by an MBSR participant, March 2026
The MBSR course exceeded my expectations and I am recommending it far and wide. I feel it has set me on a path towards greater freedom, self-awareness and peace.
My habits of endless striving, rumination and harsh judgment of myself and others have been decades in the making but I am quietly hopeful of continuing the changes the past two months have initiated.
I loved how your approach combined the profound and practical in a welcoming but rigorous way. You made leading the class look easy, but as a teacher myself I know how hard it is to create a positive and engaging learning environment for diverse students.
We are so fortunate in Canberra to have you, Simply Mindful, and a beautiful space to practice in.
I found all the content excellent but here are a few of my highlights:
Sitting like a mountain. This practice and the notion of equanimity spoke to me so deeply!
The mountain I imagine is Mt Fuji, especially the series of woodblock prints by the Japanese artist Hokusai called Thirty-six views of Mt Fuji. It depicts Mt Fuji in different seasons, times of day and weather, which to me is a representation of the wisdom of the sitting like a mountain practice.
The permission to put my burdens down. The Wendell Berry poem you shared with the line ‘My tasks lie in their places where I left them, asleep like cattle’ was particularly memorable.
I realized I had placed a moral value on never putting burdens down, even when the carrying served no purpose.
Learning that we can be intentional and mindful about our attention and this can be transformative in everyday life.
Reflecting on my relationship to time, a highlight of the retreat was the experience of a different temporality in which one day felt like an expanse of time. There was a sense of time being open and bountiful rather than scarce.
I realized that rushing had become my default that I had internalized the idea that ‘I don’t have time’ , i.e. time as a scarce resource that must be ‘spent’ productively (with a narrow notion of the productive). Actually now my children are adults I do ‘have’ time.
Moreover meditation practice is a method of making time rather than spending time.
Below is the full text of the poem mentioned above.
I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.
Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.
Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear in it leaves it,
and the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, and I hear its song.
After days of labor,
mute in my consternations,
I hear my song at last,
and I sing it. As we sing,
the day turns, the trees move.
by Wendell Berry
