One of the things I love about mindfulness is the constant invitation to go deeper. Even a few breaths can get you started, shifting from hectic and harried to calmer and more peaceful as you gain perspective on the thoughts and emotions racing around.
As you spend more time practicing, and perhaps experiment with different types of mindfulness, your experience can be as varied as the landscape of your mind, the contours of your life events, the intentions you bring to your practice, and the environment of your present moment.
Walt Whitman famously said, “I am large, I contain multitudes.” Indeed, we all contain multitudes—an ever-changing kaleidoscope of thoughts, feelings, and perspectives—and we are surrounded by worlds of opportunities for growth.
I’ve been practicing variations on mindfulness since my early twenties. One of my first introductions came when I was a young editor, researching an article about something called Morita therapy that was based on three tenets: Accept your feelings, know your purpose, and do what needs to be done. I loved the idea that our feelings were like clouds in the sky, worth observing, but fleeting and impermanent.…
