For as long as I have been writing a blog, each September I say how much more of a “new year” it feels compared to January. September is a transition month for me: return from holiday, but not quite back in to the full flow. When I turned the key in the lock of my …
It is Friday, a statement of fact (as I write) but also a statement of ‘act’: because Fridays are the day I am now putting aside for writing. I’ve spent 5 hours of my day today in front of my Mac; in front of my Mac and also in front of my window with its …
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 …
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 …
Just before sitting down to write this post, I sat quietly in order to re-connect with my experience on ‘writing retreat’. It has been 10 days since I returned home from Normandy. The space between the return and writing this blog has been intentional – a period of ‘incubation’; letting my ideas and experience in …
The main intention behind writing this blog and committing to that practice weekly was and still is to forge a writing habit as grounding for a book. Hand on heart, the motivation to blog has waned: not because I don’t enjoy it – I very much do; but rather because time and space to write …
A few things have been coming together in the past week that have moved my book project back to the foreground of my awareness: the reading of a new text on Buddhist psychology and the gestalt therapy approach, and a few conversations with supervisees and students to name but two. It feels timely that I …