Quieting the Mind
February 7, 2020
“Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself…”
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, MD
Our mind has multiple facets. Our mind can function as a friend, kind companion and guide in certain moments and can push us in unhealthy directions in other moments. Our mind can feel vast, spacious, calm, clear and quiet. Our mind can also feel over-crowded, overwhelmed, full, busy and confused.
Emotions and memories, lack of sleep, less-than-nourishing foods and beverages, lack of exercise, adrenaline and other stress hormones all contribute to our mind being ill-at-ease and less equipped or able to find peaceful solutions to challenges during the fullness of our days.
The more relaxed we are, the more our mind is able to support moment-to-moment choices that serve us and our life to be more easy, graceful and joyful.
Wouldn’t it serve us, our loved ones and our community if we had ready access – even defaulted – to our spacious and relaxed mind more often than we spoke and acted from our ‘monkey mind’?
What can we do?
Time spent in Nature, in quiet contemplation, in meditation or prayer, focusing on our breath, exercising, resting in silence or with music, engaging in our favourite hobbies and passions … all of these help us to cultivate and strengthen our confidence, our hope, our intuition, our knowing, our truth and our connectedness.
We are inspired every day by the curiosity, courage and compassion of our community.
May we all take the time that we need to connect with the silence within… and may our growing awareness of our busy, stressed and fearful mind lead us to prioritize and practice silence so that we learn to speak and act most often from love – for ourselves and for one another.
Janice Wright, M.D.
Chief Medical Officer