Mindfulness isn’t difficult, we just need to remember to do it.
Sharon Salzburg (1952–) American Teacher and Author
Mindfulness
What did you learn from your ‘mindfulness conversation’? How did the other person find it?
Elizabeth and I had a mindfulness conversation. She had had an event happen today which annoyed her, and she spoke of that. I talked about our Harakeke cohort at EDA and the links between flax and genealogy. Both of us were still talking when our three minutes were up and we both found that the time passed very quickly. Certainly there was no sense of “What shall I talk about now?” and there were no pauses. By contrast, we did this exercise for two minutes at the September ADITL experience with Don and Gabrielle: there, we found it a bit harder to keep going for a shorter time. The main learning from tonight's mindfulness conversation for me was that when you focus on someone else and let them talk with no distractions or interruptions, mindfulness or awareness of the moment really does happen.
Which of the three suggested techniques will you use to sustain your practice?
All of them.
My buddy is going to be Andy from Headspace. I like the way he guides me through my daily meditation session.
I really like the idea of setting myself a target that is “less than I can do” and I think that will work.
Taking one mindful breath a day follows on from the previous technique and I think it’s doable.
Any other musings?
A couple of years ago, we were talking about mindfulness at the school where I teach. At the time, I bought a book called The Little Book of Mindfulness by Patrizia Collard (2014). It’s only 96 pages and the size of book that would easily fit in a pocket. It is subtitled, “10 Minutes a Day to Less Stress, More Peace”, I haven’t really used it much up until now, but it has many parallels with Search Inside Yourself and has some other activities that look worthwhile.
