There's much to write about in mental health services at the moment , but with your patience I am going to continue to consider the issue of Mindfulness and my on going practice. It has been really hard to build a sense of discipline into this area of my life and I guess discipline is not a virtue I possess but am keen to develop. It really is striking what can get in the way when you have to find all of 8 minutes for a meditation exercise. I recall clearly when I have had the task of writing or even the dreaded marking when a lecturer.
It was surprising then how much time I could waste on walking from room to room , or tasks that needed doing suddenly seemed urgent. I found myself engaged in any distracting behaviour rather than get marking that pile of dissertations.
In many ways this is similar , there are lots of reasons why I should do other things rather than pay attention to the needs of practice. Yet I persist, and have found real moments of calm and quiet. If we wait for the world we live in to be like that , then we can wait a very long time!
I have found one of the most revealing issues to be the constant chatter of internal dialogue that demands attention but which can be really fruitless, at worst this seems to take the form of ruminating and can be tiring. Yet a simple attentive episode of "noticing" can be so restorative, it seems to have the capacity to introduce actual choice as to the significance of what we experience.
I have found the exercises related to listening quite revealing (although dominated by the local jackdaws) , as they clearly point towards the listening we can undertake to internal thought "chatter" and whether choose to do more than notice its presence.
So yes still persisting and even more importantly feeling a real sense of benefit.
