by Dr Ashika Pillay
Mindfulness is a topic that is close to my heart. My personal journey as a medical professional, teacher, coach, and healer has been profoundly shifted by my journey to “Inner space”. I started meditating in 2013 when we took a family holiday to India, and the Deepak and Oprah 21 Day meditation was the perfect entry for my husband Thiru and myself. Since then, we’ve both gone deep and wide in our exploration, and learning of ourselves, our minds, and the world.
This piece is written, from a mindful embodied place. A place that for some reason, I feel ready to write in this way, today. I guess the key emotion that I’m being energized by, at this moment is heartfulness and compassion. Today, I feel like I am watching the world and “feeling with” the world. A spectrum of emotions coming and going - and its only 10am! Filled with sadness and concern one moment, and bathed in empathy, love and compassion the next.
Cultivating my mindfulness means that I am able to observe these changing landscapes move through me, moment by moment. Don't get me wrong. I am sometimes violently swept away too, in moments of anger, frustration and anxiety - always to return, in one breath, to a place of centrality, gravity and being held - by me, for me.
I have started to grow trust in myself, that I can and will return.
I have started to grow courage to feel and be with the difficult emotions too.
I have also grown the skill of knowing that “good and bad” are limitations in my mind, and that if I know that whatever is going on “will pass”, I can sometimes have more space and freedom.
Being mindful has allowed me to reach into a deep well of compassion - and self-compassion. To be more gentle and softer - to myself first, so that I can harvest this for my world and people. I have also seen how often I live in the virtual reality and the “stories’ of my mind. Sometimes I see the narrative in my mind, and sometimes I am completely enmeshed in the plot - main character, supporting actor and director!
So, I invite you, my friends, and readers to start a journey of your own. The benefits of being more awake to life, and alive to what is unfolding, is far greater than the risk of walking around unconscious in this “one wild and precious life”, in the words of Mary Oliver.
I leave you with the beautiful words of Rumi,
“The Guest House:
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.”
from Rumi: Selected Poems, trans Coleman Barks with John Moynce, A. J. Arberry, Reynold Nicholson (Penguin Books, 2004)
Dr Ashika Pillay is a medical doctor, executive coach and wellbeing and mindfulness teacher. She is a mum of three boys and wife to Thiru Pillay. She believes that the nexus of all her skills is here - to create a space for personal wellbeing, and leadership by living wholeheartedly into our lives, and finding the potential make a change in our lives and the world. She has completed an MBA, and is passionate about Functional Medicine which approaches medicine in a holistic, multi-dimensional manner. She is also a member of faculty at a coaching school, a board member at the Institute of Mindfulness of South Africa and works with corporate clients and students at present.
Her philosophy is in total wellbeing, preventative medicine and mindfulness as routes to us evolving into the best versions of ourselves - mentally, physically and spiritually.
Her passions are women’s health, neuroscience, stress management, yoga and meditation.
Contact details: pillay.ashika5@gmail.com
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