The end of another academic year, my 27th in Higher Education, my 20th since completing my PhD, and my 5th as a therapist. There is a lot of life in that sentence; a lot of re-modelling, career change, new beginnings, more endings. The older I get, the more I witness myself in transition, and understand …
In last week’s post, I shared reflections on my recent marriage, and the choices my partner and I made in incorporating some teachings of the Buddhist Dharma not only in the ceremony but also in setting up how we are going to try to orientate our relationship now we are married. Not a promise, but …
I got married last week. How odd to write that? I say that because in many ways, my life and my self is no different to this time last week when I was not married. But when I stand back and say to myself “I am married” there is some disbelief. It is something about …
In this blog I’ve been sharing my recent sense of transition: to be meeting new insights about my “Self” and how I have come to be the way I am. Much of this has not been easy, yet there is an honouring that this material must come to light, and a certain inevitability about it …
I celebrated a birthday at the weekend. Not a ‘big’ one, but big enough…it felt big because of the process and transition I feel I am in post retreat. There is something distinctly ‘mid-life’ about this transition. I speak with many clients about their experiences of reaching mid-life; the nature of it like climbing up …
In my blog last week I started describing my experience at a workshop on using sandplay in therapy. A workshop that emphasised the experiential can be powerful on many levels, and last week I hopefully got across how inspired the workshop has left me to use this creative process more often in my therapy and …
Last weekend I attended a workshop on sandplay therapy run by the Association of Integrative Sandplay Therapists. Sandplay, which can be used in therapy with children and adults alike, is a process self discovery using a sand tray, small objects and play figures. Originally created by psychiatrist Margaret Lowenfield and later developed by Carl Jung …
I’ve been home nearly two weeks now, and I’m not sure if am any clearer as to what I have, might have, or have not been through. In some ways, how I feel now is reminiscent of how I felt before going away; and indeed have been feeling for maybe a couple of years. I …
This is my third day back at home. I’m not sure how far I am in to processing the experience of the past 4 weeks; nor how long it will take to do so. People I know how have completed Dathun retreats say it takes as many weeks as you’ve been away to “recover”. I’ve …
Having gathered good momentum for my weekly writing, I am taking a blogging pause’ for a month. I am about to head off on a retreat – a 4 week retreat that in the Shambhala Buddhist tradition is referred to as Dathun, literally a ‘moon session’. The month-long period of practice is an opportunity to …