Mary Niker Mindfulness

25/04/2026

"In my life I have found two things of priceless worth - learning and loving. Nothing else - not fame, not power, not achievement for its own sake - can possibly have the same lasting value. For when your life is over, if you can say 'I have learned' and 'I have loved,' you will also be able to say 'I have been happy."
Arthur C. Clarke - Gentry Lee

Artist:

Paired by Whispers from the Heart

17/04/2026

Would you travel to the happiest country in the world if the experience cost you nothing and taught you how to live better? Finland is attracting global attention with a unique initiative that focuses on wellbeing instead of luxury.

The program invites selected international visitors to spend one week in Finland, staying in carefully arranged accommodation while learning simple habits linked to happiness, balance, and nature-based living. Activities often include forest walks, lakeside relaxation, sauna experiences, local food culture, and guided time away from digital distractions. Many experiences take place in regions like Helsinki, the Lakeland area, and Lapland in northern Finland, where nature is part of daily life.

Why this matters for travelers is simple: tourism is no longer just about sightseeing. Many people now travel to reset their mental health, reduce stress, and find a slower rhythm of life. Programs like this show how destinations are beginning to compete not only with attractions, but with emotional experiences that stay with visitors long after they return home.

The geography plays a major role. Finland is located in Northern Europe, bordered by Sweden, Norway, and Russia, and is known for thousands of lakes, dense forests, and long winter nights followed by bright summer days. This natural contrast shapes how people live and relax throughout the year.

Some trips are about where you go. Others are about how you feel when you come back. This one might change both.

07/04/2026

Mindfulness and Listening

One of the great by-products of practicing mindfulness is you gain so much you don’t expect. One of those wonderful by-products is that regular practitioners become better listeners by bringing our full attention to the present moment and giving us headspace to be aware of how we are reacting.

Instead of letting our thoughts race ahead into preparing an answer when we should be listening, or interrupting and speaking over someone, we are able to notice these impulses and let them go. By being able to sit and really listen to people as they speak can have an amazing impact.

When someone feels to truly listened to, truly heard, it helps build connections. It opens up communication, making it authentic and allowing all involved to express themselves and be heard.

So often in conversation we can jump in and problem solve when all the other person really wants is to be heard and this closes down connection. By learning to be mindful as we listen, we can reduce stress and conflict around difficult or potentially challenging topics and creates room for genuine connection and understanding.

Give it a try. Start by simply waiting for the other person to be finished before replying and notice what difference it makes to the way you engage with others, and they engage with you!

04/04/2026

“Dogs do speak, but only to those who know how to listen.”
Orhan Pamuk

Muriel Helen Dawson - Seashore, 1935.

02/04/2026

Life…..well, that’s a big word to start with. Let’s just say that it is changeable. To be unoriginal, it can be understood as predictably unpredictable.

Sometimes things are going great. We’re happy and full the joys of the moment. These moments are what life is made up of, what makes it worth living, but they do not exist without their more difficult flip side. Again, in danger of falling into cliché territory, into life, some rain must fall……we all face challenges, difficulties and pressures in our life.

The natural urge is to resist them, and this is understandable. We distract ourselves; we push things away; we keep a distance from the things that are bothering us. Sometimes this works, but eventually the issues, challenges, limitations – big or small – will rear their head again.

Our worries and anxieties are internal; we cannot outrun them any more than we can leave our shadow behind. Attempts to do so in the long term are mentally and physically exhausting and can lead us into dissatisfaction, anxiety and a whole host of emotions and responses that sneak up on us and colour our mood and behaviour.

How about rather than deny or fear our challenges, difficulties and stresses, we embrace them? We open up to them, explore how it feels to acknowledge what it here, how we are feeling and use this as a basis for response. This is resilience, this is strength, and this is how we use our challenges to help us respond to them in a more skilful way.

Our problems, our perceived flaws, the difficulties of human life are Rumi’s “crowd of sorrows” that we can use as a teacher. The “crowd of sorrows” teach us acceptance, strength and over time give us the wisdom to be kinder and more supportive of ourselves when we need it. Our problems are not alien, they are not separate from us. They are part of us and by embracing them and responding with a clear mind, we can be happier with life as it is

02/04/2026

'Somewhere deep within us, there is a primordial knowledge or preconscious perception of our true nature, our destiny, our abilities, and our 'calling' in life. Not only do we have a particular path to follow, but on some instinctive level, we know what that is'

Howard Sasportas
Painting by Mark R Pugh
www.teallach.com

02/04/2026

I am the daughter
of a daughter.

Who is the daughter
of a daughter.

Who is also the daughter
of a daughter.

Some of us are mothers
but all of us are daughters,
all birthed through lines
that weave back to
that First Mother.

All connected from
the very beginning.
All connected in the now.

Mothers,
Daughters,
Grandmothers,
Great Grandmothers,
Great Great Grandmothers.
All daughters born from
One. Original. Egg.
from
One. Original. Woman.

So why the separation?
Why the animosity toward each other?
Why the arguing and fighting,
back-stabbing and lack of support?

The next time you see another woman,
look in her eyes and see the
Ancestral Lines – the lines of women –
that lead back to you.

Where are we going Mother?
And how will we get there Sister?
By staying connected Daughter
and allowing for difference.

For we are each one,
after all,
all Daughters
of Daughters
of Daughters
of our
One Mother.

~ Arlene Bailey ©2020, “The Daughter Line”
Her Sacred Wild

Art: Jessie White, “Mothering”
on Instagram

31/03/2026

“We have not long to love.
Light does not stay.
The tender things are those
we fold away.
Coarse fabrics are the ones
for common wear.
In silence I have watched you
comb your hair.
Intimate the silence,
dim and warm.
I could but did not, reach
to touch your arm.
I could, but do not, break
that which is still.
(Almost the faintest whisper
would be shrill.)
So moments pass as though
they wished to stay.
We have not long to love.
A night. A day...”
Tennessee Williams - We Have Not Long to Love.

Eiler Sørensen - Morning Sun, 1916.

21/03/2026

14/03/2026

The pure splash of yellow that is golden.
The pure splash, the breathless vision.
The presence of our hearts made visible.
The vivid fields and hills spread with yellow.
The colorful world given back to us.
The signature of God when we weren't looking.
The simplest miracle of daffodils to greet us.
Our gratitude in the offering of quietest things.

Nicholas Samaras
Photography unknown
www.teallach.com