Modern Monk

Modern Monk Modern mindfulness training for individuals and organisations. Join our daily online practice. Welcome to Mallas Mindfulne. We teach Mindfulness.

We'll show you how and why to practice and how it applies to your situation. We believe that mindfulness – understanding and managing your mind – is a fundamental and required skill to living a good life. Because the practice works on the root levels of your mind, you'll notice improvement in yourself and in your life, across the board (including your physical and mental health, performance, creativity, relationships, happiness and peace of mind).

​We hope you'll find something useful here, and would love to hear from you if you have any questions or comments, or would like to explore the possibility of working together.

The feeling came back… now what?There’s a moment in practice that almost everyone meets.You’ve worked through something....
23/03/2026

The feeling came back… now what?

There’s a moment in practice that almost everyone meets.
You’ve worked through something.
You’ve felt it.
You’ve understood it.
And then… it comes back.

The same feeling.
The same pattern.

And something in you says:
“Not this again.”
It can feel tiring.
Disheartening.
Like you’re going backwards.

But you’re not going backwards.
You’re going deeper.
The mind doesn’t resolve all at once.
It unwinds in layers.

Each time something returns, the question isn’t:
“Why is this still here?”
The question is:
“Can I meet this differently now?”

This is where the practice lives.
Not in removing the feeling.
But in how you hold it.
Awareness on the balcony.
Acceptance in the body.

That’s the work.
That’s the shift.





The feeling came back… now what?There’s a moment in practice that almost everyone meets.You’ve worked through something....
23/03/2026

The feeling came back… now what?

There’s a moment in practice that almost everyone meets.
You’ve worked through something.
You’ve felt it.
You’ve understood it.
And then… it comes back.

The same feeling.
The same pattern.

And something in you says:
“Not this again.”
It can feel tiring.
Disheartening.
Like you’re going backwards.

But you’re not going backwards.
You’re going deeper.
The mind doesn’t resolve all at once.
It unwinds in layers.

Each time something returns, the question isn’t:
“Why is this still here?”
The question is:
“How can I meet this now?”

This is where the practice lives.
Not in removing the feeling.
But in how you hold it.
Awareness on the balcony.
Acceptance in the body.

That’s the work.
That’s the shift.

27/02/2026

🚢 You’re Already on the Ship

Rumi says: Day and night, you are a traveler on a ship.

You don’t get to step off.
This body-mind is the vessel.

The breath?
That’s the life-giving spirit filling the (emotional and cognitive) sails and moving/changing us.

“Step aboard” means take captaincy.
Stop drifting. Start steering.

And where are we headed?
Toward the Beloved.
Toward the far shore of peace — not by doing more, but by inhabiting now more fully.

“Without hands and feet” reminds us:
This isn’t about outer busyness.
It’s an inner voyage — along the spine, the breath…awareness.

The destination isn’t somewhere else.

It’s timelessness.
It’s now.

24/02/2026

We love to say: “Kids these days… always on their phones… losing touch with reality.”

And yes — the scrolling, the endless stimulation, the hyper-engineered distraction — it’s real.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth:

We were already lost.

Lost in monkey imagination.
Lost in stories about the past.
Lost in anxiety about the future.
Lost in invisible scrolling inside our own heads.

The phone didn’t invent distraction.
It just made it Technicolor.

We can see a teenager absorbed in a screen.
We can’t see ourselves absorbed in thought — because it’s normalised.

The real practice isn’t pointing fingers.
It’s checking inward:

Am I here?
Or am I lost in the monkeys?

Come back to the body.
Core on.
Breath open.
Awareness awake.

That’s how we sail instead of drift.

Awareness DigitalDetox ConsciousLiving

16/02/2026

We tend to live like motorboats — push harder, go faster, control everything.

Sometimes that works.
Until it doesn’t.

Life is more like a sailboat.
You can adjust the sail, but you must account for the wind and the water — outer pressures, inner moods, shifting energy. You don’t control the currents. You work with them.

And sometimes? You’re in a river donut — just floating through the rapids. No steering. Just presence.

The practice is knowing which boat you’re in.

If you can use the engine today, great.
Just don’t mistake momentum for mastery.

Notice the wind.
Feel the water.
Sail well.

13/02/2026

Change the Body. Change the Mind.

If you want a different mind, don’t start with your thoughts.

You can’t just tell your mind:
“Think better.”
“Feel calmer.”
It won’t listen.

But the body will.
Change how you stand.
Change how you breathe.
Change how you walk, sit, eat.

These are the foundations of the mind. They’ve been wired in since birth. And when you shift the foundation, the structure above it has to shift too.

A slower breath softens emotion.
An open posture changes thinking.
A steady walk calms reactivity.

Start where you actually have leverage: the body.
The rest will follow.

09/02/2026

Thoughtaholics Anonymous

Here’s the serious part beneath the joke:
we’re not just distracted by thinking — we’re addicted to it.

We compulsively think, react, worry, plan, replay… even when it’s hurting us.
And that’s why the first three AA steps fit this practice uncannily well:

1. Admit the addiction.
Thinking and reacting have taken control of our lives — often without us noticing.

2. Recognise a higher power.
That power is awareness — the part of the mind that can observe thought instead of being consumed by it.

3. Choose to live from there.
Again and again, we practice returning to the balcony rather than being dragged around the dance floor.

This isn’t self-help.
It’s recovery.

And yes — welcome to Thoughtaholics Anonymous 🐒

01/02/2026

Let It Be (A Listening Practice)

This isn’t about the song itself.
It’s about how you listen.

Here’s the practice:

Put on a song — Let It Be works beautifully — and listen as if the music is a live map of your own mind.

• The listener (you) = awareness
• The lyrics / story = thinking mind
• The emotional feel of the song = emotional mind
• The rhythm and beat = the body

Listen to all four at once.
No analysing. No judging. No getting lost in one layer.

Just notice how these streams are happening simultaneously — exactly the way thoughts, feelings, body, and awareness move together in daily life.

This is embodied mindfulness, using sound instead of silence.
Not trying to change the mind — just learning how to observe it.

🎧 Homework: try it once with Let It Be, then again with any song you choose.

07/12/2025

Thich Nhat Hanh suggests we walk like this — full attention, soft contact, nothing else in the mind or world.
Bring *that* kind of embodied presence to your steps.

27/11/2025

Learning to shift smoothly from inhale to exhale is just like learning a manual car. At first, it’s clunky — a little jarring, a little jumpy. But when the breath becomes smooth inside, something beautiful happens:

It becomes the keel of the boat.

Life can be stormy on the surface, but a coherent breath keeps the deeper layers steady — your emotions, your thoughts, your whole inner world.

Smooth breath ➡️ Steady mind.

27/11/2025

Your inhale is the setup.
Your exhale is the doing.
Your life is shaped by the breath that comes BEFORE the moment.

Want a different day?
Start with a different inhale.

17/11/2025

The most important things in us are quiet.
The problems are loud; the goodness is soft.
If we don’t grow the capacity to notice subtle shifts — softening, releasing, opening — we never reached the deeper qualities of mind that actually heal us.
Subtlety isn’t a bonus skill .
It’s the gateway to the innate good.

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Brisbane, QLD
4000

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0413842013

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