Articles and blog posts written by team members, tutors and supervisors of the Mindfulness Association about how they bring mindfulness into their lives.
How is it that we can experience joy and heartbreak at the same time. How can we navigate that space so as not to drown in the heartbreak? We live in a world that can sometimes feel overwhelming with challenges and pain, it’s easy to feel helpless when the difficulty seems too great. The difficulty…
I first came across the seven points of mind training when I started working with Pema Chodon’s book ‘Start Where You Are’, the accompanying Lojong phrases and tonglen practice, back in 2003. It has always struck me as a practical and common-sense approach for generating compassion and awareness in our modern times. The…
I have been practicing compassion meditation now for over twenty years…..and it has been transformative. When I started my journey, I was highly self-critical and believed in personal blame….generally my own. I remember going to a weekend of compassion focussed therapy in Derby with Prof. Paul Gilbert towards the start of my journey. This is…
Sometimes in an inquiry with a participant, the air becomes electric. It’s like they are standing at the edge of a cliff about to spread wings they didn’t know they had, in order to fly into the horizon of a new possibility. The exhilaration of inner discovery has completely captured all of us in the…
There are different levels of anxiety that might be experienced in meditation practice. Anxiety might arise in relation to a worry or concern about something happening in our life. Maybe an upcoming house move or a job interview. It might also arise because we have a strong habit of anxiety, which we have cultivated over…
Have you ever wished you could be transported to a peaceful desert island—somewhere quiet enough to finally hear yourself think? Or arrived at a familiar, beloved place, like a treasured holiday spot or a retreat centre, and felt your body soften the moment you got there? Where we are matters. Environments profoundly shape how we feel…
What is Second-Generation Mindfulness? The Mindfulness Association’s mindfulness trainings, including our eight-week Mindfulness Based Living Course (MBLC) are second-generation mindfulness-based approaches (SG-MBAs). Second-generation mindfulness-based approaches represent a development beyond traditional, first-generation approaches, such as MBSR and MBCT. Second generation approaches aim to offer a more comprehensive and authentic approach to mindfulness by grounding it more…
The Healing Power of Nature When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron…
Motivation for Living Well to Die Well “Even death is not to be feared by one who has lived wisely” Buddha As I reflect over my life and some of the extraordinarily difficult things I have had to go through, somehow, I have always had a sense of joy. Moments such as welcoming the…