No, I’m not about to belt out The Beatles’ “Sgt Pepper”: but there is an opportunity for reminiscing, and it might even make mention of “lonely hearts’ – we’ll see where my writing takes me. Twenty years ago this August, I completed my PhD; and in attending the Graduation ceremony for the students of our …
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 …