As a coach, I used to talk to my athletes about operating a ‘total lifestyle’: rather than thinking 5 days for work, 2 days for the weekend and good training, how might we make a weekly structure be more fluid across 7 days? This could be useful for an athlete, as our traditional 7 day …
Like last Monday morning, I took myself to the beach for an early morning meditation. I sat on the thousands of pebbles, in front of a big sea, and under a vast sky. Everything in the external was highlighting magnitude and space; and I used those external markers to point to the space within, the …
I forwent my normal Monday morning blogging ritual this week, instead making the decision to head to the beach for my morning meditation: coming back from a week’s holiday I felt the need to mark that transition, and having meditated outside every day whilst camping, the early morning sunshine encouraged me to continue to do …
I took two days out of my week last week to deepen my meditation practice and study of the dharma: a mini-retreat of sorts. I was joined by two dear friends from my Shambhala ‘sangha’ alongside whom I considered the question “what does it mean to be a bodhisattva?”. Literally translated, a compound of ’Bodhi’ …
The close of one academic year leads to thoughts of the summer ahead and the arrival of another academic year in the autumn: one cycle ends, another begins. And whilst there is always a need to start preparations for the new year before the summer ‘recess’, I am keeping in mind how easy it is …
When I see people around me struggling – friends, family, colleagues, clients and indeed myself – I wonder how we keep going. A client asked me yesterday “how do I keep going with the daily grind when all this is blowing up around me?” I know this from my personal experience: how do I get …
Its taken some time to get the blog post title this morning: various attempts to frame my view on anxiety – it used to be a foe of mine. “Used to”, not because its gone away, its often a visitor (although as I write, its not, probably because I am giving it some air time). …
The end of the academic year, and that means marking time. Marking student work used to be one of my least favourite tasks when I worked in sport science: thankfully as a researcher I didn’t have to do much teaching nor marking…but it was enough to set up a resistance and dislike. However, since changing …
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 …