By What an amazing week we have had as a team with talks for ‘Night of Adventure’, the Rotary District Conference in Marlow, iSportconnect, the Cambridge University Women’s Boatclub crew, to name a few. It’s been diverse and exciting and reminded me how different we all are as a team yet how well we always pull together!
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The idea for the coming months is to have different topics to discuss on a weekly basis in our blogs if there are no events to share with you.
This week is about mindfulness.
Whoever we are and whatever we do, I think that there is this undeniable feeling of disharmony in the world at the moment. Nature is giving us signs all the time and I think we have all become a little more aware of the importance to look after not only our physical health but also our mental wellbeing. Finding that time to forget the stresses of everyday life, try to quiet the mind and find the perfect work/personal life balance!
One of the best things about being in the middle of the ocean for me, was all the time we had to be mindful. No mobile phone distraction, societal pressures to consider and to be able to connect fully to the surroundings and to each other as a team. Everything we did was worthy of our undivided attention. We truly listened to one another, we tasted what we ate, we really saw what we looked at and sound and emotion was heightened. I’ve promised myself that I will always bring myself back to that mindful state and carry those oceanic moments with me wherever I find myself – even in the middle of the chaotic city of London!
For us collectively as a team, some of the most special memories from the journey are the silent star-strewn nights, the magnificent sunsets, getting to know each other’s life stories and those hysterical moments when something in that instant made us laugh uncontrollably. For me, there was something very mindful about all of these situations – as we were fully present.
Have a great weekend everyone and remember:
“ In this moment, there is plenty of time. In this moment, you are precisely as you should be. In this moment, there is infinite possibility ”
Victoria Moran
Absolutely spot on about the need for mindfulness and sensing life around us in it’s infinite detail.
The problem is our modern lives have an overlay of frenetic pressures that provides a barrier to proper mindfulness.
Life on the ocean in Doris removed that overlay or veneer of modern day living pressures and allowed mindfulness to surface and provide the vehicle for ‘living in the moment’.
Somehow, those who do not have the Pacific Ocean to provide it need to find other ways to escape from the mobile phones, emails, commuter delays, traffic jams, alarmist media journalism, and a whole host of other mindfulness smothering situations.
We have reached a point in the evolution of civilised man where mindfulness should be taught in schools. People need to be shown that if they do not develop an awareness, or mindfulness, of what is going on ‘in the moment’ around them that they will spin in ever decreasing circles and lose track of who and what they are.
Mothers who have to email their children upstairs in their bedrooms to tell them that supper is on the table. The kids come trotting down, tablet or ipod in hand. The road to social ineptitude.
Six million viewers watch a film on television. That’s 6M people who all have the same image of the story in their minds. That is not a bad thing in itself because it is 6M people entertained. But it leaves the 6M open to manipulation – a facet of a lack of mindfulness
The same 6M read a story in a book. That’s 6M different views and interpretations held in the mind of the same story.
I read books and listen to the radio as much as I can becaus it helps to open up the channels in my mind to appreciate everything around me. The neurons are conditioned to find their own links and break through the smothering overlay of modern life.
There are ways that many people use to escape and bask in the healing rays of mindfulness ranging from lazy beach holidays without electronics through Yoga meditation classes to simply walking the dog along the river bank again, without a mobile phone.
Stop, think, take stock, change gear and observe more.
I meant to add that one of the ways in which people can escape into mindfulness of course is to embark upon an insane 9 month expedition across the Pacific in a 29 foot rowing boat !