Ed Halliwell > Quotes

“So it may seem disconcerting that there’s no ‘me’ at the core of our being, but actually it’s very good news. As the Taoist philosopher Wu Wei Wu said: ‘Why are you unhappy? Because 99.9 per cent of everything you think, and of everything you do, is for yourself – and there isn’t one.’4 We aren’t isolated individuals, irretrievably set in our ways, and realizing this can come as a huge relief.”
― Ed Halliwell, Mindfulness Made Easy: Learn How to Be Present and Kind - to Yourself and Others

“If you practise with the expectation of results (or if you’re sceptical, the expectation of no results), you’ve already moved out of the moment and into a fantasy of what you think or hope might happen.”
― Ed Halliwell, Mindfulness Made Easy: Learn How to Be Present and Kind - to Yourself and Others

“World Health Organization predicts that by the year 2030, depression will be the planet’s biggest health problem.3”
― Ed Halliwell, The Mindful Manifesto: How Doing Less and Noticing More Can Treat Illness, Relieve Stress and Help Us Cope with the 21st Century

“I don’t sing because I’m happy. I’m happy because I sing.”
― Ed Halliwell, Mindfulness Made Easy: Learn How to Be Present and Kind - to Yourself and Others

“Assuming a single, separate self artificially disconnects us from the world. Although we continue to be part of an interwoven dynamic, we think and feel ourselves more as isolated entities, prone to aloneness, defensiveness, perhaps even aggression. As we try to protect ourselves, we may harden and withdraw rather than open and connect.”
― Ed Halliwell, Mindfulness Made Easy: Learn How to Be Present and Kind - to Yourself and Others

“Once I’d been practising regularly for a few months, I felt calmer. I was less irritable and didn’t need to react immediately if I was angry or something triggered me. I was really able to give it that microsecond pause. Practising being present makes you more grounded. You breathe, and feel: This is where I am, which slows everything down. You feel more contented and at peace, so maybe there’s not so much conflict or busyness going on inside you. In that state, it’s easier to deal with things, as opposed to when you’re in that stressed-out mode; when you’re just reactive.”
― Ed Halliwell, Mindfulness Made Easy: Learn How to Be Present and Kind - to Yourself and Others

“Even the English word ‘mindfulness’ makes our subject sound like a quality of thinking. Whereas actually, mindfulness brings us down from our heads and into our whole bodies. Ask someone from Tibet where their mind is and they may point to their chest – the word for mind and heart in Tibetan, and many other Eastern languages, is the same. When we practise mindfulness, we’re recalibrating our centre downwards – as such, the practice might better be described as ‘heartfulness’, or even ‘bodyfulness’.”
― Ed Halliwell, Mindfulness Made Easy: Learn How to Be Present and Kind - to Yourself and Others

“It may seem a tall order, or even foolish, to be cheerful when things are unpleasant, but it seems that only by moving in this direction can we free ourselves from the stress that comes with challenge and change. Why compound a difficult experience with an attitude of misery? We may have no control over the experience, but we do have some with our attitude to it. In gently working to meet the difficult cheerfully, we hold a key to transformation”
― Ed Halliwell, Mindfulness Made Easy: Learn How to Be Present and Kind - to Yourself and Others

“Actually, mindfulness is even more important when we’re under pressure, which may drive us to react impulsively and unskilfully. Far from being selfish, our training is key to caring for others well.”
― Ed Halliwell, Mindfulness Made Easy: Learn How to Be Present and Kind - to Yourself and Others

“Because we have never been taught any other way to meet our distress, we don’t realize how much our habits of avoidance or brooding are making things worse, turning momentary tiredness into exhaustion, momentary fear into chronic worry, and momentary sadness into chronic unhappiness and depression. So it isn’t our fault that we end up exhausted, anxious, or depressed. We have been given only certain tools to deal with things we don’t like: get rid of it, work harder, be better, be perfect—and if we fail to make things different, we too easily conclude that we are a failure as a person.”
― Ed Halliwell, The Mindful Manifesto: How Doing Less and Noticing More Can Treat Illness, Relieve Stress and Help Us Cope with the 21st Century

“...there is something very vital happening when we breathe—without it we die—but trying to speed it up, force it, grasp it, push it away or control it tends to get in the way. As in breathing, so in life—we can learn a lot from the natural rhythm, pace, and un-fussiness of the way breath continues its work, without making a big deal out of it.”
― Ed halliwell

“Action may come, but we also need to learn when and how not to act.”
― Ed Halliwell, Mindfulness Made Easy: Learn How to Be Present and Kind - to Yourself and Others

“So, maybe we need to let go of solutions for a while and look instead at how we’re trying to reach them. If simply striving for a happier life were the answer, wouldn’t it have worked by now?”
― Ed Halliwell, The Mindful Manifesto: How Doing Less and Noticing More Can Treat Illness, Relieve Stress and Help Us Cope with the 21st Century

“It’s very important to me now not to make instant decisions. I have that habit of taking time out in the day to think things through. I can take myself away and say: ‘Give me a minute, or five minutes,’ or ‘I’ll get back to you in a day or two.’ My normal habit is to be impulsive and go straight into things. I’m learning through mindfulness that I don’t have to do that because I have that space and that framework. The anxiety levels are so much less when I do this, and higher if I don’t.”
― Ed Halliwell, Mindfulness Made Easy: Learn How to Be Present and Kind - to Yourself and Others

“People experiencing many kinds of difficulties find mindfulness useful. There have been positive results from studies involving people experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder, paranoia, irritable bowel syndrome, insomnia, asthma, fibromyalgia, tinnitus, bipolar disorder, loneliness, and the stress of being a carer, among many other situations.4 There seem to be few circumstances in which practising awareness doesn’t help, and mindfulness is now an option that health professionals turn to in supporting the people they work with. However, in each of these instances, changes seem to come as a by-product of people learning foundational practices and attitudes, such as the ones we’ve been exploring together, and applying what they learn to their lives. This appears to be the best way to approach the training, for as soon as we try to make mindfulness solve a particular”
― Ed Halliwell, Mindfulness Made Easy: Learn How to Be Present and Kind - to Yourself and Others

“The mindfulness road can be rocky. It’s brave to stay with the present moment, especially when we don’t like what’s happening. This courage is known as an ‘approach’ mentality. Approach-minded people move towards challenge with interest. They don’t just push away or run from difficulties. When driving in the snow, it’s better to turn into a skid, even though it runs against instinct. Sometimes, the skids in life are the same. The opposite of approach is avoidance, which is a sign of poor psychological health. Avoidance means habitually fleeing from fears: turning away from the skids. Of course, it’s good to stay out of danger when we can – it doesn’t make sense to put our hand in a fire – but when avoidance becomes a default setting, an automatic response to everything unpleasant, we restrict our range of responses.”
― Ed Halliwell, Mindfulness Made Easy: Learn How to Be Present and Kind - to Yourself and Others

“Realizing how amazing the body is, and how powerful, we can allow it to have its present moment. With a wholehearted acceptance of the inevitable, tension drops from our bow and the second arrow falls to the floor, unshot.”
― Ed Halliwell, Mindfulness Made Easy: Learn How to Be Present and Kind - to Yourself and Others

“Science shows the value of responding to stress in this way. Studies have pointed to changes in patterns of brain activity when people start practising mindfulness. The amygdala (a marker of the fight or flight reaction) becomes less active and reduces in size, while there’s more activity in regions of the pre-frontal cortex, associated with the ability to regulate thoughts and sensations.1”
― Ed Halliwell, Mindfulness Made Easy: Learn How to Be Present and Kind - to Yourself and Others

“Studies have shown that if a close friend of ours is happy, we’re 15 per cent more likely to be happy ourselves. If a close contact of that friend is happy (e.g. their partner), we’re 10 per cent more likely to be happy. If a friend of a friend of our friend is happy, our chances of happiness are increased by 6 per cent. Each happy person that we have in our life increases our own likelihood of wellbeing by 9 per cent.1 Unhappiness is also contagious, and the influence extends to other kinds of feelings and behaviours too – if your friends are overweight, you are more likely to be overweight, and if your friends don’t smoke, it’ll be easier for you to give up smoking. Having a network of family and friends giving strong social support is known to be associated with increased immunity to infection, lower risk of illnesses such as heart disease, and reduced rates of depression.2”
― Ed Halliwell, Mindfulness Made Easy: Learn How to Be Present and Kind - to Yourself and Others

“Initially, the most important thing for me was dropping out of my head and into my body – into a sense of feeling myself. My head is where I tend to spend most of my day, either beating myself up or worrying about things that might be coming up. I think I went for years hardly being in the present at all. Formal practices like the body scan, actually focusing on my body, are enough to press a reset button. Being in the body gives me a sense of ‘terra firma’, a ‘being here right now’. That sense of feeling the air on my skin, my feet on the floor, allows me to settle into myself, to refocus and respond in a different way, rather than just react habitually. That’s a great skill because it gives you the opportunity to do something different.”
― Ed Halliwell, Mindfulness Made Easy: Learn How to Be Present and Kind - to Yourself and Others

“It’s so easy to get frustrated with what you can’t change, but you can always change one thing and that’s your attitude.”
― Ed Halliwell, Mindfulness Made Easy: Learn How to Be Present and Kind - to Yourself and Others

“There may be weather going on – events in life, thoughts and sensations, ebbing and flowing in the internal and external environment. Whatever the weather, practise being a breathing body mountain: naturally wonderful without having to do anything. Let the climate of the world touch you – be rained on, shined on, snowed on – and stay present to whatever comes, neither resisting nor running from it.”
― Ed Halliwell, Mindfulness Made Easy: Learn How to Be Present and Kind - to Yourself and Others

“Letting go like this isn’t easy. As we’ve seen, our habits of perceiving and behaving are strongly entrenched. Even the idea of non-attachment can seem daunting, impractical, or even undesirable. What about our loved ones – are we not supposed to cling to them? Or our homes – should we throw the deeds away and let anyone come to stay, perhaps trying to live without money or possessions? And where does this leave our ideals – should we let go of aspirations for a better life or world? Non-clinging is a profoundly alien concept for most of us. Our human history and culture points us to grasping – to our friends and family, to our opinions and feelings, to our belongings, our sense of being an individual, and to life itself. And yet, we could ask ourselves: does this way produce happiness?”
― Ed Halliwell, Mindfulness Made Easy: Learn How to Be Present and Kind - to Yourself and Others

“This is not easy. It goes against all the conditioning, all the impulses, all the logic which tells us: ‘Get me away from this feeling, this thought, this unpleasant experience.’ It can bring up all our resistance, doubt and anxiety, and we may be tempted to try and fight or deny these too. When we feel the cold, dark night upon us, the last thing we want is to rest in the open. But ultimately we’ve nothing to lose – we’re exposing ourselves only to what’s here anyway. With the light and warmth of awareness, we offer our attitude as fuel for transformation. When we practise this wholeheartedly, courageously, repeatedly, compassionately, over time we may find that even when our frogs don’t turn into princes, we might nevertheless learn to love the frog. Is such a radical shift possible? Yes, according to practitioner reports over thousands of years, and the new data from brain-measuring technology. However, it requires practice, method and courage.”
― Ed Halliwell, Mindfulness Made Easy: Learn How to Be Present and Kind - to Yourself and Others

“Working at speed, the autopilot takes mental shortcuts and makes guesses, unconsciously based on what’s been learned before, rather than a full appreciation of the here and now.”
― Ed Halliwell, Mindfulness Made Easy: Learn How to Be Present and Kind - to Yourself and Others

“Much of the insanity of the world comes from people not knowing what to do with their feelings.”
― Ed Halliwell, Mindfulness Made Easy: Learn How to Be Present and Kind - to Yourself and Others

“Mindfulness doesn’t happen in a value-free vacuum.”
― Ed Halliwell, Mindfulness Made Easy: Learn How to Be Present and Kind - to Yourself and Others

“Opening to the difficult can’t be rushed or forced. Sometimes it’s best to wait before turning towards, especially if our experience feels overwhelming. Sometimes we need to seek the support of others first – friends, family, or a counsellor – to talk with and be supported by. We can accept that sometimes things feel too much to bear – we aren’t deficient for feeling flooded. Defences are put in place for a reason, and while they may become unhelpful, they can be honoured and respected for the job they try to do. If we choose to drop them, we can do so gently, when we’re ready.”
― Ed Halliwell, Mindfulness Made Easy: Learn How to Be Present and Kind - to Yourself and Others

“If we get sick and there’s no easy cure, we may be stuck with chronic pain. When we’re hurt by unkind words, we may feel an anger that lingers. Perhaps we find ourselves obsessing about what we should do, or why our current strategies aren’t working. We step up our focus on the pain or anger, and how to be rid of it. Or maybe we tell ourselves there’s nothing we can do, and instead get frustrated with our thoughts and sensations, which don’t seem to listen to reason. We get stressed about getting stressed, turning the fight in on ourselves. So what can be done? Of course, the best result would be not to experience the misfiring mechanism, but as the actor’s tale shows, the fight or flight reaction can’t be shut off easily. However, we can choose to practise staying present to thoughts and sensations, by noticing how automatic stress reactions arise in our bodies, and how we tend to resist or identify with them. This might not make them go away, but it significantly alters how we experience them: the meaning we ascribe them, the degree to which they control us, our way of relating to them, and our response. Instead of running round screaming, ‘I’ve got to get rid of this anxiety – now!’, we might bring a friendly interest to sensations of stomach churning, and the thoughts that come along with it. Staying present to thoughts, sensations and automatic reactions, we shift our relationship to stress.”
― Ed Halliwell, Mindfulness Made Easy: Learn How to Be Present and Kind - to Yourself and Others

“Cheerfulness means making joyous contact with life on its terms. It’s not the same as crude positive thinking – trying to make things alright by thinking nice thoughts. If you find discontent within, you don’t have to fabricate happiness. Being cheerful doesn’t require you to try to be happy – it means opening your heart with appreciation.”
― Ed Halliwell, Mindfulness Made Easy: Learn How to Be Present and Kind - to Yourself and Others