This week I would like to share some ideas for Mindful Living from a Lenten viewpoint. When my friend Carol came over for dinner last week she told me that she had given up drinking wine for Lent. She said that it was her practice every year to give up something during the weeks before Easter.

Her remark reminded me of my friend Diane who each week joined me for our ten kilometre Sea Wall walk around magnificent Stanley Park in Vancouver, B.C., Canada.

One day she announced to me a similar thought, “Jeanie, I am giving up coffee for Lent”, and I replied, “Oh I didn't know that you were religious”.

“I'm not”, she replied. I must say that it brought up for me my Anglican/Catholic upbringing of “The do-nots”, sin and lack, penitence, austere living, and made me feel a little guilty and uncomfortable that I had not done something similar.

Then I looked more deeply into this concept of denying ourselves and would like to share my musings on this subject and relate it to a mindful way of living.

As a Social Worker/Group Facilitator I have used the fun party ice-breaker of getting groups of people to break into twos and to ask each of them to close their eyes while their partner changes their appearance in some way.

Then they have to guess what has changed about the other person. Most people will take something away from them, rather than adding something.

Carol was denying herself wine this year for Lent and Diane denied herself coffee. Both enjoyed drinking these drinks, however both felt they would benefit in some way from denying themselves.

There reasons for doing so, I perceived and discussed with them, were very different. Carol told me that each year she chooses one food or drink item to give up, usually beginning with the letter “C”.

Cakes, candies, caramels, coffee, crisps, cookies, chocolate, cokes, this year was Chardonnay and other wines not beginning with a “C”!

She told me that one of her reasons was it cut back on calories, another “C”, and usually after the 40 days she didn't have any interest in going back to eating or drinking the item she had given up - a wonderful beginning to forming a new habit.

Also an additional benefit is that she loses some weight and stops a craving for certain food or drink items. She also feels more in control and that the discipline is very good for her.

The year my friend Diane gave up coffee for Lent she told me she had been going to Starbucks (a gourmet coffee chain) four to five times a day! Before she drove to work, when she got to work, at coffee break mid-morning, at tea time in the afternoon and very often before she drove home.

She often talked to me about not being able to afford to go away for a fun vacation, or to visit her Mum in the UK. Loving to be an advice-giver or a ‘teller', I as mindfully as possible, worked out the dollar cost of her six day work week coffee drinking and asked her what she would do if she put away $78 a week into a savings account or $4,000 a year. Her answer was to go away on a holiday!

The idea of changing a habit for 40 days is a wonderful practice and often means that the change will become permanent. Both of my friends will gain something, one a more mindful way of consuming and maybe the loss of a little weight in a much healthier body; the other friend more money in her savings account and a wonderful vacation.

One of the five mindfulness trainings is about Mindful Consumption and its powerful effect on our lives. Mindful living is about how we can gain more peace and joy, not about denying ourselves, either during the Lenten period or the rest of the year. Try just one day of mindful living - it could be the start of a life-changing affair!

The MPC of Bermuda meets every Sunday at 5.14 p.m. for one and a half hours to support the practice of living a Mindful Life. 71 Victoria Street (at Unity Foundations of Truth) 236-4988 or iamhomeibl.bm. and www.plumvillage.org