Articles and blog posts written by team members, tutors and supervisors of the Mindfulness Association about how they bring mindfulness into their lives.
“Warriorship does not refer to making war on others, aggression is the source of our problems, not the solution… Chogyam Trungpa, The Sacred Path of the Warrior I just love the title of this book by Chogyam Trungpa gifted to me by a woman I met as I hitched my way to Italy in…
People in cities in America – and other countries around the globe in solidarity – have taken to the streets to protest against the systemic inequalities that led to the death of George Floyd a few days ago. The unjust death of another black American, has brought the fault lines of deep tension around race…
Last week I was involved in delivering the members retreat, which continued on after the members weekend from Sunday afternoon to Wednesday, along with Jacky and Kristine. I had a very enjoyable week and very much enjoyed Jacky’s Qi Gong based movement practices. Jacky is doing a practice day around movement on 31st May, which…
Last weekend was our 10th anniversary celebration and I felt that the celebration manifested some key qualities of the Mindfulness Association: practice, presence, common humanity, compassionate messiness, kindness and joy. Qualities that Lana has captured beautifully in her documentary ‘Swimming Upstream: Ten Years of the Mindfulness Association’ that was premiered at the weekend. I am…
My heart is full. I write this in a fully mindful and awake state still feeling the buzz of the Members Weekend coursing through my body – it’s an energy thing, not from the coffee I had this morning but it feels similar! and I feel such gratitude flowing out from my lamp-lit heart; the…
Recently I have become aware of activities that I do that become a complete immersion, away from my habitual, incessant thinking patterns. Anything that is powerful enough to enable me to become totally present and not drown in my ruminations about the past, worries about the future and self-criticism comes along like a sigh of…
Life at the moment feels a bit like a dream, with the days falling through me. I have been practicing a lot because we have been facilitating the MSc year end retreat. This is great, as Choden and Kristine are co-facilitating. This means that when I am not teaching myself I get to…
Yesterday, I taught for the second time a one-day workshop for mindfulness teachers about teaching mindfulness online. I am teaching it for the third time on Sunday 24 May. One of the issues I address on this workshop is our expectations and assumptions about teaching mindfulness online. A couple of the assumptions we explore are:…
In our mindfulness training we learn how the mind has a tendency to be negative. Rick Hanson calls this a ‘negativity bias’. He explains how negative thoughts stick to the mind like Velcro, and yet positive thoughts slide off like Teflon. Over evolution, our minds were trained to react to threats more than opportunities. Rick…