making the obstacles the path

Connecting

This last weekend, I was fortunate enough to be working on mindfulness weekend one of our Masters degree in mindfulness studies, which is a partnership between the MA and Aberdeen University. This was our tenth cohort of students beginning or continuing their journey of mindfulness, compassion and insight. They were a lovely group bound by…

Go In And In – Danna Faulds

Go In and In – Danna Faulds

Kristine has been providing us with her wonderful Words of Wonder.  Duncan and I are inspired by this and have decided to share some of our favourite poems, and those of our tutors and members too. This week we have a wonderful poem by Danna Faulds.  This was introduced to me at my very first…

24-Hour-Mindfulness

24 Hour Mindfulness

I very much enjoyed Charlie Morley’s keynote talk at the Mindfulness Association conference last month. His topic was stress and trauma related sleep problems and how to address them. For more information about his work, please see his new website. This was of interest to me as I am not a relaxed sleeper, but a…

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…

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…