oh say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
Let's begin with a basic question: What is mindfulness and why is it important?
Mindfulness is an innate human capacity to deliberately pay full attention to where we are, to our actual experience, and to learn from it.
Much of our day we spend on automatic pilot. People know the experience of driving somewhere, pulling up to the curb and all of a sudden realizing, "Wow, I was hardly aware I was even driving. How did I get here?" When we pay attention, it is gracious, which means that there is space for our joys and sorrows, our pain and losses, all to be held in a peaceful way.