In my weekly blog, Heather’s Musings, I write about what has been happening in my life and how I am applying my mindfulness, compassion and insight practice to it. The process of writing the blog is often an opportunity for me to gain more clarity and recognise what is happening and I find it highly beneficial. My wish is that it is also helps other meditation practitioners who are on a similar journey.
The opinions and beliefs that I express in this blog are my own and do not represent the opinion of the Mindfulness Association.
I had an interesting insight in my practice, quite devastating. It was that I have been living in my threat system my whole life. My mind and body have been wired accordingly so that every change, every uncertainty is a potential threat. Most thoughts that are engaged set me into spirals of planning for future…
I have been working with Choden and Rob Nairn on a book, which is an experiential journey through the Mindfulness Association’s Insight Training, called Level 3: Seeing Deeply (click here for more information). We expect it to be published some time next year. Rob designed this training, and then others of us on the MA…
I had the good fortune to see my teacher Lama Yeshe Rinpoche this week and he emphasised the importance of forgiveness. There was a forgiveness exercise in the early Mindfulness courses we delivered, but it never made it to the current courses. I think it was quite a profound exercise, but painful to engage in…
I had a lovely retreat last week by the seaside, with mindfulness, yoga and some lovely walks along the beach. I always forget the calming power of yoga, which I do moving and breathing in time to Tibetan Buddhist chanting. The chatter of my mind falls away and there is just moving, breathing and hearing.…
This week I have the amazing good fortune to be on retreat, with thanks to my husband and mother-in-law for the time. I have rented a cozy cottage by the beach on the Solway Firth. My husband dropped me off with my food for the week and I have the luxury of being here alone…
We human beings love stories. Stories are how we make sense of the world. Our stories about ourselves, all the others and the rest of the world. It is useful to check our own particular set of stories, as well as the main emotional tone and core beliefs that underpin them. We tend to mindlessly…
I have been practicing Tonglen recently. It is a Compassion practice in which we bring to mind someone who is struggling and imagine breathing in their difficulty – taking it in – and breathing out what will help, all that is good – sending it out. This reverses our usual tendency to want all that…
This last weekend, I have been teaching with Choden on the insight module of the Masters in Mindfulness. The material we presented was a bit different from usual, as the two of us are half way through writing a book with Rob Nairn on this subject. We covered the same themes: the key insight practices…
I am a very fortunate person. Things have gone well in my life. Although I have had the odd set-back, my mum says of me that each time I fall in a pile of crap I come up smelling of roses. And yet still I worry. I find myself in a lovely new home,…