“Everyone one of us has a fantasy of a ‘magical something’—a relationship, job, achievement, or possession—that will remove us from the treadmill that is real life.”

Here's a great strategy from Phillip Moffitt for working with unpleasant emotions .

“When a difficult situation or memory arises, it is essential that you be able to self-soothe in order to respond skillfully.”

Phillip Moffitt

“Happiness is not a large enough word for the deeper satisfactions that human beings are searching for and will search for and have searched for through recorded time.”

David Whyte

"One of the reasons it's so difficult to focus on a small piece of experience that's neutral, like the breath, why it feels like you're just going to die—is because you are!"

Shinzen Young

Our attention is habitually drawn to problems. However, we can train ourselves to notice rest and relaxation hiding within our regular routine. Setting aside some time to get more acquainted with what rest feels like in the body can support this exploration.

It makes me feel alone
to answer to a name
I've never used.

“Several times a day let your hands relax completely. For at least a few seconds, let them be completely still.”

Jan Chozen Bays

“The eye exists to detect movement. Any image, perfectly stabilized on the retina, vanishes. Our eyes cannot see stationary objects, and must tremble constantly to bring them into view.”

Simon Ings

Shinzen Young created this breath awareness exercise to develop concentration, sensory clarity, and equanimity. It is also designed to foster the cultivation of an ongoing mindfulness practice by providing both short-term and long-term benefits.

Focusing on our in-breath, we release the past, we release the future, we release our projects. We ride on that breath with all our being. Our mind comes back to our body, and we are truly there, alive, in the present moment. We are home.

~ Thích Nhất Hạnh

Mindfulness practice involves tracking aspects of ordinary experience as precisely as possible while allowing these observations to come and go with less interference. The noting technique creates a structure for maintaining both of these qualities of attention. Using mental labels is a technique that supports noting.

Mindfulness meditation uses ordinary sensory experience to develop skills of attention which can increase our baseline level of contentment. We take the world in through our eyes, our ears, and our bodies. We make sense of the world and our relationship to it through our mental images, internal conversations, and sensations in the body which seem to have emotional flavors.

Consider keeping your new mindfulness practice to yourself until the habit is established.

Just as physical exercise increases strength, flexibility, and endurance to support the regular activities of your life, mindfulness exercises develop skills of attention that nurture a deep and mature level of personal contentment.

“What would people look like
if we could see them as they are…”

Ellen Bass

“There is a middle way here between the extremes of rigidity and passivity, one that offers a more legitimate form of meditation.”

Jason Siff

“There's nothing wrong with thinking. So much that is beautiful comes out of thinking and out of our emotions. But if our thinking is not balanced with awareness, we can end up deluded, perpetually lost in thought, and out of our minds just when we need them the most.”

Jon Kabat-Zinn

“The extended self, which is what we normally think of when we think about ourselves, is really a story. It’s the story of what’s happened to a body over time.”

Paul Broks

"When we start to pay attention in an intentional and nonjudgmental way, as we do when we cultivate mindfulness, and thus bring ourselves back into the present moment, we are tapping into very deep natural resources of strength, creativity, balance, and yes, wisdom—interior resources that we may never have realized we even possess."

Jon Kabat-Zinn