Pay Attention
- Pondo Trail 2023
Mindfulness activation reminders of ‘stay present’ and ‘be mindful’ are always effective but it is this command-
PAY ATTENTION
that has found resonance for me. A friend of mine invoked this command in a lively conversation about presence, over his busy kitchen counter, complete with half-eaten teenage breakfasts and barking parental commands.
It has stuck.
It brings up a sense of vigilance and urgency around our awareness of our state of being when we travel through the world. I believe awareness is the beginning of any process of personal growth and healing and living in alignment.
Noticing what happens for us, in our minds and bodies, in the moment can offer us great wisdom when we are confronting life’s endless hurdles and hairpin turns. In a curious way, paying attention seems to slow everything down and has a way of bringing our responses into laser focus.
What comes to mind is that email response I decided to sleep on, or perhaps that decision that felt light and aligned when I bravely trusted myself, rather than other voices.
We, as modern humans, have disconnected from the wisdom of our gut feelings; our bodies have so much to say, yet we have become all head. A fellow yoga teacher named it as our ‘witchy sense’.
We need to listen more to the feedback, to trust our knowing, to slow it all down and