https://www.everyday-mindfulness.org/how-mindfulness-changed-my-life/ How Mindfulness Changed My Life POSTED ON MARCH 18, 2013 // By Barbara Buck ‘Waking up is ultimately something that each one of us can only do for ourselves’ Jon Kabat-Zinn I think there is a problem with my enthusiasm for mindfulness and wanting others to benefit from it too. I struggle with keeping quiet, so I am pleased to have this opportunity to write about my own journey to this website. But Kabat-Zinn always says that it is important to not talk about your practice too much with other people; it’s your practice. ‘Don’t bother wasting your energy by telling everyone how amazing meditation is and how much it has helped you in your everyday life. Never proselytise and tell others that they should meditate, too.’ It’s great advice but hard to put into practice when something has changed your life so profoundly! I was always anxious, a worrier, with a quick mind that raced f...
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What I'm really thinking What I'm really thinking What I’m really thinking: the professor’s wife I want him to be respected for his achievements, just not at my expense Anonymous Sat 14 Jan 2017 09.00 GMT Last modified on Fri 1 Dec 2017 15.31 GMT View more sharing options Shares 6,974 Comments 274 Illustration: Lo Cole for the Guardian “O h, so your husband’s a professor? Well, he must be really clever then.” Well, actually, no – I’m the clever one. He’s very, very, knowledgable in a moderately obscure area of human knowledge. I know loads about everything. I’ve been at academic functions where someone has asked what I do, and when I’ve replied, “Bringing up the next generation” or “Looking after small children”, they have looked blank and turned away. I’m a non-person; not an academic, valueless and probably stupid. It’s not that I don’t value my partner’s achievements; I’ve been there ev...
What I'm really thinking: the survivor of serious illness 'I've no intention of ever going back to paid work. I'm 59 and I nearly died from a perforated bowel. Work isn't everything' Anonymous Sat 23 Feb 2013 08.00 GMT First published on Sat 23 Feb 2013 08.00 GMT View more sharing options Shares 8 'One moment your life is routine, the next you're in intensive care and there's nothing you could have done to change that.' Illustration: Lo Cole for the Guardian I f you knew you were going to die at eight tonight, would you want to have spent today doing what you're doing? That's what I'm asking myself every day. All through my recovery people said, "Bet you can't wait until you can get back to work." No, I've no intention of ever going back to paid work. I'm 59 and I nearly died from a perforated bowel. Work isn't everything. Family, friends, films, art, literature...
On the morning of 17th July 2007 I was particularly happy. Summer Term had just ended so I had 6 weeks of holiday from my Teaching Assistant job ahead, my husband was coming back from a 3 week research visit to Australia on Friday and my first grandchild was due in August. Life seemed very good – I was listening to Women's Hour, and my 16 year old son was asleep as usual upstairs. I felt a need to rush to the downstairs toilet and whilst sitting there fell forward with agonising and unexpected pain. I recall trying to shout my son's name but being able to do so only weakly. After what seemed like hours, he arrived sleepily at the toilet door and asked what was wrong. I replied 'this is the worst pain since childbirth' (already acknowledged in my family as the gold standard for pain after two 3 day labours!) and he said' better ring an ambulance then'……I recall a paramedic trying to open the toilet door to get to me, and then... I awoke 8 days later in Intensi...
Short story course 2014
The Right Place Thom wasn’t one for moving unnecessarily, so sitting on the porch in the sun came easily to him. Which is how he came to be in just the right place at the right time. The stranger came up the street slowly, staring at each house intently as if trying to trigger some long-lost memory. It took him a good ten minutes to reach Thom’s porch which gave Thom long enough to get his story straight. The man was only about thirty, well-dressed, educated-looking, with an air of enthusiasm that Thom has left long behind. As he approached the porch, the stranger smiled and held out his hand. “James Roberts” Thom chewed his tobacco slowly, nodded and reached forward to clasp the proffered hand. ‘I’m looking for my family- they moved here in ’27, to Main Street, Hammond. I’m hoping to find someone who remembers them” ...
Writing from the Body week 4 Homework
Writing from the Body INVISIBLE WOMEN She loved swimming up and down the pool, the ritual of the programme, 6 lengths of breaststroke, 6 of crawl, the rhythm of it was comforting and satisfying. She felt virtuous, the throbbing of her heart and lungs after a length in one breath satisfyingly complete. It was a solo activity, really, but occasionally a friend joined her for it, but both did the same tasks, firing each other up to greater speeds. She began to understand the concept of the pace-maker. They worked well together, each with strengths in different strokes. It was lunchtime so often the pool was virtually empty. Maybe a couple of business man chatting in the Jacuzzi, or a guy who’d told her friend he was learning to swim via the internet, and ploughed up and down the lanes with an odd stroke. Not a social time; people who were in this pool were here to swim. This day, the pool was empty when they arrived and they experienced the gorgeous...
Writing form the Body week 3
Sonnet On Sudden Death A hand turned upwards holds Only a single, transparent question The ‘why’ that fortune has not told The shock of her untimely action Anticipation of a routine day Shot through with lamentation The future no longer ‘come what may’ Tainted with terrible expectation The other question arises where ’Why not me’, I hear again My parents’ voice, Life isn’t Fair, Suffering for all, their share of pain From this day take each moment as the last Cherish the friendship, reach out and hold fast.
Writing from the Body week 2
Fingertips They arrive on the bay with due status, as if a fanfare has blown. It’s the ward round. The Consultant, his Registrars, and in the rear, the student doctors, one anxiously carrying a sheaf of papers whilst attempting to make notes of the words the Great God Consultant will pronounce. All the faces gather around her bed – they don’t make any eye contact with her, look only at the torso as the nurses pull back the dressings. He pulls his disposable gloves on, and then uses his fingertips to poke around in her revealed insides, where the skin has gone, and open interior gapes. ‘See’ he says, pointing, ‘this thickening here means the wound is beginning to close from below, from the inside out. We have to hope that no infections is sealed in underneath.’ ‘Hope’, she thinks. ‘We have to hope .’ Is that the best she can be offered? ‘Trust me’, his body language insists, ‘I am the God Consultant and I know what I’m doing’. And underneath she detects a sma...
Writing from the body
This is the first homework for a new course I'm doing at the Writing School: SATURN RETURNS “Whatever your age, your body is many years younger. In fact, even if you're middle aged, most of you may be just 10 years old or less.” So proclaimed a New York Times article in 2005. I’m sure we’ve all heard of this idea, which arises from the fact that most of the body's tissues are under constant renewal. That turns out to be not completely true as a few of the body's cell types endure from birth to death without renewal, and this special minority includes some or all of the cells of the cerebral cortex. But the average age of cells in the main body of the gut is 15.9 years, the cells lining the stomach last only five days and red blood cells, bruised and battered after traveling nearly 1,000 miles through the maze of the body's circulatory system, last only 120 days. An adult human liver probably has a turnover time of 300 to 500 days, and the ent...
Article/blog from everyday-mindfulness.org, website I am involved with: How Mindfulness Changed My Life ‘Waking up is ultimately something that each one of us can only do for ourselves’ (Jon Kabat-Zinn) I think there is a problem with my enthusiasm for mindfulness and wanting others to benefit from it too. I struggle with keeping quiet, so I am pleased to have this opportunity to write about my own journey to this website. But Kabat-Zinn always says that it is important to not talk about your practice too much with other people; it’s your practice. ‘Don’t bother wasting your energy by telling everyone how amazing meditation is and how much it has helped you in your everyday life. Never proselytise and tell others that they should meditate, too.’ It’s great advice but hard to put into practice when something has changed your life so profoundly! I was always anxious, a worrier, with a quick mind that raced from worry to worry, always one step ahead of myself, p...