Becoming a Stillness Ninja

In the first week of spring 2019, the ground beneath the feet of writer, surfer and mindfulness coach Alice MacKinnon, disintegrated. Hell descended upon her home and neighbourhood in the form of the worst recorded bushfire in Queensland’s history. As she scrambled to regain a foothold of her life, it shifted again and again, leaving her reeling for three years.

In amongst those years of groundlessness, free-failing and endings, Alice chose to begin again and become someone entirely new. She has a new name, a new wife, a new home, a new community, and a new mindset and skillset.

She applied herself to transformation out of collapse like a martial artist. She practise inner stillness like a ninja to harness her mind and cultivate peace so she could more skilfully ride the waves of life with alignment and grace. 

Becoming a Stillness Ninja: Reflections on Resilience, Recovery and Love is Alice’s story about become the person she always had the potential to be – more loving, wholehearted, joyful, kind, patient and true to herself. 

This is a book of deeply personal reflections in the form of stories, poems and photographs, beautifully presented by designer Ingrid Schoder. It is Alice’s intention and great hope that this book reaches out and helps give your own life a feeling of substance, meaning, purpose and coherence. 

Becoming a Stillness Ninja: Reflections on Resilience, Recovery and Love is a sister book to Surfing as a Dance: How one woman found grace in and out of the water which published in 2018 when Alice was named Sally.