Abstract Thursday- Quill

Thankfully my son was feeling much better today so he went back to school and I headed into the office.  When I got there and saw the amount of work I had to do I was a little annoyed as when I looked through it, there was so much I could have done at home over the last two days but for some reason it was resisted.  I didn't let it bother me though, after all, what would be the point?

My mindfulness course was very good last night and I came away optimistic about how beneficial it would be.  If you are interested here is a bbc news video we watched showing some scientific evidence of the benefits to mindfulness. Our homework is to do one formal practice and one informal a day. What does that mean? I hear you ask. Well, a formal practice is setting the time aside to do a guided meditation or a meditation without guidance if you are confident enough.  I have some many in the past like body scan meditations but I am not very good at doing it every day. An informal practice is taking a day time activity you do and doing it mindfully. For example taking a shower, making a cup of tea, eating. It is the intentional awareness of what is happening in the moment. The sounds, feeling, smells, heat etc and paying attention. We took part in an exercise last night of mindfully eating a raisin - holding it, looking and feeling, smelling (its amazing how strong one raisin smells), holding it in our mouths, biting and swallowing.  I urge you to try it!

So today I remembered to be mindful whilst I showered and I did a mindful compassion meditation whilst on the bus home which I got from this  website.

I was a little stuck for inspiration for my photo today but this was a quill on my kitchen work service that my daughter bought on a school trip! I played around with it on a photo app and this was the result!

"Mindfulness means being awake. It means knowing what you are doing,"