Words from Orla

Orla shared some lovely words in her newsletter this week about Mindfulness and I thought I would share them here so you get a taste of what she explores in the course. "When we cultivate compassion within ourselves it expands our capacity to hold the suffering of others, and it also helps us generate energy to take action. When we practice together we see how we can use this collective energy to create change and transformation. In the Mindfulness tradition transformation happens on an individual level first. For example, We may be watching or hearing about the suffering of the people of Gaza or Sudan (I could go on and on with this list) and be so disturbed, that our natural reaction is to fall into despair and turn away feeling hopeless to help. The Mindfulness tradition suggests we turn toward the feeling in ourselves first, we allow ourselves to hold the feelings, just as a mother holds and soothes a crying baby we can learn to do this for ourselves. Try repeating, ‘May I be safe, May I be happy, May I be peaceful may I be free from suffering’ this trains your brain to be more compassionate towards yourself and others. Once we have soothed ourselves then we have more energy to connect with other people and take action."