When I learned about living mindfully… part one

Part one of two:

My life changed in a profound way.

Before I practised mindfulness-based living, I moved through each day with little to no sense of what was truly happening inside my head, or what was unfolding within my heart, or what was occurring inside my body. I lived unaware of the constant chatter dictating my thoughts, and the emotions influencing my sense of well-being, and the bodily sensations clamoring for my attention. In time, I grew tired.

And as we are learning, or at least some of us are, the cost of mindlessness is health and contentment. And yet so many of us don’t bother to stop and evaluate why we are struggling. We don’t take the time to find out why we feel overwhelmed and exhausted. Don’t we care to know how to feel better? Instead, many of us just carry on tearing through the day, collapsing at the end of it, and wondering why we feel so unsatisfied.

I get it. I did the same thing… for a long time.

But when my health began to pay more than it could afford, I finally took notice. I stopped in my tracks and took a good look around. And in that moment of observation, I began to see and hear and feel things I hadn’t been aware of for a really, really long time. I heard the obsessive chatter in my head. I noticed the longing in my heart. And I felt the butterflies in my belly and the tension in my muscles.

Ah… here I am, I thought.

Here I Am.

And soon thereafter, I began to research a mysterious practice I’d heard about… a practice called mindfulness. I read books and magazine articles. I investigated the various forms of practise, even making time for bringing it into my life. But, it wasn’t until I finally transitioned from an intellectual discernment of what I thought mindfulness was, to an embodied experience of what mindfulness is, that… my life changed in a profound way.

There’s a story in every Thing.