344 Mindfulness For All; The Dream of Andy Hobson

08/02/18 • 34 min

Andy Hobson combines mindfulness and music to make mindfulness accessible to all. He’s been meditating for over 17 years and has been teaching mindfulness to groups and individuals for 9 years. Before becoming a mindfulness teacher, Andy worked as a professional drummer and has toured the world playing in a number of successful bands. It was during this time that he began to study Buddhism and explored a more spiritual path. Andy now brings his two main passions, mindfulness teaching and music, together with his guided meditations.

Contact Info

Website: www.MindfulnessForAll.com
Twitter: twitter.com/4allmindfulness

Most Influential Person

Jon Kabat Zinn www.mindfullivingprograms.com

Effect on Emotions

[Mindfulness has helped me be] less up and down. More level. More like this rather than like that. (Andy motions with his hands to show more even and consistent rather than more rolling and up and down).

Thoughts on Breathing

Breathing is a huge part of my mindfulness practice. It's everything. It's what I turn to during the day. It's something I use a lot during my meditation, but it is my kind of home place to go to if I'm having a difficult conversation with someone or anything. I get my breath while I'm still listening to them. I'm going to pause my breathing.

Suggested Resources

Book: Mindfulness Meditations in Everyday Life and Exercises and Meditations by Jon Kabat-Zinn
App: Insight Timer www.InsightTimer.com

Bullying Story

Yeah, I was bullied, definitely, a lot. I think a lot of kids are. It wasn't really for a long time or anything really bad, but it was enough. I still remember it, you know, I was in secondary school and I was a small kid and you know, I wasn't great at sports and things like that and it was just a little group of lads who used to pick on me.
Nothing huge, but, when I think back at it, it had an impact. But there was nothing really around at that time. There was no one you could talk to, so you'd kind of swallow it and then deal with it later on.
Later, I did a lot of temp jobs and when you're a temp, you're at the bottom of the ladder, and people can be bitter because they kind of know you're moving onto something else probably.
I think at that time I was more of aware of it and I used to name stuff and it usually used to clear it up, and I'd say, oh, you're really annoyed today, or something like that. I'd just pick up on it and run with it. I'd let them know that this was not okay. Sometimes I'd say, hey, talk to me about that. That kind of worked and it definitely works with children as well actually.

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Contact Info

Website: www.MindfulnessForAll.com
Twitter: twitter.com/4allmindfulness

Most Influential Person

Jon Kabat Zinn www.mindfullivingprograms.com

Effect on Emotions

[Mindfulness has helped me be] less up and down. More level. More like this rather than like that. (Andy motions with his hands to show more even and consistent rather than more rolling and up and down).

Thoughts on Breathing

Breathing is a huge part of my mindfulness practice. It's everything. It's what I turn to during the day. It's something I use a lot during my meditation, but it is my kind of home place to go to if I'm having a difficult conversation with someone or anything. I get my breath while I'm still listening to them. I'm going to pause my breathing.

Suggested Resources

Book: Mindfulness Meditations in Everyday Life and Exercises and Meditations by Jon Kabat-Zinn
App: Insight Timer www.InsightTimer.com

Bullying Story

Yeah, I was bullied, definitely, a lot. I think a lot of kids are. It wasn't really for a long time or anything really bad, but it was enough. I still remember it, you know, I was in secondary school and I was a small kid and you know, I wasn't great at sports and things like that and it was just a little group of lads who used to pick on me.
Nothing huge, but, when I think back at it, it had an impact. But there was nothing really around at that time. There was no one you could talk to, so you'd kind of swallow it and then deal with it later on.
Later, I did a lot of temp jobs and when you're a temp, you're at the bottom of the ladder, and people can be bitter because they kind of know you're moving onto something else probably.
I think at that time I was more of aware of it and I used to name stuff and it usually used to clear it up, and I'd say, oh, you're really annoyed today, or something like that. I'd just pick up on it and run with it. I'd let them know that this was not okay. Sometimes I'd say, hey, talk to me about that. That kind of worked and it definitely works with children as well actually.

Free Gift

Click here: www.MindfulnessMode.com/Sleep

Previous Episode

343 Find Peace With 365 Days of Happiness; Jacqueline Pirtle

Jacqueline Pirtle wrote the book on happiness. In fact, she has helped hundreds of clients get into a “high for life” frequency so they can become happy anywhere at any time. Her book on happiness is called 365 Days of Happiness, and her extensive research on the topic affirms that if you have happiness in your life, your health will peak, you will experience abundance and your life will shift to a more positive place. Jacqueline’s background is in health, wellness, holistic medicine, energy healing, law of attraction, and happiness. She holds international wellness degrees and is internationally certified as a Reiki Master. She is also founder of FreakyHealer.com

Contact Info

Most Influential Person

My husband and family.

Effect on Emotions

Mindfulness affects my emotions in the way that I am not a prisoner of any emotion that I have.
Mindfulness let's me say okay. I'm not feeling good right now, what am I going to do about it. So it makes me free as a bird.

Thoughts on Breathing

Breathing is one of the most healing tools I think that's out there. And also becoming aware that every breath you take is your life, right?
You think your life is getting up in the morning, going to work. Actually it's breathing, right? So I concentrate on my breathing a lot.

Suggested Resources

Book: 365 Days of Happiness: Because happiness is a piece of cake! by Jacqueline Pirtle
Book: Authors Esther & Abraham Hicks www.abraham-hicks.com
Book: Author Bruce Lipton (I love his humour) www.BruceLipton.com
Book: Author Gregg Braden, he's about deep mindfulness www.GreggBraden.com

Bullying Story

I was bullied a lot because I was a red head girl was growing up in Europe where red hair was still kinda associated with witchcraft and that kind of stuff. So I was bullied and teased a lot and had very little friends was alone a lot.
If mindfulness would have been present [and we'd had the idea that] we're all connected and the hurt and trauma they initiated and that they actually bullied themselves too because it never makes you feel good afterwards.
You carry that energy in every single cell of yourself. Mindfulness would have made things nicer for me. For me, I am who I am because of my story, because of my journey and with all the ups and downs, and different bullying situations, different health issues, you know, with me being a mom, right?
And having teenagers and they go to school and they're bullied; with all of that together though, that's my journey and it made me who I am today. That's why this book exists, for instance, right? That's why I do what I do.

Free Gift

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Next Episode

345 Real Transformation: It's Not What You Think; Wendy Yellen

Wendy Yellen is named one of the International Top Three Transformational Experts in her field. Wendy has studied emotional release bodywork and many other traditional and non-traditional forms of healing from masters around the world. Wendy walked away from a successful psychotherapy practice when she discovered the Holy Grail of transformation work called Eidetics. This practice, based on ancient Greek knowledge and 21st Century science, enables business people and creatives to unlock their full potential and remove the weight of old, often unseen vulnerabilities which have been holding them back.

Contact Info

Website: www.WendyYellen.com
Free Resource: Wendy's Newly Written Spiritual Manifesto www.MySpiritualManifesto.com

Most Influential Person

Dr. Akhter Ahsen, The Father of Eidetic Imagery www.eideticimagepsychology.com/dr-akhter-ahsen

Effect on Emotions

My emotions? Well, again, I'll go back to my husband. We've been together 40 years almost.
This is true, I'm not proud of it. I was mentally divorcing him. Sometimes it felt like about 80 percent of the time; in my head. I mean rehearsing when I would say it, but I never did it. Thank goodness, because I feel so in love with him now and I see him as a person.
I feel love in my heart in ways which I didn't allow before and part of that has been through eidetic images where saw what I was doing to him in an image where it was irrefutable and impossible to ignore. And it just broke my heart what I was doing. It just, it was horrible.
And so by being more mindful of when those automatic responses were coming up and taking a moment and choosing a house of love and letting other things bubble up in me.
Now what happens is sometimes I catch him singing for no reason at all and the problem is I don't know if he was always singing or I just didn't hear it.

Thoughts on Breathing

You might be surprised to hear [that it isn't part of my mindfulness practice]. It isn't a specific part where I focus on it, but it is a place that has changed in me and certainly when I am stopping, I'm definitely paying more attention to my breath, but it is not a place that I pay conscious attention to most of the time. I'm much more paying attention to, let's say some of the spiritual images that are coming to me through eidetics. That's more my focus.

Suggested Resources

Book: Psycheye Self Analytic Consciousness a Basic Introduction To The Natural Self-Analytic Images of Consciousness Eidetics by Dr. Akhter Ahsen
Free Resource: Wendy's Newly Written Spiritual Manifesto www.MySpiritualManifesto.com
App: N/A

Bullying Story

So I thought a lot about this question. In fact, I had a conversation with my husband in the car about it yesterday and I thought, well, I could talk about Emily and I could talk about the kid in the pool in Japan and I could talk about being Jewish, but none of those stories have the juice of what I'm about to say.
I think the worst bullying we do is the bullying we do to ourselves in our own head. We live there so much of the time; I also think it's that bullying that can put us at risk for letting other people believe us because we have that Achilles heel. We have that sensitivity. We have that place where we're not coming from that same confidence. It can be so cruel sometimes.
I hear things coming out of people's mouths and I think if anybody else said that they would be up in arms. If they said that about somebody else [it would be unacceptable], but yet the way we talk to ourselves is cruel, so cruel. So I think that is real bullying.

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