Month: April 2017

A Lesson In Patience

There’s a lady in the bed opposite. She’s waiting patiently with such elegance and poise. Later today she is having surgery to remove a tumour from her brain. She’ll be awake during the operation. She’s been warned of possible complications; loss of function and changes in personality. She waits, calmly. “It’s okay for me,” she says, “this is a one-off. It’s you I feel for having an ongoing condition.”

There’s a lady in the bed alongside me. She’s been waiting for hours, days, for tests she desperately hopes will reveal answers. “I just want to know what’s wrong,” she says, jumping up every time someone approaches her bed. I don’t know what’s tormenting her more, the waiting or the unknown.

As for me, my bags are packed and I’m waiting to go home. My face lights up as I think of seeing my kitties and being in the peace and quiet of my little oasis. But here I find myself, waiting.Read More

The Chocolate Meditation

I once found myself sitting in a hospital patient group with a raisin in my hand. What did it feel like? What did it look like? What did it smell like? What did it taste like? At this point, there were murmurs of distaste going around the room as most of the group, myself included, didn’t like raisins.

The raisin exercise was my introduction to mindfulness. I may not have particularly enjoyed the taste, but I did notice the sweet earthy scent and the wrinkled grooves sitting on my tongue for the first time. That one little raisin was bursting with flavour. It proved a point; when you deliberately pay close attention to something, using all of your senses, whilst not being clouded by the past or the future (or the judgement, ‘I don’t like raisins!’), your immediate experience can change in powerful and unexpected ways.Read More