Mindfulness should be practical whether you live on a farm or in a city-centre apartment. It IS for everyone. If you are in the moment, you are mindful. Being in the moment is about getting out of your head and into your body, experiencing what is here and now, not regretting yesterday or fearing tomorrow.
Mindfulness should be accessible anywhere and everywhere because it comes from within and appreciates without. The more I think about this the more I become aware of all my senses.
Our sense of touch, smell, taste, sight and hearing can make mindfulness so much more reachable. We often only realise something is different when an extremely loud sound comes from the tree-fellers chainsaw next door or a sickening sweet perfume on the lady walking past you.
Perhaps if we revisit our senses – and I am not talking about using your sight to admire your own Instagram photo, or your hearing to indulge in your own voice, or your sense of smell to sniff out the latest Narciso Rodrigues fragrance, or your sense of touch to covet the velvet couch in @Home or…you get the picture.
What if we just tune into our surroundings and allow our senses to help us do this. I have to admit, living on the coast makes this a little bit easier. The feeling of sand under your feet, a beautiful cooling breeze on a hot summer beach day, the smell of kelp when you are on your stoep, the sound of breaking waves as you fall asleep, the beauty of the sea as the sun rises.
Living in and amongst these blessings make it easier to be mindful, yet I still struggle to drown out the nagging noises of ‘maybe I am not doing enough, maybe I am not giving enough, maybe I am not enough’ with the beautiful sound of a wave breaking on the shore.
“When a shoreline welcomes every wave, it becomes a beach—a haven for play, ease and rest. When a person welcomes each moment as it is, she becomes a channel of peace – Brandon Nappi Huffpost 08/05/2016
We are incredibly blessed to be near these amazing sounds and sights, but I believe that if I practised this more while living in the city perhaps I would have seen more beauty, heard more kind words, smell more coffee, felt more softness and life may have tasted sweeter. With this thought, I am also reminded to not go back or forward without appreciating exactly where I am and what I am feeling right now – just absolute gratitude.
