“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? ― Mary Oliver
Mindfulness and poetry have a special place in my heart and in my practice and I feel supported and saved by them on a daily basis. This alchemy of insight and wisdom is truly soul work.
Mindfulness and poetry individually, yes ...but there's this invitation to consider the potency of them together as a gentle holistic medicine, encouraging us to engage with our energy and equilibrium, our anxieties and desires. This is a practice as a prayer, offered to ourselves and others. This is a practice gentle, therapeutic and revealing without the pressure of an outcome or goal.
We often get caught up in the desire to know what a poem means and whilst this may be rewarding, through mindfulness we learn how to appreciate poetry in a different way, perhaps without the urgency of needing to know: allowing ourselves to soften the intellect, engaging more fully with the mystery.
Mindfulness allows us to slow down and create a calm awareness to receive the words of a poem. It encourages the thinking mind to quieten and allows the poetry to be received not only through the ears but also in the body and the heart. We can be intimately in touch with the experience of the poem, connecting with our senses, connecting with our willingness to be open.
Poetry naturally creates a sense of our common humanity. We meet our own feelings and emotions in the words of another. We have conversations with people from past centuries with the revelation that our emotional pain, joy and complexity are indeed ancient not new. Mindfulness is a door through which a journey into poetry can begin and poetry always offers a welcoming hearth and home for mindfulness.
Research demonstrates that individually they are considered to address pain and illness, stress and isolation: our lives, our loves and our losses. I believe together they are most definitely greater than the sum of their parts.
Leading mindfulness and poetry sessions has genuinely moved me: the heartfelt sharing, the realisation of our commonality and connection and also our ability to consider worlds and experiences that are not the same as ours. It engages our compassion, it cultivates relationships and we all become accustomed to holding the space as we read, listen and practice. And yes there may be tears as we engage with the heart but there’s also laughter and deep wonder at the world in which we share. Here we find all the themes of mindfulness effortlessly spilling from the page, here we learn to listen generously, tenderly, attentively.
I would encourage you to consider the ways in which poetry and mindfulness might enhance your life. Perhaps choosing and sharing a poem that has accompanied your experience at moments of healing, through times of joy or distress or remembering. Or finding a new poem as a gift to greet your present experience.
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