This past week I have recognised a sense that the summer is here. Not just because of the warm weather, not just because evenings are punctuated by my beloved Tour de France on TV but rather because work has slowed to a pace that suggests “summer holidays”. And whilst my partner bemoaned the arrival of …
Last week I shared how I had taken the Bodhisattva Vow while on retreat. It is the second vow on the Buddhist path, one that takes a practitioner in to a second ‘vehicle’ (or ‘yana’) and switches focus from working on self to working on self-in-relation-to-others. As a relational therapist, this is in so many …
I’ve just got back from a 9 day retreat out in the US at a beautiful conference centre near Maine, New England located right on the Atlantic Ocean. When I say ‘right’, the ocean lapped to the shore just 50m from the meditation hall. An amazing and consistent reminder to awareness to rest and come …
It has been a few weeks since writing. It wasn’t my intention to take this break, it just happened: the inevitable consequence of finding myself squeezed and stretched by life ‘happening’; a combination of things across personal and professional. Helping my parents move from their flat, the end of the academic year, the marking of …
When I go out on my bike at the weekends, I often take a podcast for company. I have a few podcasts of which I am a regular listener – and one is Dan Harris’ “10% happier”. This week he interviewed Brene Brown: a researcher in vulnerability, authenticity and shame who came to public awareness …
As I walked to the train station the other day after work, I was passed by a man on a bike towing a small girl. It was one of those arched tow bars that allows the child to pedal away on hers and therefore contribute to the forward movement of the bikes…if so inclined…this young girl …
Just before sitting down to write this post, I sat quietly in order to re-connect with my experience on ‘writing retreat’. It has been 10 days since I returned home from Normandy. The space between the return and writing this blog has been intentional – a period of ‘incubation’; letting my ideas and experience in …
The main intention behind writing this blog and committing to that practice weekly was and still is to forge a writing habit as grounding for a book. Hand on heart, the motivation to blog has waned: not because I don’t enjoy it – I very much do; but rather because time and space to write …
A few things have been coming together in the past week that have moved my book project back to the foreground of my awareness: the reading of a new text on Buddhist psychology and the gestalt therapy approach, and a few conversations with supervisees and students to name but two. It feels timely that I …
Did you know this week is sleep awareness week? It’s the Sleep Foundation’s annual initiative aiming to highlight the importance of good sleep health for “individuals to best achieve their personal, family, and professional goals”. This year’s theme is “Begin with Sleep”, and I cannot help but see the irony (or synchronicity perhaps) that I …