January Jones-New Year's Holiday Stress-Meditation & Yoga - Liz Hansen

The two aspects of our mind can be reflected in our body. An active mind leads us to be doing. We need our active mind for survival. The planning, thinking, achieving aspect of the mind motivates us to get out there and provide shelter and food and community for life.  However, at times it can lead to too much doing and no place for stillness: active body/active mind. We need the balance of engaging with our more passive, still mind. The practice of mindfulness creates the place for simply being. It is in this place that we switch to growth and healing within the physical. Not surprisingly, this can be learned best by becoming still, relaxing the physical body, and practicing mindfulness that leads us into the stillness. I have been teaching the Mindfulness Based Stillness Meditation course for a number of years and have seen evidence of how peoples lives change for the better once they have an understanding of how to use this practice. Then we can generalise the mindfulness into our doing, and move and act in a mindful way. Still body/ still mind leads to active body/ still mind At the recent meditation teacher training with Ian and Ruth Gawler, we were learning techniques for how to use the active mind for meditation and how this can also have a profound impact on our wellness. That is me with Ian in the photo. The first of the two programs focused on imagery. Ian’s definition, ‘Imagery is the conscious development and repetition of affirmations, mental images and associated feelings for a creative purpose’, immediately indicates that it is more than visualisations; but includes...