Mindful in May QA with Elise Bialylew 1260x542
1 May 2014

Mindful in May- Q&A with Dr. Elise Bialylew

3 mins to read
Dr. Elise Bialylew the founder of Mindful in May shares her insights into the benefits of mediation and tells us a little bit more about Mindful in May and how you can get involved.


How long have you been meditating for? What are the benefits you've found from meditating?

I was fortunate to be introduced to meditation by my mum who took me to conferences about mind-body wellbeing and who had shelves full of books by Jack Kornfield, Thich Nhat Han and Jon Kabat Zinn.

One of the first meditations I experienced was guided by a Tibetan Monk - a meditation on dying - the purpose of which is to connect you with the reality of impermanence. It sounds like pretty heavy going for a 15 year old, but it sparked my curiosity to learn more about consciousness.

However, there was a long hiatus between that time and when I started to explore meditation in a deeper way.  That was triggered by a need in the face of stress that came with working as a doctor.  I’ve been going to meditation retreats for many years now and teaching it to my one-on-one clients and in group settings including in the health and corporate sector.

Learning meditation has been one of the most valuable educations of my life. It has transformed me and my career in ways that have left me feeling a lot more aligned with my values.

What is Mindful in May?

Mindful in May is a 1 month, global, online meditation challenge that brings the benefits of meditation together with an opportunity to contribute to a global cause.

The 1 month meditation program includes an accessible, well researched course particularly sup-portive of time poor people that are new to meditation. It is delivered daily to your inbox and in-cludes: weekly audio meditation downloads, exclusive interviews with leading global experts in the field of wellbeing and mindfulness and cutting edge science to keep you connected to your chal-lenge.
 
The idea is that while you learn to meditate and be mindful, your donation and fundraising will ripple across the world to help improve the lives of the one in nine people on the planet who live without access to clean, safe drinking water.


How did you come up with the idea- meditating and raising money for clean water projects?

The idea for Mindful in May arrived in a moment, but really it was the integration of a number of different passions and influences in my life that had finally come together.

Whilst training in medicine and psychiatry, I became a bit disillusioned as I felt there was something missing in the medical paradigm of wellbeing.

This led me to take time out to explore the world and contemplate whether I was going to come back to finish my training. I travelled through West Africa, India, Cuba and worked as a medical volunteer after the Tsunami in Sri Lanka. Through this time I was exposed to rich cultures, but also to the devastating reality and injustice of global poverty.

I have always been very sensitive to other peoples suffering. It was both strength and an occupa-tional hazard in my profession as a doctor and so I’ve needed to learn skills to be present to peoples suffering without being overwhelmed by it.

This is where meditation came into the picture.

For me mindfulness meditation has been life changing. It has given me strategies to manage stress and helped me find more focus and clarity when faced with life’s challenges. As someone who thrives on doing and creating, it supports me in remembering to take time to pause, re-focus and literally catch my breath in the midst of the business of a day.

Three years ago when I created Mindful in May, I imagined there were many people in the world who wanted an easy, accessible way to learn how to meditate. Over the past three years thousands of people from around the world have signed up to learn how to master their minds by learning mind-fulness and make a positive difference through raising funds to build clean water wells in the de-veloping world.

What are some of the results you've noticed both for the people that have participated and where the money goes?

People who have participated have expressed many different benefits including more focus, better stress management, a deeper sense of connectedness and appreciation in their lives, more kind-ness to themselves and an improvement in their relationships and ability to communicate amidst negative emotions. Many people were surprised at the benefits gained from just a 10 minute daily meditation practice.

If people want to get involved this year and haven't meditated before how can they learn?

Just visit the website 
www.mindfulinmay.org to register. It’s $25 to register which gives you access to the one month program including the weekly audio meditations and exclusive interviews with leading experts in wellbeing, mindfulness and mindset from around the world .Then you can create your own meditation team and inspire your friends, family and workmates to get involved by joining you or sponsoring your mindfulness challenge to help raise money to bring clean water to those in need in the developing world.

$30 is all it costs to bring clean water to one person for life this May. 


Elise Bialylew is a doctor, coach and mindfulness meditation teacher with a background in Psychiatry. She is the founder of Mindful in May, a one month global mindfulness meditation campaign.

Mindful in May has inspired thousands of people around the world to learn how to meditate, whilst raising money to build clean water wells in the developing world. When she’s not teaching mindfulness she’s often losing herself in salsa dancing or African



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