Australian_Yoga_Journal_2016_08_09_downmagaz.com

august/september 2016 yogajournal.com.au
48
Michael Shaw
back: “Enjoy your tea. As Thich Nhat Hanh
says, ‘Drink your tea slowly and reverently,
as if it is the axis on which the world Earth
revolves – slowly, evenly, without rushing
toward the future.”
Serenely, I sip my chai, inspired by
Marike’s message and wondering if her
kindness is what meditators are trying to
convey when they discuss living
authentically. Byron Bay’s Melli O’Brien,
aka Mrs Mindfulness, believes mindfulness
“Everyone can meditate
because whatever comes is
part of the meditation.
You cannot get a
meditation wrong.”
is a “radical act of intelligence and love
towards yourself and the planet” and
authenticity is essential. “Living mindfully
to me means living authentically,” Melli
says. “When I say authentic, I mean being
willing to be vulnerable and real with
what’s going on for us with other human
beings. It’s very intimate; everybody has a
fear they’re not worthy or won’t be loved.
Mindfulness opens a space where there’s a
way of being in touch with who I am so that
even when I have those fears, mostly I can
still turn up as an authentic person. The
preciousness of that is I live a life that’s true
to me and when I connect with others, it’s a
real connection. I really crave that; I think
most of us do.”
Melli incorporates plenty of yoga in her
mindfulness teachings and she also
specialises in immersion retreats. She is
responsible for the internationally
acclaimed Mindfulness Summit, a not-forprofit
project that last year gathered more
than 40 experts worldwide – including Jon
Kabat-Zinn, Jack Kornfield, and Susan
Albers – for a series of online interviews,
teachings and practice sessions. So far,
more than 250,000 people have taken part.
I am curious. Melli’s life is overflowing
with meditative devotion, so who or what
inspired her? She explains that she used to
listen to the elderly residents in the nursing
home where she worked as they recollected
what had really made them happy. “The
message was that shuffling around the
external circumstances of your life does not
give you what you ultimately want, which is
a lasting sense of fulfilment and wholeness.
It can give you pleasure, but the core
essence was that a life fully lived is a life
where you realise the little moments aren’t
little. There’s no such thing as a mundane
moment.
“Don’t spend your life waiting for the
big thing to happen. Make the most of
what’s here now because this is it, this is
life, and it passes you by so fast, so don’t
waste it. When some of the elderly people
knew they were nearing death, they would
say, ‘Oh, all the things I thought mattered,
they don’t really matter. All that matters is
being fully alive and being fully who you
are.’ That was it.”
Northern NSW mindfulness trainer,
educator and yoga teacher Shakti Burke
says a mindfulness approach will not
appear magically, but setting daily
intentions can help introduce mindfulness
to your routine. Shakti teaches the three
reliable anchors of mindfulness: body
(bringing awareness into your body), breath
(connecting with your breath) and senses
(noticing immediately what is in front of
you). These, she says, “provide a safe haven
when we’re blown about by the wind of
mindlessness”.
She says one useful technique is to walk
more mindfully. Another is to notice when
your breath becomes short or you sense
stress creeping in.“Use this as a trigger to
slow and deepen your breath and start to
relax your body. Each time you feel that
trigger, then immediately slow the breath
PHOTO: MICHAEL SHAW/ROMEO VIGLINO; (TOP RIGHT) SKAKTI BURKE NISHKAM POMROY;
VALENTIN CASARSA/ /ISTOCKPHOTO.COM; (BOTTOM RIGHT) MARIKE KNIGHT/SARAH ENTICKNAP