Trade in your Little Dinghy for a Bigger Boat: Mindfulness practices helps navigate the seas of life

I sat down to practice mindfulness or intentional awareness to the moment, this morning and was greeted with an endless train of thoughts. It was like one of those cargo trains you seeing slowly rolling in and out of Baltimore. One car slowly creaking along afte another. My mind was doing the same thing in its own way: Ideas, plans, judgements, all creaking along. The thing about the situation is that I had no idea it was happening. My thoughts were all subconscious and I was being taken along for a ride to many places I didn’t choose to go.

I talked with a friend of mine recently about his practice and he said that on this day his mindfulness practice was challenging. “I was tossed around by my thoughts like someone out in the sea on a little dinghy” he said. I thought to myself, perhaps he needs a bigger boat.

And then it dawned on me that mindfulness practice isn’t about stopping the waves in the ocean but changing our relationship to them.

I paused and took a breath and intended to accept these flood of thoughts. I named them to myself with a gentle whisper of “thoughts. ” Soon, with no resistance, the sea of thoughts calmed into less choppy with a slight breeze. What had I done? Mindfulness had helped me change my relationship with thoughts in that moment.

I was no longer unconscious of the thoughts, rather, was noticing and accepting them. And it also happens to change our relationship with the sea of life, so that we can greet it with a bigger boat. Come join me , Phillip, to explore this healing practice in private, small group, and larger group sessions virtually and in person outdoors in a local park. Click here for more info. I may be able to help you get a bigger boat to weather the storms and waves of life!

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