Mindfulness Gave Me Stillness I Needed
We love to share knowledge with our community and we wanted to share Lindsay’s inspiring mindfulness journey. Lindsay is a children’s and adult Yoga teacher as well as a Mindfulness Instructor. She has a masters degree in counselling and birth rocks birth mentor training. She has been supporting children and families in the mental health field for the past twenty years. Yoga and mindfulness changed her life and she is passionate about bringing what she has learnt to others
Words by Lindsay.
Today I wanted to share with you how mindfulness, changed my life, and how the ripples changed the lives of my children
Big claim, so let me start by saying as a mental health professional, I don’t think mindfulness can solve everything and, as you may have read in the media, there are some people that its not helpful for… so I want to remind you to listen to your own wisdom, you will be the best judge of whether mindfulness is for you, but, if your curious, or want to know how powerful it can be, then I will share a little of my story with you.
I found mindfulness, or maybe it found me, as I made a huge transition in my life. I was living the dream, amazing partner, beautiful home, car, job. Id just obtained my Masters degree, was being offered a great promotion but one day I realised this was not MY dream. It was THE dream just not MINE!
So I changed the lot, relationship ended, house sold, and I moved to working in the charity sector at a Hospice. It was there that Mindfulness found me, as it was offered to the patients who were facing end of life.
It was beautiful, and challenging, but the combination of looking death and grief in the eyes every day, opened up my grief.
Grief I had held for my lifetime and that grief ripped me open, mindfulness gave the stillness I needed to be with that grief and hold it with compassion.
One trip to india and moving on a canal boat later, and I found a new lightness and love of life. I was the happies and fittest and healthiest Id been ever in my life.
And that alone would be a good advert for the life changing impact of mindfulness, but sometimes, its our darkest hours that show us the value of something.
Finding myself pregnant with twins, on a canal boat, as a single parent I faced many challenges and fears, mindfulness taught me to take a day at a time. I prepared and fought for a natural birth. It was not meant to be. My waters broke at 10pm good Friday and emergency section at 8.50am Easter Monday delivered my babies, one to NICU.
Birth was the most painful and traumatic experience that Id ever lived thought, but thanks to Mindfulness it was also the most beautiful and peaceful! What else In life has the power to allow both those contraditions into the room!
Mindfulness was what held me through many many sleepless nights and endless days of breast feeding twins on demand. Alone, exhausted, overwhelmed but Mindfulness had taught me how to be with all that, and breath, take one moment at a time and also see the beauty. I found that I became passionate that every parent should be given the option to learn this!! Because without doubt, Mindfulness made me a far better parent than I would otherwise have been.
2019 brought me challenges I could not have dreamt off, my girl twin came down with a pneumonia that led to a lung collapse and three times, I found myself alone in A&E, holding her hand, not knowing if she would make it to the morning.
Mindfulness helped me stay present and calm and there for her.
2020 brought Covid and seizues to my little boy.
My twins now just turned five, and I, shielded alone, in our tiny house with a postage stamp sized square of concrete as our only outdoor space for almost 7mnths.
Now don’t get me wrong, Im not saint, there were messy and awful moments, but all things considered, Mindfulness meant we weathered that storm better than anyone could have expected.
The ripples of my practice however, are worth their weight in gold, as I watch my children teach their teddybears to meditate and breath, as I hear them sit with each other and talk through their fears, remind each other to breath, and when life gets a bit too much for me, remind me to breath! I realise that this practice, this small thing I decided to have a go at over a decade ago, has not only changed my life, but my childrens and perhaps my childrens, childrens lives.
Learning to be with my breath, taking that first tiny step to just be curious about how it feels to breath, and making a commitment to doing a little each day, is perhaps the most powerful thing I have ever learnt.
I cant guarantee what you will learn, or where Mindfulness might take you in your life. But, I do know you get out what you put in, that compared to many life changing options, its relatively inexpensive, and it needs no fancy props. It can be done anywhere, anytime of day and the science shows us just a few mins, little and often, can literally change your brain.
To find out more about Lindsay visit her website here
