growing love

Six ways of trying

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 …

Wedding rings

I will

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 …

saint freud

To be fully therapised

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 …

in the shadow of cherry tree

At a loss

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 …

sandtray 3 family of origin

Sands of time part II

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 …

sandtray room

Sands of time

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 …

emptiness

Making sense

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 …

great eastern sun

Coming home

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 …

DCLmeditationhall

Retreating in to the world

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 …

painting over the cracks

Changing the order of things

One of my work roles is that of Course Leader for the MSc psychotherapy at the University of Brighton, a post I have been in for nearly two years now. Over the past few weeks its been mid-year assessment time, and whilst marking and moderating work can be tiring and requiring much concentration, it is …