Tag: wellness

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Aliveness

Aliveness

Mindfulness meditation offers a practice of returning to experiencing the world as it is, to return to the raw experience of feeling each moment without thinking, thinking, pre-conceived ideas and judgment. Feeling alive is feeling the sensations that come to us – the cool air brushing against the skin, the rhythm of the breath, and the faint pulses felt in the body. Each breath is a quiet miracle of keeping us alive. We are simply here, breathing, giving ourselves the gift of the present moment instead of being lost in doing, thinking, doing, thinking.

Alive by Haashimite (extract)

To be Alive is to grow
To keep Living
Through the calm of dawn, and the bustle of noon, and the sloth of sundown
Just stay living
Embrace the self balancing emotions
And dread living-dead
For in that is true death
A great life is a life lived Alive

Awake to every feel
A life of sading and cries, and of happiness and laughter
And growth
Intertwined in perfect harmony
And when the sunlight blesses our paths a last time
Thanks to living Alive
The joy of rest is fully savoured.

Guide: Noelle Lim

Image credit: Bianca Ackermann, Unsplash

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Art of Watching

The art of watching without analysing, fixing, chasing and suppressing is a radical practice of presence, patience and compassion, allowing us to relate to whatever that arises, the welcomed and unwelcomed, with spaciousness and graciousness.

In mindfulness meditation, to watch is to observe with openness, care and without judgement, letting thoughts, emotions and sensations move along. We simply witness and not judge.

As we settle into stillness, anchoring ourselves to the breath or the body, we begin noticing the stream of experience flowing through our awareness—thoughts, emotions, sensations. Often subtle, sometimes stormy but we just keep sitting in awareness.

When thoughts, emotions, or sensations arise, we note: “thinking,” “feeling,” “sensation“, with the breath as the home base.

As we practice watching, over time, strong feelings lose their grip, and we learn to simply give ourselves space not to react.

Watching is not to control, to escape or to avoid. It is to truly see—and in seeing, to be.

Art of Watching, by Wendy Mitchell

Just sitting and watching in silence

Patience is all that you need

To see nature appear

To appreciate what was a tiny seed

To hear the birds singing happily

To watch them fly around

Yet when they settle near by

Joy, simply abounds

You have to be still, you have to be quiet

And wait just patiently

And then the reward will appear

And be there in front quite graciously.

So patience is a virtue

Or so they say

But for nature it’s paramount

Blink and it will have gone away….

Guide: Noelle Lim

Image credit: Shobha GS, Unsplash