May 8
There's a lot of buzz about Slow Living at the moment, and it would seem natural to look to meditation to support this. But I'm wondering how many of us fall into practising what I think of as 'fast meditation'. I'm not sure I've totally slowed it down yet, but I've definitely eased a lot of the pressure I'd been inadvertently bringing into my practice.
Have you ever had the experience of someone else telling you to 'just relax'? If only it were that simple. A stressed nervous system needs to go gradually, and it might not let go of tension straight away. From a place of accepting ourselves just as we are right now, we can begin to let go of some of the things that prevent us from experiencing true relaxation.
I'm often asked the question 'what is mindfulness?'. I don't believe there is one definitive answer to this question. What you'll find here is just one possible answer, based on the way I have received and share the practices of mindfulness and self-kindness...
Choosing a posture for meditation is in itself an exercise in being mindful. This is because there are no simple, black-and-white, right or wrong answers in this area.
When I embarked on a mindfulness course, dedicating a whole 2 months to something felt like quite a big undertaking. We live in such a quick-fix culture, and with so many approaches that promise instant stress relief, I guess I thought that an 8-week mindfulness course must get me sorted by the end of it, right?
Sheila Bayliss 