As long as I can remember, August means “holiday month”. My Grandad’s birthday was the 13th, and I remember as a child we were always away when we celebrated it with him. And indeed, August is when I am taking my main holiday of the year: two stints in France, my adopted country. So it …
After my post touching on my concerns for the emotional well-being of cyclists last week, a few people contacted me: some sharing their own experiences of how they used training and competition to numb feelings or deal with distress; others questioned if it really was as bad as I saw it. I was particularly grateful …
Having spent some time recently putting in place a structure to create (and protect) space for my book project, today was the first of several whole days I had planned for dedicated, intensive writing. Ordinarily, this project will be based upon consistent ‘bite sized chunks’: a rate of 500 – 700 words per week and …
“Why do we make it so complicated?” This is the question asked by Jon Jandai, a man living in a small village in northeastern Thailand. I came to be watching his TED talk as part of my explorations around ‘simplifying’. It is worth a watch. I share it with you as I shared it with …
This week I have continued to gather inspiration comes from Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche’s latest book “In love with the world” and a passage that I read… Why did this strike me? Those of you who read this blog regularly might spot the reference to the bridge as being significant – the name I was conferred …
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 …