You keep waiting for something to happen, the thing that lifts you out of yourself, catapults you into doing all the things you’ve put off the great things you’re meant to do in your life, but somehow never quite get to. You keep waiting for the planets to shift the new moon to bring news,…
The supreme good is like water, which nourishes all things without trying to. It is content with the low places that people disdain. Thus it is like the Tao. In dwelling, live close to the ground. In thinking, keep to the simple. In conflict, be fair and generous. In governing, don’t try to control. In…
Sometimes you don’t get to be a Buddha. Sometimes you just have to break. And feel. You have to lose your precious ‘spiritual awakening’. You just have to be a human being, feeling. Sometimes old pain resurfaces. Old fear. Sorrow. Trauma. The searing ache of the abandoned child. The rage of a forgotten universe. And…
The word tenderness is the closest translation to the Tibetan word TSEWA. Tsewa addresses self and others. Pema Chodron says it expresses itself as kindness, compassion, vicarious joy, generosity, tolerance, mental clarity, courage, resilience, unshakable cheerfulness and in many other internal ways. Tsewa is about expressing and experiencing our own tender hearts. This week I…
This week the Default-Mode Network that is my wandering mind, or undercurrent, has mainly amused itself by waiting for a strange blood clot to kill me after having the Oxford Vaccine on the 4th of April. Despite my ability to focus well on work, and to practice mindfulness – my mind is perpetually reminding me,…
this is the recipe of life said my mother as she held me in her arms as i wept think of those flowers you plant in the garden each year they will teach you that people too must wilt fall root rise in order to bloom by rupi kaur On a lockdown day…
I spent some of my weekend writing about the three emotional system model, based in the Compassion Focussed Therapy work of Prof. Paul Gilbert. According to this model there are three emotional systems, threat, drive and soothe and they tend to be out of balance for most of us, due to our evolved brain, our…
“Rather than letting our negativity get the better of us, we could acknowledge that right now we feel like a piece of shit and not be squeamish about taking a good look.” Pema Chödrön Well last week stress got the better of me. I forgot I was a mindfulness teacher let alone a mindfulness practitioner…
Benedicto: May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your rivers flow without end, meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells, past temples and castles and poets’ towers into a dark primeval forest where tigers belch and monkeys howl, through miasmal and mysterious swamps and down into a…