Learning to Breathe

Learning to Breathe

How Meditation & Mindfulness Saved my Life.

As a parent, neurodivergent diagnosed with adult ADHD late in life, and all around anxious over-thinker everything changed when I began meditating in 2013.

My Story

I grew up in McGregor, Ontario, Canada graduating from the University of Windsor with Music and Education degrees. Along the way, I taught private music lessons, spent 5 years in classrooms, worked abroad on cruise ships, and worked as a singer-songwriter in Las Vegas, Nevada where I married my partner and lived for 12 years. I am also the mother of precocious 9-year-old boy/girl twins, and have been back home in Essex County since 2017.

The Impact of an Invisible Disorder

Over the years, I coped with my ADHD and anxiety symptoms in a variety of healthy and unhealthy ways which came to a head when I became a parent. After that first year with two newborns I realized that my anxious overthinking, forgetfulness, lack of organization, perfectionism, exhaustion and sense of over-responsibility for everyone else was going to be the end of me and I had to do something.  I enrolled in a songwriting certification course at Berklee College Online, found a therapist, started teaching music lessons part-time to get out of the house and give myself “me” time. I began performing again, I did all the “self-care” things. It didn’t work. 

Enter Mindfulness Meditation

In 2013, I discovered meditation when I signed on to a 4-week mindfulness meditation challenge offered by Sharon Salzberg - one of the first teachers to bring insight meditation to the west in the 1970’s - and I’ve been a regular practitioner since.  Mindfulness practice quickly made its way off the mat and into my daily life bringing; focus, clarity, a sense of emotional regulation, and compassion for myself and others to everything I did. 

The Impact

I began to regularly sit for 10-20 minutes every morning and sometimes 1-2 minutes, whatever worked was good enough. What was happening for me was a sense of feeling “held” by my practice. I knew that the neuroscience described this as new neural pathways having been formed in the brain. The felt sense was that my mind and body were slightly more calm. Almost as if I had previously been running around with a bunch of apps open that were running in the background and now they had been closed. Regular life still happened, the stresses were still there, the excitements and joys, the difficult people and I was responding rather than reacting. There is so much more that happened for me through the years of practicing which I’ll save for another post but for now I’ll simply mention that my practice has only deepened through the years.

The Science of Mindfulness and Meditation

Scientific studies have shown that practicing mindfulness, even for just a few weeks, can bring a variety of physical, psychological, and social benefits which I personally attest to. Read more about the studies at the Greater Good Science Center.

Becoming a Meditation Teacher

I found myself naturally teaching what I had learned to my loved ones and noticed how much it was benefiting them too. Not long after I attended my first 10-day silent retreat, I knew I wanted to bring the life-changing practices I was learning to others in a more formal way. I applied to and was accepted as a qualifying certified mindfulness teacher, attending Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach’s Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program through the Awareness Training Institute, and the University of California at Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center.  I am also a 22 yr experienced educator with a current OCT teaching license in good standing. I founded Mindful Meditations in 2021 after the need to share mindfulness meditation became ever more necessary in dealing with the stress and anxiety of the global pandemic and lockdowns. 

My Mission

 My mission is to help you BREATHE, RELAX, & FOCUS on what matters in your life. I am here to help you to re-connect with yourself, others, and life in a playful, supportive space as you explore mindful awareness of the breath, body, mind, and heart. Reach out if you are ready to build self-esteem, manage stress, and skillfully approach challenges with ease and compassion.

In love and mindfulness, 

Sharon