Practical
Philosophical
Well-Being
Mindfulness, Meditations, Blogs, Contemplations
Cultivate awareness and calm continuity of mind. Build resilience, and balance emotion. Enjoy a healthy lifestyle and enrich your personal and spiritual well-being.
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MEDITATIONS
Access our range of free meditations for mental and physical health and well being, teens and kids, and short practices for life and workplace balance.
OUR BLOGS
Fostering human flourishing. Our blogs range across a host of subjects including tips and tools on well-being, healthy lifestyle and interesting philosopical writings.
ABOUT US
Ability Life’s vision is to cultivate well-being nourishing mental, emotional and psychological resilience toward a more balanced and connected life.
Our Blogs
Health, Well-Being, Philosophy – want to contribute?
Free Will?
The pre-frontal cortex is the area of the brain that is thought to be involved in planning and complex cognitive behaviours and in the expression of personality and appropriate social behaviour. What separates us from all other sentient species is that the frontal...
Balance and Purpose
Many of us feel the need to ‘change the world’ at times. Whether this is from an altruistic base, like helping the disadvantaged, or from the ego by building a business or becoming a famous ‘influencer’, this need can lead to intense ‘outer’ activity and, potentially,...
Give to Live!
GIVE TO LIVE! - the benefits and ways of generosity. Generosity is good for you. Generosity and life expectancy are among the six variables scientists look at when making the World Happiness Report, which is released annually by the Sustainable Development Solutions...
Mindfulness – focused or unfocused explained
Mindfulness is a buzz word these days, the thing to do, but is ‘being in the moment’ doing? It can be. The practice of mindfulness – the act of purposely paying attention and being aware of the experience of the moment you are living, without judgement - is an active...
Sound and Silence
When I wrote this blog it was raining outside, mist sitting on the western hillside and a steady comforting hum in the air from the constant, gentle, deluge. It was early in the morning and the trees full of birds, each one calling into the new day to announce its...
Pillars of Purpose series – Forgiveness
Forgiveness is good for us …
A Personal Experience of Meditation
The timer goes off and you slowly start to move away from the meditative state, momentarily carrying a blissful sense of the stillness and silence within you and the flicker of pure happiness or joy. You smile at the anomaly that all the circumstances surrounding you,...
Quantum Physics – Mysticism or Science?
In previous blogs we raised the seemingly mystical, that is the possibility of changing our inner world and so changing our external reality. This is a bit like a caterpillar being released from the pupa of its past, to become free to be the butterfly that God...
Twixtmas Reflections
Twixtmas is that quiet, special time betwixt and between the Christmas gatherings and the New Year celebrations. Twixtmas offers a quiet time, a time to rest, reflect and, perhaps, make a New Year’s Resolution. New Year’s Resolutions date back over 4000 years from...
Unbearable Surrender
Sometimes life brings us a challenge that is fierce. It can be a deep sadness or an agonising truth, and it can induce absolute helplessness. This helplessness is not about fear, and it’s not about passivity, it’s about feeling, and settling somehow, into an...
Beliefs Become Biology
If you change, everything will change for you. Beliefs become biology. This blog considers how our beliefs and other non-genetic factors activate our genes, causing them to behave differently and so change our physiology (1) . What is remarkable is how such changes...
Listen to your Heart
Listening to your heart can involve all of your senses, including intuition, balance, enviroment and sense of time or place. Taking time to be with yourself, grounded through your senses into the land beneath your feet, the land that resonates deeply with your inner...
Feeling Lucky?
Have you ever looked at some people who just seem to have it all and asked yourself, ‘what makes them special? Do they have more angels on their side? How come they are so lucky?’ In 2004 an English Professor, Richard Wiseman, published a book The Luck Factor, which...
Overcoming Depression through Resilience
Many of us will unfortunately suffer depression at some time in our life. The ending of a relationship, being made redundant, severe illness, these are the kinds of events that can throw us off balance, robbing us of our self-esteem, motivation, and enjoyment of life....
The Problem with Plastics, a student perspective
The problem with plastics is that they become micro plastics. Microplastic and plastics in general that are in the ocean are a danger not only to sea life but to us as well. Thousands of earths creatures are affected or dying from the effects of these microplastics...
Changing Our Perception of Reality
How do we understand reality, and can we change it and so change ourselves? There is an ancient Sufi story of an elephant and some blind men which goes as follows: Once there was a city, the inhabitants of which were all blind. They had heard of elephants and were...
Ageing Gracefully
Ageing gracefully is so much easier if you are friends with your own body, thinking less about how you look and more about how you feel inside. However, this is easier said than done, living as we do, within a society that glorifies youth and beauty. We have entire...
Anger Energy
Anger eats energy – your energy. Anger can range from mild irritations to a raging monster of energy consumption, and it can exhaust you. When anger manifests as energy it becomes a mental formation, and this energy formation can cause lots of suffering if it’s not...
Nostalgia, Harmony and Belief
What happens when the past takes on an intensity that shapes our present behaviour? A backward-looking life, whether shaped by good or bad experiences, spells trouble, because your thoughts and feelings are the tools that will craft your personal world, both now and...
Pillars of Purpose Series – Stillness
The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for. ‘Purpose’ is defined as the reason something is done or created, or for which something/someone exists. The ultimate purpose, the purpose for human life itself, has...
Magic Mushrooms
Magic mushrooms, psilocybin or psychedelic mushrooms, have been used in indigenous cultures for religious rituals, healing, and divinatory purposes for millennia. Psilocybin is an hallucinogenic compound, the term ‘magic mushroom’ was formed when the effect of this...
What is a Paradigm?
A paradigm is the thinking that serves as a pattern or model. A set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality for the community that shares them, especially in an intellectual discipline.These assumptions are often not...
Firm Focus, Soft Gaze
Ways of developing a firm focus, and soft gaze. In Vipassana meditation, we open ourselves in a wide awareness of senses, with a soft mental gaze that allows us to notice whatever is happening. If something catches our attention, we then turn toward whatever it is –...
Hope
Hope can sometimes challenge us - can we, will we, accept hope in times of despair? How do we manage the unmanageable, that thing, person, or circumstance that gives rise to emotional exhaustion and hopelessness? To be without hope is to be without optimism,...
The Intactness Within
How strange life can be,It’s not always as it seems,What seems so right What seems so wrong. Go out, go out they say,But pause just a little,Before you go,Maybe first there are things to know. What we seek, it looks for us,Hoping too, that in our search, we stopIt’s...
My Way
I often wonder why I love science fiction and science fantasy so much. My friends read all the latest books that win prizes and are much vaulted. I do try and read them but too many of them are dry, depressing, and boring. ‘What about space?’ I think, ‘what about...
Lost your Career Path?
It isn’t a failure if you decide after many years that your career isn’t for you. People change and their priorities with them. So, it’s normal to find yourself with over ten years of experience in a field that isn’t for you anymore. According to Indeed, 49% of...
The Notebook
I have a beautiful notebook. The picture on its cover is of the sunset, yellows, oranges and gold’s. Its a few years old now, it is still pristine. I look at it often but do not write in it, in case the words I write are not good enough somehow for its perfect blank...
Coping with Death and Loss
Death is inevitable. There are nearly 8 billion people on the planet at this time and every one will meet an ending of this life be they old or young, sick, or healthy. No one knows how long their span here will be, for hundreds of thousands every day their time is up...
Adapt or Diminish
Nothing is permanent, everything changes – this is the nature of things. National Geographic writes that “adaptation is the biological mechanism by which organisms adjust to new environments or to changes in their current environment … “So change is a natural part of...
Self Compassion
We are born into a social species, being cooperative and caring for others is hard wired into our DNA. So, it’s not surprising that when we see suffering, sometimes that suffering has caused compassion to rise in us for others. And when our hearts are touched by...
Testimonials
Attended by people in various health related and challenging situations, such as diagnosis and treatment of cancer, chronic pain, sleeplessness, bipolar disorder, depression and anxiety … it proved to be very successful … excellent comment and feedback … highly recommend it …
I am a strong advocate for practicing mindfulness to help manage everyday life, to deal with the more challenging times… I am encouraged by organisations and initiatives that promote mindfulness to support stronger individuals, community and society, particularly as it’s something I’ve witnessed in my personal and professional life.
The Mindfulness Based Well-Being program …
“I’m almost speechless …
That was the most profound and effective meditation experience I have ever had …”