It is my last day in India. We have empowerments this morning with Tai Situpa Rinpoche and then our teachings for this year are ended. This afternoon we have a massage booked and then online check in, packing and hotel check out. I feel immensely fortunate to have received the teachings and to have spent…
I am in India this week for year four of a six or seven year training in Mahamudra meditation. The teachings are from Tai Situpa Rinpoche, the latest in a lineage of teachers that can be traced back to the historical Buddha Shakyamuni. The teachings were systematised 500 years ago, based on teachings brought to…
I have been beset by feelings of anxiety over the last few weeks. My recent blogs have described how my mindfulness and compassion meditation practice have helped me. They have enabled me to turn towards and experience the anxiety. They have enabled me to look after myself, in my meditation practice and in my daily…
On a recent retreat a well-intentioned participant informed me that my drive system was overactive. She was referring to the three-circle model of Prof. Paul Gilbert which is part of our Mindfulness Level 2 – Responding with Compassion. This model postulates three psychological systems: a threat system, which triggers the fight, flight, freeze response when…
Some weeks my blog just falls out of my mind, through my finger tips and onto the paper. Other weeks, it is a bit more tricky and this week is one of them.
It is early Sunday morning and I am awake early in my cozy room at Samye Ling Tibetan centre. It is before the start of our second day of this MSc Studies in Mindfulness weekend. The first year students are beginning their Compassion training. The second year students are learning research skills as well as…
Mindfulness-An-evidence-based-approach-to-life
Within the last month I’ve had the pleasure of teaching on two “Insight” courses with Heather Regan-Addis and Choden, both at Samye Ling. These have been as part of the second year of the Aberdeen University MSc in Mindfulness, and the non-academic “Level 3: Seeing Deeply course”, the second of which was run as a…
With what stillness at last you appear in the valley your first sunlight reaching down to touch the tips of a few high leaves that do not stir as though they had not noticed and did not know you at all then the voice of a dove calls from far away in itself to the…