This last weekend I have been teaching weekend three of our Mindfulness Level 1: Being Present course. This weekend we focus on preference and acceptance. One of the big things that comes up over this weekend is a habitual pattern that many of us have that we are not good enough. This habit can be…
Being of best service to others as an aspiration for mindful living and a mindfulness for life. Mindful Nation Scotland (MNS) was born on 17 September 2019 at a Holyrood Event in the Scottish Parliament. A wonderful, warm and excited audience welcomed its birth. The attendees were made up of MSPs, and people strongly connected…
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…
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…
Heather Regan-Addis, lead tutor, author and head of the Mindfulness Association, shares her experience whilst teaching students studying the MSc Studies in Mindfulness on their retreat on Holy Island.
I am on the beautiful Holy Isle this week delivering the year end retreat for the first years of the University of Aberdeen’s MSc in Studies in Mindfulness. There can be no better place on the planet to practice mindfulness! It is a pilgrimage to get here. A wonderful journey, at each stage meeting up…
Mindfulness Meditation – Serendipity and Trust in my Values
When we think of mindfulness and compassion in action, we often jump straight to thinking about gestures of kindness, or caring interventions, or supportive acts, and usually aimed at someone other than ourselves. I sometimes feel there can be something a bit ‘Tom and Jerry’ about this – you know the thing – Tom chases…
On a recent retreat a well-intentioned participant informed me that my drive system was overactive. She was referring to the three-circle model of Prof. Paul Gilbert which is part of our Level 2 Compassion training. This model postulates three psychological systems: a threat system, which triggers the fight, flight, freeze response when we feel threatened;…