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…
There are different levels of anxiety that might be experienced in meditation practice. Anxiety might arise in relation to a worry or concern about something happening in our life. Maybe an upcoming house move or a job interview. It might also arise because we have a strong habit of anxiety, which we have cultivated over…
The Springer Mindfulness Journal has published the second article of the Mahamudra and Mindfulness Series, written by Mindfulness Association tutor and Buddhist monk Choden. As with the first article, Choden explores a central tenet of Mahamudra teaching – this time compassion – and how it is central to modern mindfulness practice. Compassion is fundamental to the work…
It’s like the scent of rain after a month of drought, the way it rises up and fills the lungs, quiets the body and gentles the mind – that’s what it’s like when, after grasping and spinning and reaching and clenching at last, exhausted with my own fear, I lay my hand on my own…
And sometimes when I move at the edge of a greatness— a lake or a sea or a mountainside— my insignificance thrills me and the largest of my sadnesses dwindle smaller than the space between grains of sand and in that moment, knowing my place, comes a love so enormous I can love anyone, anyone,…
My friend and I snickered the first time we heard the meditation teacher, a grown man, call himself honey, with a hand placed over his heart to illustrate how we too might become more gentle with ourselves and our runaway minds. It’s been years since we sat with legs twisted on cushions, holding back our…
And if I speak of Paradise, then I’m speaking of my grandmother who told me to carry it always on my person, concealed, so no one else would know but me. That way they can’t steal it, she’d say. And if life puts you under pressure, trace its ridges in your pocket, smell its piney…
today I am breathing through fatigue, fear, and feeling overwhelmed. I breathe because when I breathe, I am reminded that I am alive. I am reminded that to be able to fill my body with air means that I have the ability to keep going. I am reminded that my time on earth may be…
Don’t surrender your loneliness So quickly. Let it cut more deep. Let it ferment and season you As few human Or even divine ingredients can. Something missing in my heart tonight Has made my eyes so soft My voice So tender, My need of God Absolutely Clear. by Daniel Ladinsky, a rendition of Hafiz …