We teach what our founder had to learn the hard way

"In 2015 I had, on paper, everything going right: a successful corporate career, a full calendar, a life that looked like achievement. Inside, it was another story. I was exhausted every single day, yet at night I couldn't sleep. I couldn't remember the last time I had truly switched off from work. I sat with my friends and family without really being there. I struggled to concentrate, gained weight I couldn't lose, and my cortisol stayed high no matter what I tried.

Then my body started speaking more loudly. Chronic pain appeared and kept moving from one part of my body to another. I went from doctor to doctor and from test to test, and everything came back clear. There was nothing wrong with me, they said. Which also meant there was nothing they could treat.

Here is the part I most want you to hear, because it might be true for you too: I thought all of this was normal. Everyone around me was under the same pressure, working the same hours and carrying the same tiredness, so I assumed this was simply what working life cost. Every morning I told myself that today I would resign, and I kept telling myself that, every morning, for two years. All that time I was waiting for something outside of me to change: a calmer workplace, less pressure, a different life. It never occurred to me that my experience could change from within.

In the end, the decision to leave was made for me. One morning, after opening yet another difficult email, I suddenly couldn't breathe. My chest locked, and sitting there behind my desk I believed, for one long moment, that I was going to die at work. That moment made the choice very simple: my job or my life. I resigned the same day.

That was 2015. I left the corporate world and went looking for answers, and what I found was mindfulness: not a relaxation trick, but a trainable skill with four decades of clinical research behind it. I certified as an MBSR teacher at the University of San Diego and as an MBCT teacher at the University of Oxford, trained in youth mindfulness in the UK, and learned from teachers including Deepak Chopra, Eckhart Tolle, Dr. Joe Dispenza and Michael Beckwith.

Somewhere along that path, the change I had been waiting for finally arrived, though not from the direction I had been watching. The world outside didn't change; the way I met it did. Sleep came back. The pain loosened its grip. I was present again with the people I love. And slowly I understood something that changed everything for me: so much of what feels absolutely real to us is meaning our mind has built. What the mind has built, it can also rebuild.

In 2017 I founded Beyond Mindful Living to bring these skills to people living the life I used to live. Since then, our programs have been recognised by government bodies including the Dubai Future Foundation and the Abu Dhabi Government, and trusted by organisations such as Emirates NBD, ADNOC, L'Oréal Middle East, Hyatt and the Swiss Business Council. In 2018 we launched a Mindfulness Awareness campaign to reach people who couldn't afford a program, and in 2019 I led Dubai's first Women's Health & Wellbeing conference, followed by a second edition in 2022. Today we work with individuals and teams worldwide, online.

This year I published my first book, It Only Feels Real. It brings together what my own journey taught me and what I have learned in the years since, sitting with clients through their anxiety, their stress and their low moods, and watching the same quiet turning points arrive for them too.

If you are where I was, exhausted all day yet wide awake at 3am, promising yourself that tomorrow you'll make a change, I want you to know two things. You are not weak. And this is not normal, no matter how many people around you are living the same way. Your experience can change from the inside. I'm not saying that as a slogan; I'm saying it because it happened to me."

Bahar Alexandra Moreau, Founder