On the 8th of November 2014 my heart stopped for 20 minutes.

Take a moment and think about it…? How long is 20 minutes really ? What can you achieve in the same amount of time ? Does 20 minutes of your life mean little to you or perhaps alot? When you having fun, is 20 minutes too short and when you are doing something you dislike, is 20 minutes too long ?

While I was blissfully unaware, people were fighting for my life. The health professionals saw a relative young man slowly ebbing away and they kept on fighting. At that present moment , all attention ,  on purpose was being placed on my heart.

“Paying attention on purpose in the present moment,  non-judgementally ” – The definition of Mindfulness as described by Jon Kabat Zinn. A technique teaching us to return to the present moment,  again and again. Mindfulness is developed through the practice of meditation. With an average length of, you guessed it, 20 minutes .

I wonder what it would take for you , the reader , to realize that “THIS MOMENT” is everything. That it is the only thing that is real and such a precious gift . The human brain is wired to wonder. To let our past memories affect us emotionally , to let our future hopes plus dreams stress our bodies while the present moment is totally missed. We are living in a fast paced world with hardly any time to just take a breath. When would we make time for that breath?  Perhaps when we realised it is the last one? To survive we as a human race had to evolve over thousands of years. Continued discovery of the next big breakthrough kept us going. Now , to move us from surviving towards thriving , Mindfulness has come to play a part.

As my heart found a beat again after 20 minute , my journey into Mindfulness started. That was even before I knew it. I had to change and here was a technique that would save my life.

Next time : The Science behind Mindfulness plus more…