My Mindfulness Journey

How Mindfulness Transformed My Life and My Purpose - By Charlotte Kershaw

Reading time: 3 minutes

What does Mindfulness mean to me?

Mindfulness to me is presence. It is noticing all of the small joys in life whilst being aware of my struggles. Present for myself and the world around me.

My journey with mindfulness started when I had had my little boy Ez & was pregnant with my little girl. Life was very tricky. Ezra was born following a traumatic birth during the pandemic shortly after we had moved house and my husband was made redundant. I was overwhelmed with joy, fear, love, anxiety - the lot. I knew that I needed something. I had practiced meditation previously and with a psychology undergrad and masters I knew a little bit about a lovely little “relaxing” thing called mindfulness.

And so I signed up to an online Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course - 8 weeks of evening sessions which I thought would help me feel lovely and relaxed. Well I was in for a rude awakening when I realised that actually mindfulness was much more than relaxation and although it could be relaxing a lot of the time it meant acknowledging my struggles, my anxieties and the realities in my life that were actually really difficult at the time.

I pushed through and completed the course - wiser, a bit calmer and a lot more aware, and surprisingly I also found myself knowing for sure what I wanted to do with my life. Mindfulness. I set to work finding out how I could teach everybody about this amazing new way of thinking, feeling and living. I was equipped to start managing my intrusive anxious thoughts, to feel grateful even when things got dark & I began to really become re-acquainted with myself.

Following my teacher training course I set to work to bring mindfulness to the masses (well my local area to start with!). Since then I have met so many wonderful people and have been on some really incredible wellbeing journeys with them.

Mindfulness in my experience can mean something different to everybody. For some it brings a stillness that they really need whilst for others it can bring inspiration or a new found ability to really focus on one thing at a time. A common theme however it that it is a little well needed reset - an opportunity to stop, turn their attention inwardly and refocus.

The research backing of this approach is just fascinating and the fact that when we are practicing our brains are literally adapting to a new way of thinking and changing is incredible but I also love that this is absolutely an ancient practice - it is something that has worked for thousands of years and been passed down to us here now. How inspiring!

I simply love bringing Mindfulness* into peoples lives and it is so truly rewarding when people choose to keep coming back to learn more and practice with me and during my time as a mindfulness teacher I have learned so much from everyone around me.

My vibration gets higher and higher the more I am around these incredible like-minded and open hearted people, and each person that I meet teaches me something new. A mindfulness session is just beautiful.

If you’ve never tried Mindfulness I cannot encourage you enough, and if you have but you didn’t feel it worked I would encourage you to reach out to me or explore Mindfulness further. There are so many ways we can practice mindfulness and if one way didn’t work for you it definitely doesn’t mean that another way won’t, even if sitting and meditating isn’t your thing there are plenty of practices I can suggest to help you to practice being mindful.

*commission earned from this link.