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Because mindfulness is a contemplative practice, it values simplicity and non-distraction. By extension, it holds silence in high regard. It is widely accepted that environments conducive to mindfulness practice are ones that keep the clamour and noise of everyday life at a distance. Classes, training courses and retreat centres tend to prioritise relative quietness. The rest of the time, however, just like everyone else, practitioners inhabit a busy world of human interactivity. This is where the practice gets ‘real’ and ‘interesting’ because we are obliged to engage and respond, to speak and to act. If our practice is in good shape, we will find ourselves reflecting on the causes and the effects of our speech and our actions.
What is your ‘felt sense’ in this moment? Yes, this moment. If you are not sure, pause and allow awareness to open to your physical experience. Deliberately inhabit the ever-present inner landscape of bodily sensations. Let the prevailing mood or atmosphere of body and mind become known to you. What do you notice about the overall quality of feeling you are experiencing now? Pause reading and just feel.
Working with difficult or painful emotional states is an understandably frequent topic of discussion on mindfulness training courses. Feelings will out – perhaps all the more so in meditation which is, after all, a purification of the heart.
Gentle, patient and persistent effort empowers one’s mindfulness practice. On a micro level, this is no more and no less than the energy required to wake up to what is occurring in the here-and-now. On a macro level, it has four aspects: to sustain wholesome (aka positive) mental states that have already arisen; to arouse such states when they have not yet arisen; to abandon unwholesome (aka negative) states when they have arisen; and to guard against negative states so that they do not arise.
You know mindfulness has fully penetrated the mainstream when it lands a starring role in a TV drama about the meditative dismembering of a mobster by his morally vacant lawyer. So begins Murder Mindfully, a darkly comic satire about navigating the stresses of modern life with a not-so-delicate blend of three-step breathing spaces and extreme violence. Each episode serves up training points on mindfulness that are neatly woven into the unfolding predicament of the main character, who uses his newfound awareness skills to keep cool and stay alive. By not taking itself too seriously, this show is one of TV’s most illuminating depictions of the promises and perils of modern mindfulness.
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June 2025
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