Cultivate the skills of being present and responding wisely in daily life.

It’s normal to want to prolong our pleasant experiences and escape our unpleasant ones.  And, if that experience is in the outside world, such as delighting in our favorite food, often we can choose to have another portion or look forward to next time we’ll have some. And if we’re trying some food that we don’t like, we can easily escape the unpleasant experience by pushing the food away.

If the experience is based on our thoughts and feelings, we can’t easily discard it or produce more of it, so in mindfulness we learn to work with our experiences, exactly as they are. This allows us to uncover a paradox – the more we are able to work with our unpleasant experiences, the less they affect us; and the more we are able to simply enjoy rather than crave our pleasant experiences, the more impact they have when they are around.

The mindful meditation practices in this channel help us to work with reality rather than against it--training our mind to stay present while reducing unhelpful reactions, and increasing our insight and ability to respond wisely to whatever arises… and so enhancing our resilience and wellbeing.

Be with Open Awareness

Three-Step Being Space

Being with Sound

Be with Breath

Body Scan

Befriending and Self-Compassion

Savoring

Mark Quirk

Psychologist, Health Coach, Mindfulness

This calming practice helps us connect with and build awareness of our body, as well as training our attention as we continually focus and re-focus throughout the scan. This practice can be done lying down, as well as sitting or standing. Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash

A body scan practice helps build body awareness and focus, and can be done lying down, sitting, or standing.