The problem lies in implementing these healthy lifestyle intentions in our busy and often stressful lives and making them stick.

have you recently set a new intention to start a new healthy habit? Are you sticking to it? Have you lapsed and given up?

The problem is the human condition, which is habitual and driven by desire. Much of the time our habits and the deeper psychological forces that are driving our habits and desires are unseen. Until we turn towards and accept these forces then the possibility for change is limited and we set ourselves up for failure.

Key principles for making a new habit stick are, one habit at a time, intention, motivation, inevitable and repeated lapses and turning towards the underlying psychology.

Our mindfulness practice can be helpful to cultivate clarity and self-awareness around what we are actually doing. Slowing down and paying attention to the thoughts, emotions, sensations and attitudes can be really helpful in those moments before, during or after a lapse.

The practice of RAIN can be particularly helpful here, when we:

Recognise – noticing what is happening while it is happening;

Allow – allowing our internal experience to be as it is;

Intimate attention – paying close attention to and allowing:

our thoughts and thinking patterns; our emotional feelings; how the body feels; and how we are relating to our experience; and then

Non-identifying – zooming out to a wider perspective in which we are not out experience, but our experience is ever changing and moving through us.

Our compassion practice can also help us to recognise the challenges of the human condition playing out in our busy and often stressful lives. Instead of beating ourselves up when we don’t meet our healthy lifestyle intentions we can offer ourselves some compassion by:

Turning towards and acknowledging that which is difficult;

Recognising that the human condition is messy and that we are driven by many causes and conditions that we did not choose; and

Choosing to be kind to ourselves.

This creates the conditions for recognising and normalising the lapses in our intention, so that it becomes less of a big deal and so it is easier to get back on track again, without recrimination.

Our insight practice is also of us as we familiarise ourselves with the workings of the desire and grasping that underpin and fuel our habits. We apply the antidote of compassion and look directly as a way of generating insights into the underlying psychological forces that drive us.

We have brought together these ideas and others in developing our Mindfulness Based Healthy Living course. In this course you choose the habit you want to change. We provide you with a range of mindfulness-based tools and strategies to support the change in an atmosphere of kindness, common humanity and non-judgement.

Here are some comments from past participants:

“The title of the course made me fearful that it would be judgemental and proscriptive….it hasn’t been”.

“Feel more in control of me, the ups and downs, the successes and failures, they happen, the changes are helping me lose soe weight, that’s the reason I started this journey”.

“It made me develop a much moderating sense of the importance of self-compassion. I feel much equipped to continue on this journey of feeling so much better”.

If this is something that is of interest to you, our next course takes place online on over eight weekly Tuesday evening sessions beginning on OCTOBER 20th – 22nd at Samye Ling. FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE COURSE HERE

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• Heather also teaches on our Masters degree programs, please CLICK HERE for more information.

Many mindfulness courses last for just eight weeks. Here at the Mindfulness Association we offer mindfulness based meditation training over four Levels over four years. Our training is flexible to meet your needs and we start with one module of mindfulness meditation training over one weekend or over four or five evening sessions. This can be built on at your own pace until a final stage of training including two six day retreats a year apart with monthly evening meetings in between.

There is much research to indicate that a short training in mindfulness can be beneficial. The first thing we might notice is that we become less reactive and a bit calmer when facing challenges, but only at those times when we are mindful. With long term practice the transformative benefits of mindfulness become part of our being, enabling us to respond more skilfully to the ups and downs of life and to live full, authentic and happier lives.

It is not a quick fix. It takes practice and requires us to incorporate mindfulness into the fabric of our daily lives.

In all of our courses we draw on different wisdom traditions, including psychology, philosophy, evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, physics and Buddhism. The courses are experiential, in that they are led by your own experience of the mind in meditation and in daily life.

We start with Level 1 Mindfulness training over four modules. Each module is taught over a weekend (generally in person) or over four or five evening sessions online.

Our first module is on the basics of mindfulness technique, including settling the mind, grounding in the body, body scan and using a mindfulness support of sound. We also start developing our mindfulness attitude of kindness. In the second module we introduce mindful movement, using a mindfulness support of breath and begin to explore the undercurrent and observer model of mind, plus a bit more on kindness. In the third module we focus more on cultivating our mindfulness attitude of acceptance, kindness and self-compassion. There is daily practice to do in between and so by module four participants are developing a regular daily mindfulness meditation practice as well as introducing mindful activities into their daily life.

At the end of this course we find participants are calmer, happier and less reactive and more resilient in the face of stress. Their mind is more stable and they are more able to be present with their experience as it is. So a good start!

Our Mindfulness Level 2 – Responding with Compassion takes place over three modules or one module and a five day retreat and is focussed on cultivating kindness, compassion, joy and equanimity. The first module starts with self-compassion and is based in evolutionary psychology and uses compassionate imagery to support us in cultivating the qualities of compassion. We recognise that the human condition is a messy business and that much of what we struggle with in life is not our fault. We begin to let ourselves off the hook of perfection and become a compassionate mess! In the second module we explore the biggest obstacle to self-compassion, which is the inner self-critic, as well as continuing to use compassionate imagery practices to develop our capacity to feel safe within ourselves. We end this course by moving from self-compassion to cultivating kindness, compassion and joy for others, as well as ourselves, within an atmosphere of equanimity.

At the end of this course we find that participants like themselves a lot more, their self-criticism has loosened and they are more able to be themselves as they are. It is as if a great weight is lifted off their shoulders and they are more able to be authentic and to set healthy boundaries in life. They develop a glass half full attitude to life in general. Our Level 2 training is all about cultivating a kind, allowing and curious internal environment of mind, in particular in the face of troubling thoughts and strong emotions.

Now we have stabilised our mind with mindfulness and are able to be compassionately present with challenging mental states, we have created the foundation to begin our Level 3 Insight training. This training takes place over three modules or one module and a five day retreat and is focussed on familiarising ourselves with the more subtle activity of the mind, which inhibits our freedom. There are two elements to this training. The first is sensitising ourselves to the subtle activity of the mind, including how thought becomes thinking, layers of emotion, and the operation of our sense of self. The second is learning to do less and to be more in our meditation practice. By sensitising and doing less, we create the conditions for insights to arise. Later on in this training we cultivate skills to skilfully navigate the emotions of anger, craving, jealousy and pride.

At the end of this course we find that participants become familiar with more of their habitual patterns of thought and behaviour and are more able to recognise and refrain from unskilful habits, creating the conditions for a more skilful way of being to manifest of its own accord. An exaggerated sense of self becomes less of a hindrance and their ability to make choices about how to respond moment by moment are enhanced. They gain more freewill.

Based on the insight training, our Level 4 training is around cultivating an understanding through meditation of the reality within which we live, what we are and how the mind unfolds. This training takes place over two six day retreats, a year apart, with monthly teaching and practice sessions, weekly peer group sessions and a daily meditation practice commitment of one hour a day. This course addresses our misperception of reality as dualistic (me here and you plus other external objects separately there), permanent and solid – a materialist perspective. It gets us in touch with our actual experienced reality which is an interdependent, ever changing process, based on myriad causes and conditions within which we are all interconnected.

Our first cohort of students are finishing this course at the end of this year and we are currently recruiting our second cohort of students to start in November. Our hope is that this training will enable participants to live more in accordance with the reality we inhabit, so that they are not constantly resisting reality. This will mean that they will suffer less and instead be happy. A good way to live!

Extensive research has been carried out into a range of mindfulness based approaches and has found many benefits for people with physical and mental health conditions. Such approaches are now approved for use within the NHS within the UK for a range of physical and mental health conditions.

The Mindfulness Association (MA) approach to mindfulness is based on the work of Rob Nairn, who has been teaching meditation to Western audiences for over forty years. Rob’s work draws on Tibetan Buddhism, but is presented as a practical systematic training drawing on Western psychological language and approaches. Over the last twelve years the MA have delivered long term mindfulness meditation training to thousands of people, building on the clinical approaches to mindfulness and on the work of Rob Nairn. Our courses are not specifically for clinical populations, but are for the general public.

Research evidence suggests that mindfulness meditation can improve physical and mental wellbeing, reducing anxiety and stress and improving health promoting behaviours. There is growing evidence that mindfulness meditation can help us to age well, reducing cognitive decline and Alzheimers and providing the tools to cope with some of the challenges of ageing such as chronic pain, isolation and (for women) menopause.

At the MA, we believe that mindfulness is a way to live all aspects of our lives well. Therefore, we offer long term training over months and years. Our systematic training is experiential and evidence based and draws on Tibetan Buddhism, neuroscience & evolutionary psychology. We work with the University of Aberdeen and the University of the West of Scotland in the delivery of two Masters degree programs and so remain in touch with the latest research evidence and theory.

Our long term meditation training pathway progresses from mindfulness and through compassion and insight to wisdom. The research evidence suggests that the deep path of practice embeds the benefits from states of mindfulness seen in the research so that they become life long personality traits.

We understand the importance of practicing with other meditators and a strength of our trainings is the community of practice that we build and support. Walking this path with fellow meditators liberates us from the conditioning that governs and limits our lives. It results in an unfolding of our innate human potential for happiness and wellbeing and the freedom to make choices about how we live.

From the research evidence one might start to think that mindfulness is a panacea, which is not the case. It can be challenging to familiarise ourselves with the contents and habits of our minds. This is why the Mindfulness Association provide long term systematic training and support in mindfulness meditation by experienced mindfulness teachers with over a decade of mindfulness and compassion meditation practice experience. The thousands of people that we have worked with over the years demonstrate again and again the myriad benefits of mindfulness for wellbeing and happiness. To hear what our course participants say, have a look .…HERE…. 

We are a not for profit organisation and keep our prices as low as we can with flexible payment options. In addition we have a …widening access scheme… for those who cannot afford to attend our courses.

Written by Heather Regan-Addis

Heather Regan-Addis is a Founder Member and Director of the Mindfulness Association.

Heather delivers training for the Mindfulness Association on our two Post Graduate Master’s degree courses as well as on our regular courses in Mindfulness, Compassion, Insight and on our Teacher training programmes.

Once when the lawn was golden green

And the marbled moonlit trees rose like fresh memorials

In the scented air, and the whole countryside pulsed

With the chirr and murmer of insects, I lay in the grass

Feeling the great distances open above me, and wondered

What I would become and where I would find myself

And though I barely existed, I felt for an instant

That the vast star clustered sky was mine, and I heard

my name as if for the first time, heard it the way

One hears the wind or the rain, but faint and far off

As though it belonged not to me but to the silence

from which it had come and to which it would go.

My Name by Mark Strand

“He was sitting in a brown room. With nothing to do and nowhere to go. There was a vast feeling of emptiness.”

This was not a monk, this was my partner speaking of his visit to his elderly relative, nearly 100 years old. A reclusive man with no urge for company, after losing his wife just before covid struck he has had 2 years of sitting alone in covid restricted life, in a rural place with limited support networks. But he was glad of the company now, and talked of life and ageing and just how empty everything suddenly seemed. He spoke plainly and undramatically of just ‘how things are’; being old, after having such a busy, energetic life; still lively of mind but the body no longer able to keep up with the mind. And people talk to him like he has already lost his mind, just on account of his age. He hasn’t the energy to explain or protest.

My partner is telling me details of the visit and the interaction between himself and his uncle, in this brown room, it was like he had brought it back with him – which he had, in his mind – this felt sense of a vast emptiness – and now here it was in my mind too. Palpable.

I could see him sitting there and feel this sense of ‘what was all that about?” (his life). All the days he had looked ahead to his future.

We both experienced this feeling as insight.

So now we are awake again, it’s another new day, here we are and we are still feeling this because what the meeting did for my partner was to make him question his life.

And when your partner is questioning their life, the meaning of it and purpose, well it’s a bit infectious. We have spent our lives, Avoiding The Void. Keep busy! Keep talking! Work to pay those bills! Watch Telly! Why is there only one Wordle a Day? I want to do it all day!

We drink our coffee and look into The Void. Where are we headed? Isn’t it all happening now?

I can’t say how The Gardener is experiencing this insight, but for me it is imbued with the bodily felt sense of emptiness I have experienced through insight meditation and the teachings of impermanence and of dukkha –teachings I have learned from Buddhist texts about why we feel unhappy most of the time and about that feeling that there is something missing all the time, or better just around the corner.

I take the void feeling to the cushion with me, with the intention of exploring what is here for me. I step into the void opening and curious. Feeling a little courageous.

I settle myself, stay rooted to the vast earth beneath me, with the lightest attention to the breath breathing me and feel the vastness of the space around me, and I step into it. My body vibrates with life, this was the feeling, skin tingling, I am alive, in this moment my body is buzzing, lightly, like champagne.

When I began mindfulness practice my body was disconnected, mostly there were no feelings to detect beyond pins and needles, numb legs, sore knees. This was something, but can be distracting and off putting, taking the attention away from the more subtle feelings, like what I am now experiencing. (I make sure I’m comfy, I’m not trying to be a monk, but it does take a bit of getting used to getting the posture right so it’s not too tight, not too relaxed) (same as the mind!) it’s so worth experimenting with that.

I’m sitting, body like a mountain and a light tingling buzz fizzes though me. And now, emotion, unexpected! And oh now.. it feels a bit messy.

A big sigh indicates to me going a little deeper and I feel that I am in this gap-space – there’s a sense of self falling to bits literally – a gap between who I am, who I think I am and who other people think I am. There is emotion here. I resist analysis and stay with this feeling and the feeling is that none of them are it – there is space between them all and I am in the space not in the self-identities.

It feels messy, my mind wants to connect it back to the brown room space it starts to think about that and compare, but I use my mindfulness to come back to the space which feels effortless and free, which brings more emotion around the effort of ‘being someone’.

Compassion is here on the cushion, is my cushion, I offer myself permission to be messy and in bits and hold it with self-compassion. More release of held tension. When tension goes, and I sigh, the energy is freed up – I can feel this happen. I don’t need to understand.

Life is actually unfolding in this gap between… bubbling up, fizzy and fresh. The gap lies between me doing this, me being that, the gap between the me trying to be what I think I should be, doing what I think other people think I should be doing, and actually the me that is experiencing here, now.

The empty space, if I can sense into it in each moment, will keep me present to this moment, which is the only moment I have. I might think the next moment will be better than this, or that next week everything will be OK and that next year will be even better and each projection out there whether about me or my life is taking me away from what is, and the amazing aliveness of this moment, fizzing like a glass of champagne.

“The Future is always beginning now.”

Mark Strand

I think of the elderly gentleman sitting in his house and his wondering about all his days of striving and working hard; and we see ourselves in him; what are we hoping for today that takes us away from this moment? What do we think will be around the next corner better than what’s here? Can we awake from this delusion? Can we step into that very space we are always trying to avoid?

Warm wishes to you this windy week, I hope you stay safe and warm and have the opportunity to find joy in many moments of the coming days, whatever this week brings for you.

And if you have covid this week, as many people do, I hope it is mild, passes quickly and you feel better very soon.

Take care of yourself,

Lisa Hellier.

Weekly Challenge

Simple / Not simple!

See how we get on with this: See if we can notice the tendency to want this moment to be different… better somehow.

What is it that you don’t like about this moment? Can you feel the gap?