motivation again and simply be?