Interview with Melli O'Brien - Mindfulness Teacher in Australia
Melli O’Brien is an internationally-accredited meditation and Satyananda yoga teacher and an MTIA-trained mindfulness teacher. Ms. O’Brien was selected by the Satyananda Mangrove Mountain Ashram (the largest ashram in the southern hemisphere) to teach their mindfulness retreats. She also blogs about mindful living at www.mrsmindfulness.com

Below Melli explains what is mindfulness in her own words on a Youtube video

This is a summary (not a full transcript) of the interview
How did you get started with meditation practice?
Melli looks back and reflects on the pivotal moments in her childhood for forming the beginnings of her interest in meditation. As children we're good at being in the present moment. She spend a lot of time in alone in nature. Time in nature, contemplating in nature.

When she was about 8 years old, she watched the news, of the Gulf war at that time. And she realized that the adults that she looked up to, that she was going to become like, were really insane, not functioning harmoniously at all. That hit home for her.

Something hit her deeply, it created an existential crisis for her. Coming to terms with her place in the world. It became a slippery slope into depression, and even despair.

As Melli got older, she wondered if it was possible that there are people out there who live in harmony with each other and the planet, who have some wisdom and are not with despair and distress.

She started looking for an answer to see if it was possible to be happy and harmonious. That led her to reading books about comparative religion, self-improvement, to look for answers.

She found answers, and her curiosity was fed.

So you were a teenager at this point right, a few years down the road?

Yes, the depression and despair was getting deeper, and at the same time, I was opening up to the wisdom traditions.

How did that develop into a meditation practice?

She did a course on meditation with her friend in her late teens, and started doing yoga. And she started reading eastern wisdom traditions. She started to get it, that she could investigate her mind, and free herself from the patterns that were causing depression and distress.

Was there a particular meditation practice?

Melli was doing simple breath meditation back then, it has evolved since then, but it is still mostly breath meditation. So it is not so much the technique, but the way that the practice, and the orientation, and attitude of herself, has changed, the ability to simply be. The quality of her practice has evolved a lot, rather than any particular technique.

Did you start noticing the depression de-escalating or dissolving?

It made a huge difference really quickly, because what happened I realized.

That I am not my mind

That was unbelievably liberating.

I am separate from those things that I had been so entangled and so identified with, things that caused her so much suffering.

She was really enthusiastic about utilizing that realization to the best of her ability. She put a lot of effort watching her mind, watching the current of her mind go by, seeing how it worked.

Even simple insights like noticing that when I have bad thoughts, it makes me feel bad. And then choosing to drop it, when I found that it wasn't serving me.

This was absolutely life-changing, absolutely incredible.

Two things happened there,

1. You have this incredible opportunity for liberation. Seeing the way you get caught up when you're no longer the witness, you've falling in the river of thoughts and emotions. Again and again you can chose to have more and more liberation.

2. The noticing of the fact when I'm not caught up, witnessing, I felt so at home. So in a natural state of contentedness, deep sense of being connected with life. Not the things that that my culture said would make me happy, white picket fence, achievements, etc,