This is the time of year when we reflect on the year that’s just passed and plan for the year to come. It’s tempting, as I’ve written before, to attempt to rip up the old me and bring in a fresh new, improved version of ourselves. But as Jon Kabat-Zinn so wisely wrote: Wherever you go, there you are!

Often there isn’t really a need to create a new year, new me. Instead we can just work on who we already are and get more in touch with what will truly make us happy.

In that wilderness week in between Christmas and new year, when those of us lucky to be at rest might easily forget the day of the week, it can be tempting to reflect on the year that has just passed. And I found myself doing just this when people asked me for me highlights of 2017.

For This Mindful Life CIC the highlights were as follows:

• This Mindful Life CIC was successfully and officially formed as a not-for-profit company committed to delivering quality mindfulness training to diverse communities.
• This Mindful Life delivered more courses in partnership with The Everyone Project, who’s aims of widening the reach of mindfulness sit well with This Mindful Life CIC.
• This Mindful Life CIC successfully opened an ethical CIC bank account with the co-op which was a lot more challenging than it sounds!

For me personally as a mindfulness teacher, highlights of 2017 were:

• Being accepted onto and included in The Mindfulness Network’s list of recognised Mindfulness teachers UKMN_2017_18_MAY 
• Attending the Mindfulness Association’s annual conference which included trans-formative workshops with Sharon Saltzberg and Vidyamala Burch and getting to meet my supervisor in the flesh after two years of working together.
• Attending a day of practice and CPD session with the God father of secular mindfulness: Jon Kabat-Zinn. Truly inspiring to hear him guide meditations but also to see him lead an inquiry after each practice.

• Realising the direction I would like to go in as a teacher – working with client groups who have experienced trauma and/or addiction alongside mainstream teaching work.
• Completing a course on addiction and the impact this has on the brain as the first step in this journey.
• Signing up to train in EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing) as the next tentative step in this journey.

For me personally as a human being the highlights of 2017 were some golden moments with much loved family and friends. While on retreat thismindfullife.net/…7/12/21/retreating-3 I realised that while teaching, training and day job stuff are all very important to me,  it would also be useful not to take on too much in order to ensure there are further plentiful golden moments with loved ones in 2018.

Today’s Total Practice Time: 1 hour (mostly movement and a short bodyscan)