How I Came to Practice Mindfulness

My first experiences of mindfulness were through participation in yoga classes and in my own personal yoga practice. It was in these sessions that I realised that being totally present, for the time I was practising, felt like a weight had been taken off my shoulders. I had always described myself as a busy person with an even busier mind and a slightly messy life! As a teacher and mum of two young children, my mind literally didn’t stop generating ideas, worrying, pondering and tying itself up in knots!

Eager to explore more about how I could use this mindful presence to create more awareness, clarity and peace in my daily life, I delved into mindfulness.  I established a personal practice that I found eased my days enormously. Keen to know more and to use this in my role as a teacher, I undertook a Master of Science in Mindfulness Based Approaches, at Bangor University, not really knowing if or how I would manage the return to academic study after so many years.  I loved it! I started to incorporate mindfulness into my role as a primary teacher and started to teach mindfulness to adults, both of which have been immensely rewarding.

However, even though I managed to achieve a distinction, the path of academic study didn’t always run smoothly. These particular additional demands highlighted some of my personal characteristics that I had learnt to work around in my daily life - and they were tripping me up. After a lot of research and personal honesty – owning up to my own traits and challenges - I decided to follow an ADHD assessment, which resulted in a diagnosis.

I now realise why I sought mindfulness as a tool, many years earlier, and why it provided such relief – even though I was still living with the many characteristics and challenges that ADHD can create. The diagnosis has helped me to understand these challenges, make sense of and better use my mindfulness skills to ease these challenges, create new routines and promote a healthier, more forgiving and more productive lifestyle. It has been quite a pathway of discovery! Although I have the same constant flux of the many and varied mix of thoughts and emotions that being human with ADHD means, I can be with them in a healthier way and respond a little more wisely!

Creating time and being fully present with my other passions (art, yoga, nature and my busy cocker spaniel, Monty), all help me to thrive and be able to make the best of my working and home life.