Mindfulness as Medicine: A Story of Healing Body and Spirit

years. He shared with us that when he walks from his office to his secretary’s office or to a meeting room, he sings silently to himself, “Breathing, smiling. Walking, happy.” “Breathing, smiling. Walking, happy.”

It’s like eating a cookie. If you eat it all at once, it’s gone. However, if you take time to concentrate and look at the cookie, smell it, take a small bite, enjoy the taste and sensation in your mouth, and then look at it as a child would look at the sky or smile at a butterfly, before you slowly take another bite, you can truly appreciate it and

We may complain that we suffer, but in fact, many of us are addicted to it. We guard it with all our might by our habitual ways of living and thinking.

Our body has an incredible capacity to heal. Our mind can endure any sort of pain. However, if we cloud our mind and weaken our body with denial, worries, and fears, we actually deprive ourselves of the strength we need to heal ourselves.

Similarly, you can feel joy in the anticipation of meeting or seeing someone. Once you are established in deep connection with that person, you can simply be in the same space, sitting next to each other, without the need to say or to do anything.

Frustration and despair do arise, but I breathe to calm these feelings so as not to worsen the situation.

Suffering is caused by ignorance, which is manifested as wrong views and wrong thinking. With Right View, healing and the other elements of true love manifest naturally.

When people are speaking during the meeting, he listens quietly as he breathes in, closing his fingers into a gentle fist, and as he breathes out, opening his fingers and fist. This is how he stays mindful of his breathing; he has seen our Teacher doing this and he has brought this practice into his daily life.

“My body and mind are still whole and intact. Thank you for still being intact.”