Category: Mindfulness
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Red brain / Green brain
In the book “Mindfulness on the run” (2016), the author Dr Chantal Hofstee notes that the way our thoughts and emotions interact is complex. And yet, the ‘bottom line’ of all the discussions about layers of the conscious and sub-conscious is simple: “your brain [either] feels safe or unsafe” (page…
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Transcendental-mantra-meditation
When I was 19 years old, I went backpacking through India and Nepal with the intention of making it to the Annapurna base camp (read more here about how I ALMOST made it). One of the gifts that I brought home from that journey was an increased awareness of how…
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Dialing down the ‘hurry up’
My mind is not minding the way it used to. I’m sad to say that I think it has fallen victim to a problem that is sweeping the globe (which I delusionally thought I was immune to): a decreasing attention span. My revelation came the other day when I was…
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“Walk for Peace”
Late last week a group of two dozen Buddhist monks completed their 109-day pilgrimage of 2,300 miles (about 3,700km) from one coast of America to the other, travelling from Texas to Washington D.C. The Walk For Peace “encourages non-harm, kindness, and mindful living” – and they note that their procession…
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Doodle your pain away
I’ve written before about the art of distraction and how it can help you forget your pain… for awhile. Arts and crafts that have helped me include long-stitch sewing, taking photographs of “glimmers” (the things that make me happy) and making either a mood-board or coloring-in a healing mandala. I’ve…
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Haiku for pain relief
Some time ago, I wrote a post titled “The narrow road of healing” which referenced the seventeenth century writer Matsuo Basho (1644-94) and his book of poems written on pilgrimage. The collection of poems included one that is considered ‘the most famous’ haiku ever written – “The Old Pond”: An…
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Guest post: Simon says… try mindfulness
One of my favorite places in Blog-land is brand new blogs; they are filled with such good intent and a contagious enthusiasm. A recent newbie I came across is “Simon Says Blog – Personal growth, personal weirdness…” After some email chit-chat (I’m here if you need me) I invited him…
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“No mud, no lotus”
Today’s blog post is a book review for Thích Nhất Hạnh’s book “No Mud, No Lotus” which is a practical self-help guide published over 10 years ago in 2014. Before I started to read it, I knew nothing about the book or the author, other than I had heard the…
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Will this upset the Mindfulness Police?
When I first started practicing mindfulness, it was practice in the sense of a “learning experiment” rather than a “regular habit”. I relied heavily on YouTube videos that appeared in my google searches, and made selections of what to try based on the shortest duration of the video rather than…
The Mindful Migraine 