Think of practicing mindfulness as setting good intentions. Like planting a garden.

Remember, when we plant a flower seed in the earth, we cannot make the flower appear. But we know something of the conditions that will encourage its blossoming... it needs water and sunlight and nutrients. We encourage the flower to grow by providing these things.

Embodied wisdom is like that. The seeds of kindness, compassion, joy, ease, contentment, peace, well-being, they are all inside us. And like the flower seed, there are certain conditions that will encourage these seeds to blossom as well. The conditions are: non-judgmental observation of how things are, and making friends with what is happening. That is exactly what we are practicing when we practice mindfulness meditation. We are working with the sensations of the body to notice the various conditions as they arise and meet them with friendliness. We are working with the mind to notice our old habits and create new ones.

It is under these conditions that appropriate responses to challenging situations begin to happen, authenticity grows, and our lives blossom.