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.
Last weekend was our 10th anniversary celebration and I felt that the celebration manifested some key qualities of the Mindfulness Association: practice, presence, common humanity, compassionate messiness, kindness and joy. Qualities that Lana has captured beautifully in her documentary ‘Swimming Upstream: Ten Years of the Mindfulness Association’ that was premiered at the weekend. I am…
Life at the moment feels a bit like a dream, with the days falling through me. I have been practicing a lot because we have been facilitating the MSc year end retreat. This is great, as Choden and Kristine are co-facilitating. This means that when I am not teaching myself I get to…
Yesterday, I taught for the second time a one-day workshop for mindfulness teachers about teaching mindfulness online. I am teaching it for the third time on Sunday 24 May. One of the issues I address on this workshop is our expectations and assumptions about teaching mindfulness online. A couple of the assumptions we explore are:…
Us Brits are famous for our stiff upper lip and like many of us, I have been holding it together with as much optimism as I can muster through these weeks of lockdown. However, any emotions we are feeling need space to move through us, or else they get suppressed, they fester and then they…
I hope that you are all faring well as we settle into our fifth week of lockdown. I am curious about how adaptable we humans are and how many of us have now settled into a new more limited routine of life, with its pleasures and hardships. I have had many unexpected lessons in impermanence…
I am struck by contrast in my life at the moment. On a day to day basis, I experience a peaceful, retreat like existence. I practice and teach sessions of meditation; mindfulness, compassion and insight. I walk the dogs by the river in this beautiful isolated valley. I work at my computer contributing to…
So I am here at the start of week three of being home alone and it is going pretty well. This weekend I had an online meeting with my mum and my sister Helen and a long FaceTime chat with my daughter. Helen’s husband did a live DJ set on FaceTime on Saturday afternoon…
I was looking through some notes on intention and motivation this morning and I came across some notes from doing a Charlie Morley golden shadow exercise from his book ‘Dreaming Through Darkness’. The golden shadow is made up of our good qualities and best aspirations, which often we are not able to admit to ourselves.…
I woke up on Friday morning feeling a sharp pain in my heart. My initial thought was – oh no my lungs are hurting, this can’t be good – then my next thought was that this was an emotional pain. It took a while for me to recognise what it might be. Then the thought…