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Mindfulness has changed my life. And it could do the same to yours

After five days in silence on a meditation course, I discovered an invaluable sense of stillness and calm, writes Anthony Gordon Lennox.

 

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Mind over matter: meditation can act like an antidepressant  Photo: Getty Images

  

By Anthony Gordon Lennox

2:23PM BST 09 May 2014

54 Comments

I had no idea what mindfulness meant. All I did know was that a handful of my most senior clients, and a number of close friends, talked about it as a completely indispensable part of their lives. As a result of this, I signed myself up for a five-day course in the middle of Herefordshire titled The Art of Meditation, taught by a meditation expert called Burgs. It was for beginners – and its intention was to teach the basic art of meditation to a collection of people who’d never meditated before in their lives.

By the end of the five days, spent in complete silence, I came away feeling that I had begun a process that had the potential to be as truly significant as I had been led to believe. Sitting still, being aware and, perhaps most crucially, learning again how to concentrate – all perceptibly such simple traits – were the key drivers behind the five days.

What did I learn about myself? I learnt that to concentrate on sustaining a quiet and uncluttered mind was something that I found almost impossible. However, achieving, for the very briefest of time, the feeling that you have truly entered the space of still and quiet is one of the most powerful feelings that I have ever experienced in my life. Completely rejuvenating, those momentary times of total calm allowed me to review so many daily thoughts and anxieties with a completely fresh and more rational perspective.

So how do you begin to empty the cluttered and complicated minds that we all carry around with us on a daily basis? We were taught to focus on our breathing, to follow and to think about our breath as it moved into our bodies. We were taught that such a simple thing as to focus on the breath and to sustain concentration on this for as long as possible, has the ability to engender a feeling of calm and insight into the mind and the body. In particular, that the mind is not something that sits in isolation, but is wholly connected to of the rest of our physical being.

Over the last eight years I have had the privilege of working with leaders across all sectors. My company has also worked with young people, "leaders of tomorrow", and children. I’ve worked on authentic self-expression with all of these people. There is a common denominator behind all these different groups in their yearning for a greater sense of self-awareness, as well as finding the time to sit still, without books, music or any other distraction.

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My five days on this course renders me a total novice but it has awakened me to a means or a process through which people from all walks of life, through the most simple of techniques, can find a sense of stillness and calm reflection that, to my very cluttered mind, could be invaluable.

Anthony Gordon Lennox is the founder and CEO of AGL, a communications agency. He is a visiting fellow at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford.