A Year of Mindfulness
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We are lucky here at Balance Garden to have contributors who are working at the forefront of natural health and wellbeing. This month we are showcasing some of our favourite collections from our first year out in the world.
Today we want to signpost you to Natalie Morrison’s mindfulness column. Natalie is a London based mindfulness and yoga teacher, and teaches regularly at major wellbeing events as well as in smaller studios and on retreat.
Here’s our favourite articles from the archives:
1) Mindfulness for a Sense of Balance
Natalie explores the history of modern mindfulness and offers some easy ways to integrate the practice into your life.
Excerpt: “Mindfulness in its essence is a very simple practice. A training and way of being which involves being really open and attentive to whatever is going on in the present moment.“
2) The ‘Having It All’ Dilemma: Why Self-Compassion Is the Key
Many of us have grown up in an age where there is the desire and expectation to ‘have it all’. A rich and fulfilling life. A successful career. Sparkling relationships. A deep sense of peace, joy and well-being. Yet in practice we’re finding we’re way off the mark.
3) “Leaning In” to our Lives
As we are able to be more open, to lean in to greater extremes of both good and bad in our immediate environment with love, without fear, everything shines more. Our lives become richer. And we become more interesting because we are more interested.
4) On Interbeing: Cultivating Deep Connection to Others and the World
In the coming decade, a radical shift of humanity towards a more ingrained sense of interconnectedness with others and the environment is needed to keep the forces of greed and self-interest that are causing so much suffering and that have the potential to cause irreparable damage to our planet in check. No less than the lives of our children depend on it.
5) Avoiding Wastage: A Mindful Personal Accounting System
Natalie takes a look at how preventing waste in our own internal world can have a lasting impact the way we treat external resources. She offers the practice of Mindfulness as one potential solution to the economy of waste that we find ourselves in. This is meditation and activism all rolled into one.
6) After Abundance; On Becoming the ‘Less Is More’ Generation
The term ‘Bodhicitta’ in Sanskrit means a mind that strives towards awakening for the collective wellbeing of all. Beyond surface-level stress reduction, mindfulness-based meditation practices and ways of living can bring us closer to that sense of profound comfort and ease within ourselves that exists whenever we are thinking and acting out of our innate sense of compassion and connection with other beings.
7) Lightening the Load of Being a ‘Me’
Natalie takes a look at the baggage associated with ‘being’ and provides some practical mindfulness exercises for lightening the load a little
8) Redefining a Life of Luxury
Mindfulness is a way of being. What’s often missing in the white-washed zen-style imagery that can shape our preconceptions of this practice is that it can really make our lives pop into a glorious, widened spectrum of emotions and senses.
9) Embracing Your Edges
How often are you prepared to go to your edge places? To really place yourself in a situation you know will challenge you to your limits in some way. Once a week? Once a month? Once a year? How often would you like it to be? What holds you back?
We hope you’ve enjoyed revisiting these beautiful and inspiring words as much as we have.
Are you a mindfulness teacher or practitioner? Would you like to see your words on Balance Garden? We want to hear from you. Contact us and introduce yourselves.
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