Meet David

Welcome to Meet Our Community!

This is a place where we are sharing real-life experiences from Mindfulness.com community members — both as a way to help you feel connected to people all around the world who are on the mindfulness journey with you, and also so you can see how regular, simple mindfulness practices are helping people deal with challenges, increase happiness, and improve their everyday wellbeing.

We’d love to introduce you to David. David hails from Oxford, UK. In March, he had major spinal cord surgery that left him paralyzed from the waist down. Facing an uncertain future, David turned to mindfulness practices to help him cope with grief, anxiety, and spiraling thoughts.

Read David’s full story and find out how mindfulness has changed his life:

Sudden loss of mobility

In March I had a major spinal cord operation that left me paralyzed from the waist down.

I had so many things to face: an uncertain physical recovery, not to mention the frustration, grief, anxiety, and anger that comes with having your life changed so abruptly by an injury like this.

I started to use Mindfulness.com to help me calm my thoughts, build resilience, and focus on my long recovery.

The long road to recovery

Using Mindfulness.com helped me accept my situation and stop my thoughts from spiraling out of control.

After intensive work with an amazing team of doctors and specialists, I am now walking again with sticks. I actually competed in the spinal games last month.

My recovery has been a combination of world-class spinal rehab at the world-famous Stoke Mandeville spinal unit — and using mindfulness to build up my mental resilience.

How mindfulness helped me heal

I use mindfulness practice every day to help me with my mental wellness.

I can work on my physical recovery — but if I don’t have the resilience or self-compassion, then that physical work won’t be as effective. I need this practice to keep me focused and patient with my progress.

And on hard days, I can turn to this internal work to stay in a place of openness and gratitude. It’s not always easy, but I know that finding and staying with a simple daily routine has helped me navigate the biggest challenge of my life so far.

Advice I would give to someone starting out with mindfulness and how to tackle life with mindfulness is: