Silent retreat: what you need to know
My first silent retreat was challenging, and yet I have gone back for more again and again. Try your first silent retreat, and perhaps you w
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- Jun 10
- 10 min
How to find a mindful therapist in the UK
When I qualified as a Clinical Psychologist, I had one overriding ambition: to be a mindful therapist, bringing mindfulness and...
- May 31
- 5 min
An honest guide to mindful parenting
Before I became a parent, I was pretty mindful. I meditated each morning for as long as I wanted, and I maintained my practice throughout...
- May 23
- 5 min
Breaking down is updating
I very much enjoyed this podcast - https://fitmind.com/podcast-collection/ruben-laukkonen-neuroplasticity-meditation - in which Ruben...
- Apr 8
- 6 min
Compassion: obstacles and objections
A striking fact about meditating on kindness is how little people do it. Even experienced meditators seem to avoid the practice
- Dec 30, 2023
- 5 min
Effort in meditation: in praise of doing and striving
I was practising in a very goal-focussed way for a while, aiming for kensho, which is the breakthrough experience of Zen, in which the...
- Dec 11, 2023
- 4 min
A profound cliche
Meditation is a microcosm of life, in that you get to see how your mind works, do your best to manage it, and along the way find out what...
- Dec 11, 2023
- 3 min
Enjoy what you have
In my last post, I suggested that in meditation and in life you should hew to the cliché about putting one foot in front of the other. In...
- Dec 11, 2023
- 4 min
Mindfulness isn't what you think
Most people who are interested in mindfulness know that it comes from Buddhism. Fewer know, however, how far the modern, popular...
- Dec 11, 2023
- 4 min
Admit what you don't know
It is possible to really hold yourself back by not wanting to admit your failings, in both meditation and life. My father has a good...
- Dec 11, 2023
- 5 min
Breaking down is breaking through
Since my Zen retreat the other week, I've been thinking about the relationship between catharsis and Awakening. I've experienced a fair...
- Dec 11, 2023
- 6 min
Function over form
Lately I've been running into a dilemma that is familiar to many modern meditators: should I do exactly as the teacher tells me? What if...
- Dec 11, 2023
- 5 min
Breaking down is updating
I very much enjoyed this podcast - https://fitmind.com/podcast-collection/ruben-laukkonen-neuroplasticity-meditation - in which Ruben...
- Nov 16, 2023
- 6 min
Mindful parenting: the unbearable annoyingness of children
There is a story from one or another spiritual tradition in which a great yogi dwells upon a mountaintop, meditating ceaselessly. One...
- Nov 13, 2023
- 4 min
The single most useful thing that I have learned from meditation
The single most useful thing that I have learned from meditation is to feel my body, and to feel my emotions in my body. This is an...
- Nov 13, 2023
- 5 min
Enjoying meditation
Enjoyment in meditation is a somewhat vexed question. People often assume that it's the point of the exercise. Aren't you meant to...
- Nov 13, 2023
- 3 min
When meditation is awful: attitude
A lot of the time, meditation is no fun at all: you're tense, uncomfortable, distracted, and bored. You can't stay focussed on the...
- Oct 24, 2023
- 3 min
Breaking Through to Zen
I did one of these retreats a couple of weeks ago - https://zenways.org/event/breakthrough-zen-retreat-online/- and it felt quite powerful.
- Oct 13, 2023
- 4 min
Compassion: a load of techniques
In my last-but-one post, I offered three general principles to apply when cultivating kindness in meditation. In this one, I'll be more...
- Sep 30, 2023
- 3 min
How to read this blog
Before you dive into the blog, I’d like to issue a few caveats and disclaimers about how I come to be writing it, and how you should...
- Sep 30, 2023
- 7 min
The single most useful thing that I have learned from meditation, part 2
In my last post, I made a rather speculative case for body awareness as a natural state, to which we should all wish to return. In this...
- Sep 28, 2023
- 2 min
When meditation is awful: investigation
I've already written about how "bad" meditation is in fact invaluable because it teaches you how to relate to unpleasant things. But...
- Aug 10, 2023
- 5 min
Waking up Sam Harris: what Sam Harris gets wrong about awakening
Cmichel67 (Christopher Michel), CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons First, let me say...
- Aug 8, 2023
- 2 min
Compassion: cultivation
If you've read my last post, then hopefully you've started to work on building up some awareness of your emotions in the area of the...
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