Every Moment Is an Opportunity for Mindfulness

Midwest Alliance for Mindfulness teacher Erik Hulse talks about how each moment is an opportunity for mindfulness, whether joyful, painful, or something in between.

Sunrise photo by Erik Hulse

As long as you’re breathing, there is more right with you than wrong, no matter what is wrong.

How does this quote by Jon Kabat-Zinn sit with you?

Over the years, it has reminded me that as long as I’m still alive and attending to my present moment experience without judgment, it’s possible to cultivate greater equanimity and peace, even or perhaps especially when it seems that I’m careening between grief and joy.

Another teacher says that “Everything you can think, say or do can be thought, said or done more or less mindfully”. If this is true, and I think it is, then every waking moment presents another opportunity to practice mindful awareness – by noticing what’s happening right in front of, and inside us – and by examining our relationship to whatever is unfolding in our experience with compassion.

Contemplative neuroscience, and our own intuition, tells us that attending to our present moment experience, even when it’s painful, rather than fixating on the past or the future, corresponds to greater satisfaction and less suffering from anxiety, rumination and even depression. It’s also true that as another great teacher, Joseph Goldstein likes to say, it’s easier to be mindful than it is to remember to be mindful, so I’ve found it tremendously helpful to seek the guidance of teachers and the support of a practice community to help me keep my practice fresh and alive.

I hope you’ll consider joining me, in person or online, on Thursday, February 29, 2024 at 7:00 PM Central time for a Community-Wide Mindfulness Practice Gathering. We’ll explore the theme of ‘Continuous Practice’ through meditating together and harvesting our collective wisdom through dialogue around ways we can integrate our mindfulness practice with our daily lives so that our grief, our joy and everything in between can be fully experienced with compassion for ourselves and all others.