What enables us to be at choice rather than reactive?

While there are many variations to this answer, for certain it’s a continuous process.

Back when I worked at FDA, every once in a while I’d walk down Rockville Pike at lunch and browse in the local bookshop. One day I found Lorin Roche’s book Meditation Made Easy. That was the start of my mindfulness practices.

Years later, I mentioned to one of my kids’ teachers that I was looking for a new workout. She told me she practiced Bikram Yoga and loved it. I read Bikram’s book, and it looked interesting, but he recommended starting yoga by practicing every day for 6 months. I looked at my calendar and the soonest I felt I could commit to that was in May of the following year. On Mother’s Day 2006 I went to my first yoga class. Six months of daily practice later, I was an enthusiast.

I felt better mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually than I had in my entire life.

About two years into my daily Bikram practice, I injured my knee. That led me to experiment with many other styles of yoga, and eventually I found Iyengar yoga.

In 2014 I became a fully certified Iyengar yoga teacher, and in 2017 I added Certified Yoga Therapist through the International Association of Yoga Therapists .

I’ve been practicing yoga day in and day out for 19 years now. I’ve come to realize that while the physical benefits of properly practiced yoga are wonderful, the true gold is that “Yoga stills the fluctuations of the mind” (Yoga Sutras of Patanjali Sutra 1.2).

This ability to call on internal resources while the world spins around us is critical for all of us, both for our own well-being and for those around us.

There are lots of pathways for developing this ability. Knowing there are options is not enough, though.

Just as we don’t go the gym and expect to pick up the 45 pound weight bar with weights on either end unless we’ve been weightlifting over time, we practice mindfulness over time to be able to respond the way we want to what life brings us.

Staying centered requires practice, practice, practice. Yes, even then, we can get off course, but with more practice under our belt we get back on track sooner.

What’s your mindfulness practice?