I did my Christmas shopping yesterday, with my husband and daughter. We had a fun day out, spent enough but not too much money and hopefully bought some nice gifts that will be enjoyed by our friends and family. In general, Christmas troubles me: the unrealistic expectations, the excess, the over-spending, especially in an economy…
This week I have the amazing good fortune to be on retreat, with thanks to my husband and mother-in-law for the time. I have rented a cozy cottage by the beach on the Solway Firth. My husband dropped me off with my food for the week and I have the luxury of being here alone…
So this last week I have been on Holy Isle off the Isle of Arran in Scotland – surely one of the best places on the planet! The birds were in full song, providing an astonishingly beautiful support for our Mindfulness practice. The Iron Age Tsoay sheep had tiny new lambs, that shake their tails…
I have just been out to walk my dogs. I was hearing on the radio this morning how walking was one of the best things we can do for our mental and physical health. They were saying how our pace of thinking is programmed to match our pace of walking. I was walking slow and…
I am just home from Spain, more precisely Catalonia, where I have been delivering the MBLC teaching skills retreat. This will be the first group of Spanish graduates from our teacher training program and it is exciting to think of them delivering the program all across Spain. People travelled here from Las Palmas in the…
This week many of us are feeling quite fearful at the prospect of a Trump Presidency, another winter of austerity and the uncertainty of Brexit. It is worth reflecting that the earth is populated by the same people this week as it was last week and recognising that the majority of people on this earth…
work in the office is piling up; the clocks have gone back and there is a lot to organise in the family. I think many of us find ourselves tired and over-busy in the run up to Christmas and it is easy to get run down and catch one of the omnipresent cold or flu…
I am just back home from Holy Isle after a wonderful week retreat with Lama Yeshe Rinpoche on meditation. It got off to a very good start. The night before the retreat I was packing up my camping gear as I was too late booking to get a single room. I was looking mournfully at…