There is much more understanding and greater publicity than ever before of the real human cost behind the mental health issues that so many of us deal with everyday. 

 

Our young student's powerful blog of her mindfulness classes last year, gives us another dimension to the power of friendship, the need for perseverence and her courage. 

 

When my best friend asked me if I wanted to go on a mindfulness course, I was immediately doubtful. 

 

I'm the type of person who can't ever mentally switch off. Add to that a lot of external factors - an intense relationship breakdown, debt, stresses at work, an upcoming house move and a masters dissertation and you're left with extreme insomnia and severe depression. I was at a point in my life where I did not want to live my life, my thoughts were a constant stream of self criticism and on several occasions I tried to end this. 

 

One of my most profound lessons from Suryacitta’s teachings is: understanding the true value of direct experience…. 

 

As a traditional acupuncturist, steeped in Daoist theory (Yin/Yang, the Law of the Five Elements, the Eight Principles etc.), my critical thinking often prompts me to challenge new teachings to see how they fit into the law models that are familiar to me. 

 

Your body holds a lot of answers, a lot of wisdom. All of the experiences that we have, people we meet, and the things we are told create a series of reactions within the body. Spending so much time in the mind often reduces the amount of awareness we have about how our body is responding to the environment. 

 

 

The Latin derivative for the word emotion, ‘emotere’, literally means energy in motion. We can find ourselves searching for a cure, when actually what we are looking for can be found right here, within our physical body. We can notice the energy in our bodies change when we experience strong emotions.  

 

Around 10 years ago I spent a month in Nepal with Gaynor my wife trekking the Himalayas, it was a good trip. Whilst there I must have contracted some sort of virus which my body didn’t like. 

 

One evening whilst having a meal together I felt awful, I was sick and needed to go to the bathroom. 

 

I actually passed out and my wife got me back safely to our hotel. The next day there was so no sign of anything amiss. 

 

I listen to Surya’s Monday morning meditation on Facebook as he guides us to, “Drop into the body”. And it feels like a drop. I’m off to Krakow this summer and a friend recommended I go to some underground caves, which involves a dabble in pot-holing to get there. So now I don’t meditate as often, coming into the body feels like delving into the depths of a cave, with a hint of trepidation at what might be lurking around the next corner. After the initial drop, I’m fine – which I imagine is similar to the actual cave experience – but I’m definitely more tentative when it’s time to ‘come home to the body’ compared to when I was regularly practising throughout my course. 

 

Mindfulness is now being taught in so many ways, in so many settings and by many different people. 

 

Mindfulness to me is something of beauty. Although it is not a thing, an object, to me it is still beautiful. I often use the image of a jewel to illustrate mindfulness in teaching. A jewel has many facets, you turn the jewel a fraction and there is another facet, shimmering right at you. When running a course, or a series of workshops what we are really doing is exploring the jewel of mindfulness or awareness, and it is something we explore for the rest of our lives if we commit ourselves to it. 

 

All plants and trees are healthier and stronger when they have healthy roots, they have more stability if those roots reach deep into the earth. 

 

If we take a plant out of the earth and lay it on the ground it doesn’t take long before it withers and dies. 

 

Mindfulness is like a tree, it too has roots, and its roots go very deep into the Buddhist tradition. Roots which go back 2500 years. 

 

We have become accustomed to think in certain ways and often see things in fixed patterns. It’s hard not to make assumptions and to stay in patterns of thoughts and behaviours. Situations and circumstances are often shaped by the way we think. It’s important to try to break free from this way of viewing the world, to see more clearly, the way things actually are. We construct our world through our thoughts and in this way can make things appear negative or positive just by our thinking. 

 

I am on a plane to Italy finally writing about my Nanpantan Hall Mindfulness Retreat experience. The day before the start of the Retreat, a problem arose that nearly convinced me that I should stay at home and sort it out. Instead, I decided to go following my daughter’s encouragement. Somehow I knew that staying at home was not the cure and would not address the source: myself.