Back from France, and more than content with the week: the creative and self-care intentions accomplished. When I arrived in Normandy, I pondered what a “good week” would look like for book number 2. I set the intention to know my rationale for this book, including who it was for and why it would be useful …
Easter, and Spring more generally, is a time of renewal and beginnings. As I sit here in my beloved Normandy overlooking the crabapple and magnolia blossom, I see life coming back to life. Five years ago, pretty much to the day, I drafted a table of contents for my first book; a year ago, pretty …
This past week, I have been spending some time gathering my thoughts and resources ahead of a writing retreat over the Easter break. I have been working on a research project since last autumn, and having now analysed the interview data, I am ready to start preparing the research article…or so I thought. I had …
…and grace will follow; or so that is what I have been reflecting on in recent months. “Faith and Grace, Helen…I thought you were a Buddhist?” Yes, these are two words one might associate more commonly with the Christian, and indeed other theistic, traditions. And so why am I pondering on them this week? Well, …
In the last two weeks of this term’s enneagram for therapists group I have been facilitating, we are turning toward the “path quality” that the enneagram offers. What makes the enneagram so much more than a personality typing system is how it points to both our blocks to wholeness, and how to lever back into …
As well as my love for facilitating group work, one of my motivations for setting up and running a personal and professional development group for therapists was to deepen my exploration into the enneagram. I have been using this mapping of the “all what it is to be human”…self, soul, spirit… in my personal life …
Back from retreat, and with a momentary detour into the activities of marking and exam boards, back into retreat….of sorts. A research retreat: a chance to indwell in the data I have collected at the back end of 2023. I interviewed five humanistic therapists who had undergone the training journey of counselling then onto psychotherapy …
And so, here again another Friday morning I sit at my desk with a writing day ahead. My beautiful Mac, a wonderful Downs view, a mug of tea, and a cat happily warmed by my desk lamp. Ah yes, I kinda wait all week for this – a luxurious opportunity to immerse myself in solitude …
The first Friday of the New Year, and true to my intentions I am sat at my desk ensuring I commit to my Friday writing practice! Since the Twixmas* of 2012, I have undertaken the same “end of year review” process inspired by Buddhist teacher, Susan Piver. The same set of questions to reflect upon …
Recent experiences in my personal life and spiritual practice have led me into a deep contemplation of how I “prod the wound”. For those on a healing path, the metaphor of the wound is familiar: we bear scratches and cuts from relational environments that don’t allow our emotional, psychological, physical, spiritual needs to be met. …