by Dawna Markova

Happy New Year dear readers! This poem by Dawna Markova encapsulates elegantly what I feel a wholesome new year aspiration is for me. It has all the important components – the wish to open in spite of it all, the power to consciously choose, the resolve to not be stopped by fear, the power of the ‘will not’ and the tenacious commitment to living fully, the wish to be present in my days moment to moment, to ‘risk our significance’, the heart’s bid for freedom and finally the wish for who I am and who I am becoming, to be of benefit to others.

Having not yet done my annual new year’s vision board, I don’t know what the particular flavour of my new year’s contemplations will be this year, but I feel the promise! I can feel a quickening of creative life force in my body – is it ready to take wing, or become a torch? Or maybe – and this feels right as I write – it’s ready to put down roots.

Often at new year we focus on a concrete resolution that can feel like a should or a pressure that sets you up for ‘failure’. What if your new year’s aspiration was a feeling or an impulse or energy stirring within you? What feel does it have? Where does it want to flow or grow or settle down to? Does it have a colour or a metaphor to help you know its wisdom? And after bringing your curiosity to it, can it become a message of aspiration in words?

New years resolutions are often made from the rational thinking mind that has a story about how in this or that way we aren’t doing well enough and this year will be the year where we push ourselves hard enough to finally get beyond it and be better. No wonder they don’t last long! Let this year’s new year’s resolution come from the inside out, like a fountain, or a flower fragrance or a golden egg cracking to reveal new life.

More beautiful metaphors from Dawna Markova:

May you let loving unfurl you
then give you away.
May you remember
you are nest,
harbor,
garden.

All the best for 2026!

Ps. If you’d like to enter into this year with the intention to live your own precious life more fully in it’s uniqueness in this moment and the next, in the ups and downs and joys and sorrows, and alongside fellow practitioners of mindfulness, please join our Wonder of the Everyday course which starts on 14th January.

Photo by Jared Erondu on Unsplash

by William Stafford

This poem is quite a well-known classic in my mind, and was chosen as one of the 100 Essential Poems of the very prolific William Stafford. I was surprised recently to find that I hadn’t shared it here yet, high time to do so!

And I’m curious, what is this thread for you? What do you hold on to, what do you follow to keep you from getting lost? Sometimes the breath can be the outer manifestation of that thread as it weaves the moments together, but a deeper version of the thread may be what brings you to come back to the breath and this moment rather than staying lost in story-thoughts. And part of what gets you to the cushion or chair for practising, may be the thread of meaning and purpose in how you live your life…

As I grow older, I love discovering how this meaning can change and deepen over time. Equally, I know it can get clouded over or feel lost or inaccessible in the thick of things, but then it can also be found again with fresh truthfulness. Friedrich Nietzsche has an interesting view on meaning, and Viktor Frankl very much agreed with this: that “those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’.” Which makes a strong case for becoming very clear on your own ‘why’, your own thread, and finding ways to reaffirm this.

This is why, towards the end of the Level 1 – being present course, we reflect on our values, on what’s important for how we live our life and explore our internal compass and what it’s set to. And from there, step by step and moment by moment, we can grow in that direction… and how wonderful to do this, supported by fellow practitioners!

PS If you want to connect more deeply to your own thread and what’s important in your life, you may also want to explore the Living Well to Die Well course…

Photo by Anand Thakur on Unsplash

Donna Ashworth

The poet Donna Ashworth hopes (in her own words) to “provide words that can be used everyday, as well as in those moments life hits hardest”. This particular poem made me think about the goodness of neutrality – the ordinary moments that may not be spectacular but are also not particularly difficult. Easy to overlook – but how wonderful it is in this moment to… not have toothache, for example, or to breathe freely without having a blocked nose! I’ve been glad at particularly difficult times where it felt hard to connect with something really good, to be able to relish the absence of particular challenges that would have made whatever was going on, harder still.

And the biggest one of all is of course the simple fact of aliveness. How very lucky indeed, to have another day of life!

PS if you’d like to wake up more to the wonderfulness of life, there is a new Mindfulness level 1 course starting before long, as well as a shorter course more focused on daily life, called the Wonder of the Everyday…

Photo by Jamez Picard on Unsplash

by Brad Aaron Modlin

A couple of days ago I spent a whole day next to the beautiful River Monnow not far from where I live, in the most blissful solitude. These days solitude is something I long for more of, so sitting there by the river I felt myself melting and drinking it all in. When I first set off on my mini retreat I noticed anxiety at play in my chest – Will everything go ok back home? Where am I going? What will I encounter? So, for the first half hour my mind, body and heart were still staccatoing tightly at a high frequency. I found my spot on a tangled mat of roots inches from the flowing water, underneath weeping boughs of alder, and sat. And sat. And sat. And time stood still. I could have remained there indefinitely. The river gurgled and rushed, the sun sparkled and ran dapples across it, a grey wagtail bobbed by and then a kingfisher. Before long I noticed the anxiety had evaporated and I sank into a deep melody of being, staccato tightness gone.

Later I sat underneath a grand oak on a little ledge above the river. Again, I entered a flow allowing my awareness to rest into just being, enveloped in the solace of nature, vitalised by a gentle awe – I just loved the river. At some point a cockerel crowed from a distant farm, its voice carried free into the summer air. There was something about the sound of the cockerel crowing and of really being there to let myself experience it. I realised that over the past bunch of years I had not let this sound into awareness, even if I had supposedly heard it. My mind has been too preoccupied with a thousand and one things. It was as if every cockerel crow I had ever heard was held in a dream within this present one. And the bittersweet thrumming present touched deep into my veins and ran through me to flood my heart. I long to always hear a cockerel crowing in this way, free of the crush of inner and outer ‘stuff.’

In this moving poem I wonder whether Brad Aaron Modlin, a contemporary poet who teaches at the University of Nebraska, Kearney (find out more here), is saying something a bit like what I am trying to convey about my day by the river. There is something about the timeless span of the poem and its precious life lessons, reaching from now to that fourth-grade day and back. And there was something similar in that crow of the cockerel – as if all existence – both the beginning and end of it, had no beginning or end when encapsulated in a moment. It is something about living life mindfully, with humility and with feeling. It is about letting yourself be called towards what has meaning and soul for you. It is about allowing life to teach you of itself – the hard lessons and the good. It is about risking the significance of the moment and following through towards this and letting it be the way you live. And maybe it is about not getting lost in academics, technology, and stuff. And yet it is about getting lost – because we all do, and so finally it is about finding ourselves and each other and the world within an encompassing embrace of presence.

Ps. It’s not long until our next Mindfulness meets Mystical Poetry course begins on the 12th September. Sign up to enjoy the plethora of gifts that being with poetry mindfully has to offer towards living fully and with heart.

Photo by Jack B on Unsplash

waiting for the plumber I still haven’t called. This is the everyday we spoke of.
It’s winter again: the sky’s a deep, headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through

the open living-room windows because the heat’s on too high in here and I can’t turn it off.
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street, the bag breaking,

I’ve been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve,

I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it.
Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.

What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss—we want more and more and then more of it.

But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I’m gripped by a cherishing so deep

for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I’m speechless:
I am living. I remember you.

by Marie Howe

Wow, this one touched me deeply. And reading that poet Marie Howe‘s brother John died not long before, gave more poignant context to what the living do, all these ordinary and not exactly glamorous ingredients of life that you might think you’d be happy to do without… and yet, this is it! How precious to realise that we are part of this human family of the living, and able to remember those who have passed away.

Nothing more to say, but to live it…

PS if you’d like to practise being aware of the miracle of living – in all its glory and mundanity – together with others, there is a new mindfulness course starting before long…

Photo by Tina Bosse on Unsplash