Top 9 Quotes & Sayings by Jan Chozen Bays

Mindfulness is deliberately paying full attention to what is happening around you-in your body, heart and mind. Mindfulness is awareness without criticism or judgment.

The problem is not in the food... The problem lies in the mind. It lies in our lack of awareness of the messages coming in from our body... Mindful eating helps us learn to hear what our body is telling us about hunger and satisfaction. It helps us become aware of who in the body/heart/ mind complex is hungry, and how and what is best to nourish it.

We wouldn't pay to rent and watch the same painful movie two hundred fifty times, but somehow we let our mind replay a bad memory over and over, each time experiencing the same distress and shame.

If we practice stepping into the unknown, moment by moment, hour by hour, millions of times, then death is just the next step into the unknown. It loses its terror.

Resting in this moment, we have no age.

Except that it’s not really 'now' that the inner critic attacks. It’s a few seconds or a minute ago. The inner critic depends upon comparison, and when we are fully aware in the present moment, when there is no past or future in our mind’s awareness, there is nothing to compare. There is only what is, as it is. The inner critic disappears.

Mindful eating is a way to become reacquainted with the guidance of our internal nutritionist.

Several times a day, stop and just listen. Open your hearing 360 degrees, as if your ears were giant radar dishes. Listen to the obvious sounds, and the subtle sounds?in your body, in the room, in the building, and outside. Listen as if you had just landed from a foreign planet and didn?t know what was making these sounds. See if you can hear all sounds as music being played just for you. Even in what is called silence there is sound. To hear such subtle sound, the mind must be very quiet.

When you are unhappy, discover what you are clinging to and let it go.