What do you wish for yourself, for your life? Moving through life like a zombie, on autopilot, doing what is needed to make money, survive, eat sleep and repeat. Or living a full, rich, life, wide awake, full of choices, of moments of awe and wonder. 

In either case we will encounter difficulty, that is inevitable for all of us as humans. Sadness is inevitable, worry, stress; nobody has a life free of hassles. But we can choose to acknowledge this and create a way of being that is larger than the worry, we can move with it. 

This week we completed an 8-week MBSR course and spent some of our last session reflecting on the trajectory of the course and the changes that were apparent as we learnt and practiced. It’s not always easy, waking up to the full catastrophe of being human. After all, who wants to acknowledge there’s sadness present when we could busy ourselves along and pretend it’s not there? But in waking up to the sadness, and recognising it, a small degree of acceptance creeps in and a small bit of space emerges and we find ourselves open and receptive to other emotions, new ways of thinking and being in the world, new patterns of thought and behaviour. In waking up we live the life we were destined for, a life full of joy and opportunity and choices.

The practices are subtle and they are layered. In breathing out and letting go of the awareness of your big toe and moving on to awareness of your little toe you are carving new pathways in the brain and your capacity for greater awareness increases. Tiny bit by tiny bit, moment by moment, like a large bucket being filled with single drops of water. 

If you would like to know more about the 8-week MBSR course and what it entails please join us for an online information session on Wednesday 29th March at 10am. Our next course will start in May running in Mutton Lane on Wednesday mornings from 9.30am-12noon for an 8-week period and you would be most welcome.  I’m here for any questions, x Sylvia.

The Summer Day.

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean—

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

—Mary Oliver