who-are-you

Who Are You?

I’ve been asking myself that question recently.  Who am I? It’s a complicated thing it seems. Last week I caused myself and others to suffer. Why?  Because I forgot my practice and I forgot who I was.  For a moment, I got caught up in lots of stressful human stuff and it completely took over…

planning-on-retreat

Planning on Retreat

I was on retreat last week at Purelands retreat centre near to Samye Ling. The retreat was led very skilfully by Lama Zangmo and the main theme was impermanence. The problem with us humans is that we believe things will stay the same and don’t generally like change. We also believe we can control our…

Noticing Awareness

Forgotten practices

I had a wonderful time at our conference earlier this month. It felt like a coming of age. We were our own keynotes, without needing to import big names in from the US. We acknowledged our roots with warm and insightful sessions with Rob Nairn. We acknowledged the success of our Masters students and their…

MBLC Teachers

New MBLC teachers

I have just completed delivering the 6 day Mindfulness Based Living Course teaching skills retreat and seen a new cohort of embodied mindfulness teachers committed to sharing the benefits of compassion based mindfulness with their communities. It was a wonderful week working with my friends and colleagues Choden, Barbara Reid and Alan Hughes – what…

Rob Award

Mindfully Happy

Reflecting on the Mindfulness Association Conference last week – feelings of warmth and happiness flood my body and a smile appears on my face.  I’m sitting here looking through all the photos that I took over a few days – and again I see laughter and happiness reflected in the images before me.  So I…

Weeding out Unworthiness

So, this is a tricky one – it’s present, so here goes.  Recently I have noticed my sense of unworthiness coming up more frequently than I’d like to admit! Tara Brach talks about “the trance of unworthiness” that we can find ourselves in! My teacher, Lama Yeshe tells me to “keep doing the weeding”.  What…

meeting the menopause

Dare to Fear

I find it equally frustrating and amusing – my mind’s habitual pattern of imagining in the future. Having a conference to organise isn’t helping. Last minute arrangements, coordinating speakers, planning my sessions. The merchandise has arrived and hopefully the conference booklets will be ready in time. I am there in the future anxious about all…