Beginners Mindfulness- the inside story!

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Blogger beautyh2t.com has taken up Mindfulness! Share her journey and candid review of our 8 week beginners’ course with her weekly blog right here on our Mindful Musings page. Read on to find out how week 1 went….

“I was nervous! Yup. that’s the thing when you try something new; I guess sometimes it’s the thing that stops actually even stops you trying something new? “I’ll be rubbish at it, no one will talk to me, I don’t have time” etc etc, my list to not go to things has been pretty long in the past so being asked to write About The Wee Retreat has forced me to jump right in. Top of my worries for session one was, can I stay awake and not spend the time worrying about the baby??! And do you know what, I managed both….

Session 1 was all about meeting each other (a really lovely open group of people who are all there for similar reasons to each other) and learning about The Wee Retreat course and what it will entail. We tried our hand at a short meditation and it was really useful to learn how others found it and be honest about what aspects I struggled with (mainly for giving myself a hard time for not being ‘good enough’ at it). Vicky skilfully guided us through our discussion and provided insight into why we were experiencing what we were. It was really refreshing to have someone remind you not to be hard on yourself, and that something like mindfulness is not a hard goal you can set yourself as there really is no finishing point. I won’t just achieve some perfect state and then cross it off my list like I might want to. I feel like with my ever growing to do lists and constant guilt for not replying to people, going to all the things, keeping everything in order, it is all to easy to want to give up a new habit like this and mark it as ‘too difficult’ or that I have ‘no time’.

The biggest thing I took away this week actually was that perception of time. Since being off on maternity leave I have never felt I have more to do yet I have also never spent so long sitting staring at Instagram stories, to the point of big passages of time passing on little snippets that I don’t always need. Obviously I love some of them and they are a great distraction but suddenly I find myself just getting lost in them for too long and it’s possibly not benefitting me as much as just a quiet moment alone with my thoughts could.

So my initial thoughts on the process are that this is going to be a hugely interesting course, there is so much to be said for taking the time out for me, listening to other people share their experience and pick up what might seem like small nuggets of information that carry am much bigger impact out in day to day life. I left feeling a mix of emotions, excited and energised to try out my home exercises, reflective on the hard time I had been giving myself of late, and calmer. It was like things had stopped swirling around in my head for a while and I noticed just how freeing that could be.

Bring on week 2!”

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