Articles and blog posts written by team members, tutors and supervisors of the Mindfulness Association about how they bring mindfulness into their lives.
This last week I have been working with Choden and Alan from the MA and Graeme and Liz from the University of Aberdeen on the Year 2 and 3 year end retreats. The Year 2s do a couple of days of teaching skills and then complete the insight module and the Year 3s do a…
After 7 months of legal activities and 10 weeks of being locked down in transit, I have finally landed in my new house by the sea in Yorkshire. I still haven’t been able to return to my previous house to collect my belongings and find myself here with one suitcase of Winter clothes, 2 pairs…
We are living in interesting times. There are a lot of challenges. However, it strikes me that as a country and as a human race there has never been more opportunity for positive transformation. This is the same in our practice, in our lives and in the world – challenge is the catalyst for positive…
People in cities in America – and other countries around the globe in solidarity – have taken to the streets to protest against the systemic inequalities that led to the death of George Floyd a few days ago. The unjust death of another black American, has brought the fault lines of deep tension around race…
Last week I was involved in delivering the members retreat, which continued on after the members weekend from Sunday afternoon to Wednesday, along with Jacky and Kristine. I had a very enjoyable week and very much enjoyed Jacky’s Qi Gong based movement practices. Jacky is doing a practice day around movement on 31st May, which…
Last weekend was our 10th anniversary celebration and I felt that the celebration manifested some key qualities of the Mindfulness Association: practice, presence, common humanity, compassionate messiness, kindness and joy. Qualities that Lana has captured beautifully in her documentary ‘Swimming Upstream: Ten Years of the Mindfulness Association’ that was premiered at the weekend. I am…
Recently I have become aware of activities that I do that become a complete immersion, away from my habitual, incessant thinking patterns. Anything that is powerful enough to enable me to become totally present and not drown in my ruminations about the past, worries about the future and self-criticism comes along like a sigh of…
Life at the moment feels a bit like a dream, with the days falling through me. I have been practicing a lot because we have been facilitating the MSc year end retreat. This is great, as Choden and Kristine are co-facilitating. This means that when I am not teaching myself I get to…
Yesterday, I taught for the second time a one-day workshop for mindfulness teachers about teaching mindfulness online. I am teaching it for the third time on Sunday 24 May. One of the issues I address on this workshop is our expectations and assumptions about teaching mindfulness online. A couple of the assumptions we explore are:…