How two plane crashes led me back to my mind
A mindfulness practice I barely understood helped me face the chaos I couldn’t control
This is the second article in a series chronicling my 30-year meditation journey. Missed the beginning? Start here with Part 1, or read Part 3 here.
By the time I picked up Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Full Catastrophe Living, I wasn’t trying to become enlightened or even learn mindfulness. I just needed my mind to stop spinning.
Ten years had passed since I first dabbled in the Silva Method as a curious teenager.
Since then, I had left Venezuela amid growing political and economic chaos, moved to Spain, and stumbled into a dream job that ultimately led to a slow-motion burnout.
The job sounded incredible on paper: travel the world producing investment and tourism reports on emerging economies for top-tier European and U.S. publications.
And yes, in many ways, it was a fantastic job.
I spent three-month stints in different countries, interviewing CEOs, government officials, and diplomats.
Then I’d pack up and do it all over again in a new timezone. A new culture. A new geography.
It was high-octane, high-status, and adrenaline-filled.
It was also completely unrooted. A few years into the role, I realized I needed more than a good itinerary and a functioning liver.
I needed something to center me. Something portable. Something simple. And something real—even if I didn’t yet know to call it “mindfulness.”
The book I didn’t know I’d need
That’s when I came across Full Catastrophe Living. The title hit me with an eerie sense of recognition.
Kabat-Zinn wasn’t talking about life-or-death catastrophe. Not exactly. He meant the totality of modern life: stress, deadlines, ambition, illness, parenting, heartbreak, aging.
But in my case, catastrophe wasn’t always metaphorical.
Like the time I was stationed in Abuja, Nigeria. I was there to interview the Minister of Transportation.
Abuja, despite being Nigeria's capital, felt like a strange simulation of a city—a top-down, master-planned metropolis with little life on the streets and even less to do after 6 p.m.
I spent my days going back and forth between the mostly empty hotel room and the Ministry's office, trying to charm my way into an appointment.
After two weeks, the minister finally said yes.
That day, a plane crashed.
Nearly 200 people died. The flight was headed from Abuja to Lagos — the same route I’d soon be taking. The interview was cancelled. A national mourning period was declared.
That night, I felt my chest tighten. I couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t think clearly. I picked up the hotel phone and called my head office in a mild panic.
Told them I was done with domestic flights in Nigeria. If they needed me in Lagos, I’d fly from Abuja to London and then back to Lagos — whatever it took. But not on a local airline.
Two weeks later, I finally got my interview.
Two days after that? Another crash.
At that point, I stood firm—no internal flights. No exceptions.
As luck would have it, Virgin Nigeria had only started flying the year before. I ended up on one of their early Abuja–Lagos flights.
In hindsight, it was almost funny. Almost.
Turning to the page
That first night, after the crash, I’d reached for Full Catastrophe Living. I’d brought it with me on the trip, thinking I might get around to it. I hadn’t.
But when the fear came, I needed something to settle my system, and I opened the book with shaking hands.
I wasn’t looking for wisdom—just a way to breathe. Kabat-Zinn delivered.
Somewhat naively, I initially thought Kabat-Zinn was offering mental gymnastics, a clever way to escape the discomfort of the moment.
I couldn’t have been more wrong. What the book offered was a toolkit for staying sane in the eye of the storm.
Of his three core practices—body scan, mindful movement, meditation—I took to the seated practice most quickly. Not because I was particularly good at it. But because I needed it most.
There was something comforting in the simplicity: sit down, focus on the breath, watch thoughts arise, and let them pass like clouds.
If you drift away, gently bring attention back to the breath. No need to succeed. Just notice.
It was familiar, in a way. Like the Silva Method's body scanning, but stripped of ambition. No affirmations. No manifesting. Just presence.
At a time when I was constantly in motion, meditation became the only moment I wasn’t chasing, persuading, or performing.
I wasn’t trying to win an interview or impress a minister. I was just breathing.
And that was enough.
Something was rewiring
I didn’t feel like a monk. I wasn’t meditating in a candlelit room or perched on a zafu cushion.
Most of the time, I sat on the edge of a hotel bed or a stiff rental apartment chair, legs planted, palms up, eyes closed. Five minutes if I were tired. Ten, if I could stretch it.
Sometimes I’d get through three full breaths before my mind hijacked the rest of the session with logistics and deadlines. But even then, something was happening.
It wasn’t bliss. It wasn’t transcendence. It was something quieter, harder to put into words.
A shift in the relationship
Where I used to feel swept away by stress, I began to see it. Just see it, not fix it or fight it. That tiny space between stimulus and response widened, even if only slightly.
And inside that space, I found something resembling choice.
That changed everything.
Because the chaos didn’t stop. The flights, the delays, the no-shows, the language barriers, the near-misses — they kept coming. But I was ever so slightly less inside of them.
From technique to trust
Looking back, I realize this was my first real encounter with meditation in its purest form.
The Silva Method had introduced me to inner work, but it always leaned toward directed change — visualize, guide, shape your outcomes. It was a focused mental discipline, goal-oriented in its way.
Mindfulness was different. It asked nothing of me except that I notice what was already here. It didn’t promise transformation. It didn’t require improvement.
It just invited me to stay—with the breath, with thought, with discomfort, without trying to shift any of it.
That was new for me. And quietly, it changed everything.
I didn’t become a perfect meditator. I didn’t walk away enlightened. But I walked away with a practice I could return to, not to escape life, but to meet it.
Even now, years later, that’s what mindfulness still offers me: not control, but contact. Not answers, but clarity.
A quiet way to be with life, even when it arrives as the full catastrophe.
Previously in the series → Mind control… but in a nice way
Coming up in the series:
In a tiny LA studio, I found a strange form of “Chinese yoga” taught by a former screenwriter. Technically, it wasn’t meditation—but it helped me build the same kind of inner strength.
Have you ever reached for something—anything—just to calm the chaos… and found more than you expected?
I’d love to hear what helped you stay steady when life got turbulent.
If this piece resonated, the best gift you could give is to share it with someone it might speak to, or restack it so it finds its way to the right eyes.
It’s amazing how a single book can arrive at exactly the right moment. Thank you for sharing such a raw and grounded window into your journey.
Hi Alexis.
I’m really enjoying this series, and this second installment is just as powerful as the first. Your description of the "full catastrophe" not always being metaphorical—especially those plane crash moments—hit home. Before finding meditation, I often felt desperate for something to center me when real catastrophe struck.
Funny enough, Jon Kabat-Zinn was important in my journey too! Years ago, I picked up Wherever You Go There You Are and decided—halfway through—I knew enough to start. I just dove in, and it was exactly what I needed.
My interest actually began at 11, but certain Christian voices in my life warned against "that kind of thing." It wasn’t until years later, when cracks in that framework began to show, that I finally embraced what my soul had been longing for. I took to mindfulness meditation immediately, connecting to something deep within, and just months later, experienced a pretty intense spiritual awakening. All from half a book!
Your insight that mindfulness offers "not control, but contact. Not answers, but clarity. A quiet way to be with life, even when it arrives as the full catastrophe," describes it perfectly. Again, thank you so much for sharing your journey with us!