Posts tagged with “mindful”

How to Work Mindfully with Pain and Illness

“Can I sit with suffering, both yours and mine, without trying to make it go away? Can I stay present to the ache of loss or disgrace—disappointment in all its many forms—and let it open me? This is the trick.” ~Pema Chödrön

At forty-seven years of age, I have experienced chronic illness in some form since my mid-to-late twenties. This past year, I’ve also encountered chronic pain on a level I have never experienced before. Part of that is illness-related, and part of it is simply my body getting older, coupled with the effects of repetitive motions from sitting and …

The Magic of Mindfulness: It’s Never Too Late to Find Peace and Balance

By Brian Reich

“If you want to conquer the anxiety of life, live in the moment, live in the breath.” ~ Amit Ray

On December 12th, 2019, I found myself in a hospital undergoing an exploratory heart catheterization, a wake-up call I could no longer ignore. My health had reached a critical low. I was battling high blood pressure, high cholesterol, prediabetes, and obesity.

At just fifty-five years old, my long career in automotive manufacturing, with its relentless deadlines, high-pressure demands, and long hours, had caught up with me. The stressful grind had become unsustainable, and I had to make a choice: continue …

Tai Chi: A Strange and Powerful Dance of Freedom

By Lana Bird

“The key is to be in a state of permanent connectedness with your inner body—to feel it at all times. This will rapidly deepen and transform your life.” ~Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now

“Relax your shoulders, keep your head high, stay grounded,” I cue myself as I walk through my morning Tai Chi. It’s still dark, but I know my moves, and my arms and legs move with confidence and ease.

Most of my life, I was a person with anxiety. I didn’t know I had anxiety, even though it was trying to speak to me as tension in …

Stop Chasing: Finding What You Need in the Here and Now

By Giada Crepaldi

“Life is what happens while we’re busy worrying about everything we need to change or accomplish. Slow down, get mindful, and try to enjoy the moment. This moment is your life.” ~Lori Deschene

Are you living life in a constant pursuit—chasing happiness, freedom, comfort, or success? What if the thing you’re so desperately looking for isn’t at the finish line? What if life isn’t a race to be won? These were the questions I asked myself not long ago.

I won’t lie; answering them didn’t completely change my life overnight. I didn’t have any major breakthrough when realizing what I’m …

How Gratitude and Mindfulness Gave Me My Life Back

By Danielle

“Train your mind and heart to see the good in everything. There is always something to be grateful for.” ~Unknown

I used to rush through life, constantly ticking off to-dos, feeling like I was always chasing something just beyond my reach. My days were a blur of deadlines, errands, and commitments. And yet, in the quiet moments—when I finally lay my head on the pillow at night—there was this heaviness, this emptiness I couldn’t shake.

I kept telling myself that once I finished the next big project, once I achieved the next goal, I’d feel better. But that “better” feeling …

Why We All Need to Pause More Often and How to Do It

By Muwafica

“Taking time to do nothing often brings everything into perspective.” ~Doe Zantamata

I have always been that person who just cannot seem to slow down. An overachiever? That’s putting it mildly. In every aspect of my life—work, relationships, personal goals—I have always pushed myself to the absolute limit. It is like I have this internal drive that just won’t quit.

At work, I am always the first one in and the last to leave. Deadlines? I would meet them days early. Projects? I would volunteer for extra ones, even when my plate was already full. And don’t even get me …

Silent Storms: How Mindfulness Helped Me Reclaim My Self-Worth

By Allicia Flemons

“You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.” ~Jon Kabat-Zinn

We often hear about storms as powerful forces of nature, but for many of us, the most intense storms are the silent ones—those we battle internally. For me, this storm took the shape of bullying. While I appeared to handle the daily microaggressions and malicious rumors, inside, I was crumbling.

The bullying didn’t stop in high school; it followed me into adulthood. Every time I thought I had weathered the storm, another wave of hurtful comments would crash over me, leaving me feeling trapped and powerless.

The …

How I’m Learning to Live with Anxiety, Not Against It

By Holly Hatam

“Your anger? It’s telling you where you feel powerless. Your anxiety? It’s telling you that something in your life is off balance. Your fear? It’s telling you what you care about. Your apathy? It’s telling you where you’re overextended and burnt out. Your feelings aren’t random, they are messengers. And if you want to get anywhere, you need to be able to let them speak to you and tell you what you really need.” ~Brianna Wiest

For half of my life, anxiety has been my constant companion. I went from a confident, fiery, and fearless girl to a woman plagued …

How I Found my True Self in the Space Between my Thoughts

By Rebecca Fellenbaum

“I am not my thoughts, emotions, sense perceptions, and experiences. I am not the content of my life. I am Life. I am the space in which all things happen. I am consciousness. I am the Now. I Am.” ~Eckhart Tolle

Everything changed the moment I learned I was not my thoughts.

There I was, reading Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth, when I read this line: “What a liberation to realize that the ‘voice in my head’ is not who I am. Who am I then? The one who sees that.”

I felt a shift. Wait, what?!? How can …

How Slowing Down Helped Me Reclaim My Dreams

By Samantha Plavins

“For fast acting relief, try slowing down.” ~Lily Tomlin

“Are you the owner?” asks, well, yet another customer at our local Italian eatery.

“Nope—I’m just old!” I reply, all sheepish but pleased.

It’s true. At fifty, I’m not exactly your classic, college-struggling part-timer.

Actually, I’m the oldest employee at our restaurant—the staff “mom,” if you will. I’ve been at this serving gig three years now and haven’t looked back. Which might seem weird considering how I got here in the first place. What a contrast to the world I once lived in.

I co-owned a financial services company with my …

How 10 Days of Silence Brought Me Perspective and Peace

By Sophia Reeder

“Removing old conditionings from the mind and training the mind to be more equanimous with every experience is the first step toward enabling one to experience true happiness.” ~S.N. Goenka

I just spent ten days sitting in absolute silence with about 100 strangers, time I previously thought I should’ve spent networking and applying for jobs as an unemployed twenty-something with little savings and no assets, living in a completely new country with no network or job prospects.

There were no conversations, no eye contact, no listening to music, no exercise, no reading or writing—just silence, with twelve hours of meditation …

5 Pillars of Mindful Awareness That Transformed My Life

By Nicole Howard

“When things change inside of you, things change around you.” ~Unknown

When I was twenty-three, I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety. It was not until two years later, when I stopped taking medication, that I discovered I had a mental health disorder linked to my menstrual cycles.

Meditating daily has been foundational for my well-being. It helps me manage the physical expressions of anxiety and bad moods. It allows me to be more accepting of myself and grateful for the many positives in my life.

But it is the awareness journey that mindfulness has paved over these last …

The Benefits of Vipassana Meditation and How to Start Your Practice

By Rob Bruhn

“Meditation is not a way of making your mind quiet. It’s a way of entering into the quiet that’s already there.” ~Deepak Chopra

Have you ever felt overwhelmed by the chaos of daily life, longing for a sense of calm and clarity? That was me a year ago, trapped in a cycle of overwork and unhealthy habits. It wasn’t until I rediscovered meditation, particularly Vipassana, that I began to find true peace and transformation. Here’s my story and how Vipassana changed my life and how it could change yours too.

My Personal Journey with Meditation

I’ve always been drawn …

The Beautiful Gift of Finding Presence in The Ordinary

By Kimberly Hetherington

“For a long time, it had seemed to me that life was about to begin—real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, or a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last, it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.”~Alfred D. Souza

I recently came across an old photo album from when I was in my twenties. All these snippets of my life back then—going out clubbing, those harsh Canadian winters, walking in the back field

…

How My Old Dog Taught Me New Tricks

By Susan Mifsud

“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” ~Lao Tzu

With two rambunctious kids, a stressful job, and a house to maintain, life was hectic. For many years, my children begged for a dog, and I would always say, “When you are older and life slows down a bit.”

Time was ticking by, but life was no less chaotic when my then preteens made yet another pitch. With more than a little trepidation, we brought home a little ball of Golden Doodle fluff who we called Murphy. How much trouble could he be?

In a short time, our cute puppy …

The Most Useful Mindfulness Technique I Know

By Michael Eisen

“This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival.” ~Rumi

When people start out with mindfulness, they want to feel better. They want all the worried, angry, or regretful thoughts to pipe down a little and stop making them feel so bad.

That’s great, as far as it goes, and mindfulness can deliver it if you practice consistently. But there’s something even better on offer, and it both is and isn’t about feeling better.

I learned this on an intensive meditation retreat.

There I was, excited to be there and ready to attain states of bliss, …

The Problem with Meditating to Become More Productive

By Cristina Bonnet Acosta

“Stress is caused by being ‘here’ but wanting to be ‘there,’ or being in the present but wanting to be in the future.” ~Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now

I started learning yoga and meditation when I was eighteen years old, in the late nineties, in the car garage of one of the few yoga teachers in Puerto Rico. I took to it like a duck to water.

By the time I was twenty-five, I had spent months on Buddhist silent retreats, living in ashrams in the USA, India, and Burma.

Meditative practices and retreats provided me with great moments …

The Simple Lifestyle Changes That Healed My Mind and Body

By Gregg Zambrovitz

“If you don’t give your mind and body a break, you’ll break. Stop pushing yourself through pain and exhaustion and take care of your needs.” ~Lori Deschene

When I collapsed that evening while fishing, I was fortunate not to land head-first into the water.

It was April 2018, a few weeks before my fiftieth birthday, and after work, I decided to walk to the local pond and spend the remaining hours of light fishing.

After a short time, though, I started to feel hot, a little lightheaded, and dizzy, and then the lights went out. I only blacked out for …

How I Found the Good Within the Difficult

By Rachael Gaibel

“Inner strengths are the supplies you’ve got in your pack as you make your way down the twisting and often hard road of life.” ~Rick Hanson

“I had a rough day. Can we talk?” I asked my husband in 2015 after coming home from work. He nodded, and we sat down on the couch.

I continued: “I got really challenging performance feedback from my manager today. It was hard to hear because I know it’s true.”

It was the most significant critical feedback I had received at once. All afternoon, I’d ruminated on the conversation. I had sat in the …

Are You Paying Attention to the Beauty of this World?

By Karen Weissert

“’I got saved by the beauty of the world,’ she said to me. And the beauty of the world was honored in the devotion of her attention. Nothing less than the beauty of the world has become more present, more redemptive, for more of us in the encounter with her poetry.” ~Krista Tippett, on interviewing poet Mary Oliver

The act of paying attention seems rather simple. Simply being aware of life happening all around us. And yet most of us are what we might call asleep at the wheel. We perform daily tasks and engage ourselves in human interactions without …