Meditation, Mindfulness and Letting Go are three wonderful tools to a happier life. All three are interlinked and support each other, so simple and yet so rarely used.

When I say simple, it is because intrinsically they are, so why can they be so difficult to put into practice?

I have been interested in Buddhism all my life but for some reason I never was able to get into the ‘doing’ of it, to be honest it was all a bit complicated.

A couple of years ago I purchased an online course in Buddhism and meditation which went a long way to explain what Buddhism was, but still the meditation was complex, breathe this way, eyes half closed, think this , don’t think that, think with the heart, expand into space, meditate on nothing, meditate on something, by the time I had remembered everything I was meant to do my legs were numb and I had to end the meditation session!

From walking my own path of personal development I already understood the importance of ‘letting go’ but it was only when I read (and due to a catastrophic computer melt down I have lost the URL to the website I am about to speak of and cannot find it again!) the experience of a Buddhist practitioner who said for the first three years all he did during meditation was to ‘let go’.

It was strange, just reading that was like someone giving me permission to do what felt natural. Now when I meditate some times my eyes are open, sometimes closed, sometimes I sit cross legged on a cushion, sometimes I sit kneeling, I breathe naturally and it all feels natural, no longer do I fail at meditation because all I do is sit and let go.

Thoughts and feelings are just let go, muscles let go all by themselves, the breathing takes care of itself and finally I am beginning to experience the space, the emptiness one lets go into.

This concept of space is as also available to us in our day to day life by adopting a mindful approach to our living.

I really do not like drinking milk, ok I can have milk in my tea and on my cereal but I would never drink a glass of it. One very hot day, I had been working outside and came into the kitchen, opened the fridge, took out the bottle of cold water, opened it and started to drink. This water tastes strange I immediately thought to myself , tastes just like yukkkkk! Its milk!!

My mind had been so divorced from my actions I had picked up the milk instead of the water, opened it (a completely different top to the water bottle!) and only noticed after I had drunk some of it!

There are better reasons to be more mindful in our daily lives than accidentally drinking milk, reasons such as clarity and lightness of thought and observing all that we normally miss.

To be mindful one has to let go of thoughts of tomorrow and memories of yesterday and increase one’s awareness of now. By consciously noticing the smells and sounds around us, our body’s movements, the breeze on our face, the surroundings we see every day but never really see, a sense of clarity peace and space will replace the clutter of thoughts crammed into one small head.

Try it yourself just go for a mindful walk, I guarantee you will be amazed at what you see that you never noticed before. Mindfulness can even make housework fun!

The ‘space’ that meditation and mindfulness can increase can be explained like this, if you can imagine a man in a space suit with his bubble helmet on, there is limited space in the helmet. Mindfulness and meditation increases the size of the helmet, limitlessly.

And the simple secret to being successful at both meditation and mindfulness is just let go.