After years of unhappiness, stress and exhaustion, she’d learned to relax and had begun to live again.

We have begun the process of revealing how the mind works and raised the possibility that your thoughts are not you.

This bullying script may once have helped them get what they wanted in life, but now it simply exhausts them.

mindfulness, we start to see the world as it is, not as we expect it to be, how we want it to be, or what we fear it might become. These ideas may initially seem a little

Many people who work too hard, or for too long, end up being trapped by their own perfectionism and sense of responsibility – they feel, deep down, that there is ‘no escape’.

For example, during the mindfulness programme you can practise letting go of avoidance and find yourself being less judgmental as well; you can work on ‘staying present’ and you’ll also find yourself taking your thoughts less literally; if you cultivate greater generosity towards yourself, you’ll find that you also have more empathy for others.

Further, Cara realised that she was also compounding her suffering, not only by saying, ‘I must be busy’, but also by repeating to herself, ‘Things used to be different.

We re-live past events and re-feel their pain, and we pre-live future disasters and so pre-feel their impact. Meditation trains the mind so

You may become aware of a rumour at the back of the mind which says that, if you ever let go of striving, or became more compassionate and accepting, you’d lose your ‘edge’ and become too soft for your own good.