Sharon Salzberg, a world renown meditation teacher and best selling author, believes that meditation and kindness are inseparably linked.

Why is that? Sharon feels that when you first begin to meditate, you start to really notice all the thoughts that ricochet around in your mind, all the crazy tangents your thoughts can travel on and just how difficult it is to try to keep your focus on your breath.

This is where kindness comes in - kindness towards yourself. If you are going to learn how, and continue to practice meditation, you pretty much immediately need to learn to choose between being frustrated with yourself or kind to yourself, keep bringing your mind back to your breath no matter how many times you need to and keep practicing.

You also need to learn to choose kindness over judgment. Of yourself, that is. We all will have a tendency to catch our minds wandering for the 20th time in 2 minutes and say "I can't do this!", or "What is wrong with me other people make it look so easy!" To accept that is just what minds do is gentle, it takes kindness.

There are many positive benefits of meditation is we improve our ability to concentrate. In addition, we also develop greater self awareness. We begin to learn what is actually going on in our minds and emotions because, maybe for the first time, we're becoming increasingly aware of what is going on up there.

When I have taught the Mindful Moment portion of our CommUNITY Yoga class, I have suggested that we are the observer of our thoughts we are not our thoughts. And when you observe a thought, you notice it and gently release it, that you don't have to travel with your thoughts, you can let them go and come back to your breath. This is how we begin to know ourselves better, to create more awareness of who we are, what we think, what we feel. The bonus of this is, this awareness naturally extends to an increased awareness of others. Being aware of ourselves and others - really aware, is one of the kindest things we can do.

To take this further, being aware and noticing leads naturally to appreciation. Let's say you are on a walk and you pass by some beautiful flowers. You notice them and you smile with appreciation. And then, you notice your feelings of appreciation and that makes you smile and you notice how good that simple thing makes you feel. You think, how many simple things you pass by every day of your life and how you can repeat this nice moment over & over by being more aware - and then you do just that. And this changes your experience of your life.