What is Mindfulness?
If meditation is reaching a point when you have no thoughts, mindfulness is having one thought at a time. Furthermore, it is the ability to choose a thought wisely and move to the next with intention and fluidity. As a meditation and mindfulness instructor, I use a metaphor (stolen straight from the ancient Taoist text, “The Toa Te Ching”) to explain this to my students: the metaphor of the bowl. The usefulness of a bowl comes not from its material but rather, the empty space it creates. From this space comes its ability to hold things. A bowl is not the things that it holds. Similarly, we are not our…
Anxiety and Meditation
Anxiety is an emotional state of stress caused by worry, fear, and concern for future events. It is experiencing the unknown and responding to it by projecting negative possibilities. We all experience anxiety in our lives, some to different extent than others. This article is not talking about chronic anxiety but rather a sort day-to-day anxiety that we may all experience. This is not to say that people suffering from chronic anxiety won’t find meditation and this article useful. In fact, I think they will, but I am not a doctor or a psychologist,therefore, I do not feel I can appropriately address this type of anxiety. Why do we experience anxiety?…
