#52 | January 26, 2022 Introduction to Mindfulness + Short Meditation

Life can get really challenging. I mean, whether it's just dealing with your day at work ,at home, whether it's trying not to react in a negative way when feeling triggered, or to even watching the news or to the larger environment around. It can be difficult sometimes to just be in the present moment, enjoy your life and not get stressed about it. And that's what mindfulness meditation can help you learn how to do.

But what is Mindfulness?

This is how Buddhist meditation teacher and clinical psychologist, Tara Brach defines it,

Mindfulness is a way of paying attention moment-to-moment to what's happening within and around us without judgment. So, said differently, when we attend to the moment-to-moment flow of experience, and recognize what's happening…fully allowing it, not adding judgment or commentary, then we are cultivating a mindful awareness.

And Meditation is the deliberate training of attention. So, when you do a mindfulness meditation, you are deliberately cultivating mindfulness by using strategies to enter the present moment and to let go of judgment and so on.

What drew me to mindfulness was I needed tools to support myself staying embodied and present, no matter what kind of stress was around me. For years, I had been working in TV, 14 to 18 hour days, sometimes 7 days a week. I needed tools to support releasing stress and not be reactive but staying grounded and aligned in mindfulness while managing a high volume job.

But I also wanted to cultivate more tools to support myself in navigating through any challenges. 

I wanted to be able to be in the heart of compassion instead of trigger into woundedness and react from that place. It wasn’t an overnight process to get to this, I had many failed attempts and it has gone sideways many times yet I also had beneficial experiences where I stayed in compassion, loving-kindness, grace and ease. From those experiences, I saw how it was about training my human in terms of mindfulness tools. So, I learned to reach for the mindfulness tools as I need them. Even today, I can always reach for the tools on my tool belt when I need them. 

Press play to tune in to for an Introduction to Mindfulness and for a short meditation!