A dedicated mindfulness practice can help prepare us to meet life's inevitable challenges with greater wisdom and ease. This might allow us to decrease our own suffering and prevent ourselves from mindlessly causing or exacerbating harm to others.

True freedom comes from within. Through the practice of mindfulness we cultivate an understanding of, and a new relationship with, the things that most often hold us captive, such as ignorance, attachment and aversion.

With the start of the new year, many of us are thinking about the ways we will care for ourselves going forward and the healthy practices we'd like to cultivate or maintain. But, how can we know what's truly good for us? Mindfulness can help us be more discerning.

Aversion involves the desire to turn away from or avoid something unwanted. Most often experienced as annoyance, disliking, disgust, or even hatred, aversion obscures reality by turning attention away from what is present, preventing us from truly understanding our experience. By learning to face aversion, we can gather important information that can help us respond to life situations with greater ease and wisdom.