To Be: A mindfulness journey

Have you ever asked yourself: when will my life start? We get up each morning, we spend the day doing tasks and activities - many of these are thrust upon us, aren’t they? We have to go to school, or go to work, or pay the bills and such like. We finish these tasks at the end of the day, and then off to bed we go. We used to live for our weekends, pre-COVID didn’t we? Or the annual holiday or two – counting down the days until we could relax and do our own thing…. whether that be chilling on a sun lounger with a good book on holiday or waking up on Sunday morning and planning a spontaneous day out with friends. Before COVID hit, I must admit that this type of day to day living irked me. For a long time, I couldn’t put my finger on it – then, after one particularly long, work filled, mundane week, it struck me, I was living to exist but not truly living. A quiet realisation was released within me. I wasn’t living my life as if my life depended on it. I was living but I wasn’t awake. Why should I live only for my holidays? My Sundays? It was like I was sleepwalking my way through repetitive actions I took every day, built up through habitual thoughts which often involved ‘What do I have to do next?” I was desperate to pause, to stop and reflect. Take a moment Freddie, my inner self, seemed to urge. So, I did.

And when I paused, I started to notice something. My thoughts were churning. Chaotic. Shouting at me to keep going, keep doing woman! To achieve in life, you must constantly be doing! Rather than reacting immediately, I just sat with my thoughts for a while. I noticed I was very quick to judge my thoughts, and to believe them! When they shouted, ‘Stop sitting still, get up and check your emails!!!’, I felt panic – an insistent need to get up and follow through with my thoughts. What if there was an important email, I needed to reply to this instant?! If I don’t do it now, I’ll be swamped later. It was then I realised what irked me so much – why am I living my life like this? I’m obsessing about emails that I don’t even know exist! Suddenly I was so grateful for pausing in this way, for noticing. My thoughts still churned but they seemed less pressing on me. In this awareness, I started to notice something else. My body. My poor chest was tightly coiled in a knot. I was so tightly coiled I could be a spring, ready to jump at any moment. Now these were the days before I knew much about mindfulness, but I knew a bit. So, I started to breathe. I imagined breathing into that coil and within a few minutes…indeed, a few seconds really, I felt it loosening. Dare I say, I started to feel more like me.

Since that day, I’ve been on a journey to understand mindful awareness – now a qualified teacher in this field, I am learning how to ‘feel more like me’ whenever I consciously tap into the present moment, just like the moment when I paused to notice. But, with respect, I’ve learnt that it takes a lot of practise and patience to integrate meaningful awareness into life. On some days I have the patience, on other days I do not (and that’s okay too) Also, I believe there are some misconceptions about mindfulness. I know many people who think mindfulness either doesn’t work or isn’t for them. What’s the point of meditating or pausing or breathing? Boring!! And here’s the rub – I find meditating a challenge…. I do feel amazing afterwards…. More connected to what’s real and my own life force… but actually carving out the time to do it…. Well, we all know the limits of time, don’t we? Sometimes, it feels alien too, just to sit with your eyes closed to notice your thoughts, your body and the breath. What’s the point, one might argue? We are a goal orientated society – that’s how we’ve been brought up, how we’ve been educated and how we habitually think in our professional (and personal) lives…. To set goals and fulfil them. So, why do something that seems a bit pointless? Relaxing, perhaps, but will it enhance or change my life? For a while, these reactions to mindfulness bothered me. So much so, I kept my mindfulness practises to myself; only sharing them with my closest circle around me. When I told my Gran that I was training to become a mindfulness teacher, she said ‘Why do you need that sort of thing?’ Maybe it sounds a bit like therapy to some people or to others it sounds too spiritual.

This led to the next part of my journey of mindfulness - the realisation I made about wanting to re-educate mindfulness misconceptions… not only to become a teacher who helped individuals to bring more meaning and awareness to their lives but to actually explore a different language and application in the education of mindfulness as a tool for life. Rewrite the story so to speak. For instance – mindfulness is not just meditation. Mindfulness can be learnt in so many different ways…. in fact, the word itself might be too limiting…. Maybe by changing the word, we might change a bit of the misconception…. What about awareness? Meaning? So far, the word I feel most resonates with me is consciousness. The state of awareness. To be conscious to me is to be alive. To connect to both our inner and outer worlds. It is wakefulness. This is precisely what I want to teach - this is also what I want to experience myself - I want to live my life like my life depends on it, every day, not just for weekends and holidays. I want to be awake. I realised how passionate I was about sharing my ideas to others about living more consciously in every moment possible. But mostly, I realised that I want to teach young people. Why? Because after 18 years (gosh!) of being a drama teacher, I cannot bear to see another child that I teach flounder in stress, confusion and low self-esteem. Childhood should be the ‘best years of your life’ so they say. But quite frankly, every year should be special and meaningful. Life starts now.

Education is not satisfactory in my opinion. It works really well for our model of society and to suit academic children, but it does not equip young people for the rollercoaster that is life…. For years I have been perplexed why “Life” is not taught alongside “Maths” and “English”. Children learn more about the causes of the first world war than they do about understanding their thoughts and feelings. It’s certainly catching on though. Teachers are instilling more mindfulness practises into classrooms as a necessity to help overstressed students. I read the other day that there are now 5,000 school teachers in the UK who are trained in mindfulness. But why oh why is it not a stand-alone subject? My hope is to bridge this gap in education. We all know that COVID has exacerbated an already mounting mental health crisis in young people – education, social media, exam pressures, lockdowns; how on earth do young people cope with all of this? Where and when are they taught to love themselves and to love life as a priority? Even just a small shift in awareness could bring new possibilities in the long term as they grow up. And so, to date, my journey has taken me to this moment. The moment of introducing my coaching business – To Be. Through fun and interactive strategies, taught through my personal coaching style, I aim to wake young people up to their lives right now. To bring more meaning into their lives if I can J

To Be www.tobecoaching.co.uk is about to be launched within the next week or two. Check it out if you are interested. If you want - share my services to your friends with children, your local school or college, or anyone who you feel would benefit. I hope to make a difference to as many young people as possible. Let’s give the next generation a boost. Let’s start shifting how they are educated in this unsettled and unknown world of ours. I am not promising quick fixes – like any ‘subject’, learning takes commitment, but I do promise that I will give my all to the young people who work with me and provide them with tangible life skills they can use in every area of their lives.

To Be

Freddie Underwood

Life coach for young people

www.tobecoaching.co.uk

Website launching soon

Thank you to the following people for helping me on this journey: Louise for logo design, Clare for website design, Lou and Chris for patiently listening to me.