If you had asked me what my opinions and thoughts were around mindfulness a few years ago I would have come up with a list something along the lines of:
trendy
a bit like yoga without the moving
colouring
emptying the mind
not for me
another passing fad
You get the idea. To be perfectly honest it wasn't something that I had given a huge amount of thought to. It wasn't something that came up in my family or social circles, it wasn't something that was considered to be especially relevant at work. In a nutshell it wasn't something that I thought would be for me.
My work situation changed and I started to consider alternative career paths. After various conversations, I started an introduction to counselling course. At the same time it was suggested at work that we would devote a big chunk of our allocated CPD time to a mindfulness course. To give a little context to this - the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns had just come to an end (the lockdowns anyway had ended) and awareness of mental health , wellbeing across the world was pretty much at the forefront of everyone's thoughts.
I was feeling fairly uninspired by the idea of having to spend a day followed by a series of after work sessions on mindfulness; I found it hard at this point to see beyond the irony of mindfulness and being at work. However, it was certainly something that sounded more interesting than some of the 57,000 slide presentations that one has to sit through sometimes ( sorry, I am prone to exaggeration at times but you get the idea)
The dates were set. Compassionate mindfulness. Here goes...
My next post will continue the journey. I am not going to get all evangelical about things, that's not my style (not even sure that I have a style!) but it's a journey that I am so happy to have started and three years down the line feel that it's one to keep on exploring and learning from.
