Mindfulness - the antidote to always being 'on'
When it comes to seeking help with an issue in your life, the choice of therapies can sometimes feel overwhelming and end up adding to our worries.
Many people come to mindfulness via difficulties in their lives. These can range from low mood, anxiety or depression to a general sense of vagueness in their lives, a lack of connectivity or meaning.
However we arrive, Buddhist psychology and mindfulness especially, offers much simple guidance and wisdom, in at first understanding our issues, then accepting and finally moving forward.
In what is termed 'the four noble truths', the first truth is the universal principle that we live our lives with Dukkah. Although the simple translation is 'suffering' it would be better described as 'unsatisfactoriness', a sense that whatever is here right now, well just isn't 'enough'.
To live in our current world is to live in what has been termed 'an addictive society'. Business, media and celebrities work hard to keep and maintain our busyness, our striving with the net result being that we never stop and we rarely truly 'feel' anything. It's an increasing worldwide sense of 'numbing out', hiding from what causes us pain.
Heavy? Yes. Truthful? Unfortunately also yes.
But there is hope.
Mindfulness practice in therapy or counselling helps bring our attention to the present moment, consciously taking a pause and asking ourselves 'what is going on for me right now..or what am I running away from?' Working with a qualified and experienced mindfulness teacher helps enormously in this.
If and when we ask these questions, we don't need to know the answers right away. In simply being with this process, we step away from the Google culture of immediacy and someone else's opinion, we slow down, we learn to listen to ourselves, our bodies our minds. We find an alternative place to be.
For some 'analysis' in therapy can be quite daunting. Mindfulness allows us to approach our suffering in the here and now, with compassion and wisdom, untangling ourselves from our problems and rediscovering the space we need to heal ourselves.
With warm wishes,
Gavin.