Articles and blog posts written by team members, tutors and supervisors of the Mindfulness Association about how they bring mindfulness into their lives.
Sometimes in an inquiry with a participant, the air becomes electric. It’s like they are standing at the edge of a cliff about to spread wings they didn’t know they had, in order to fly into the horizon of a new possibility. The exhilaration of inner discovery has completely captured all of us in the…
There are different levels of anxiety that might be experienced in meditation practice. Anxiety might arise in relation to a worry or concern about something happening in our life. Maybe an upcoming house move or a job interview. It might also arise because we have a strong habit of anxiety, which we have cultivated over…
Have you ever wished you could be transported to a peaceful desert island—somewhere quiet enough to finally hear yourself think? Or arrived at a familiar, beloved place, like a treasured holiday spot or a retreat centre, and felt your body soften the moment you got there? Where we are matters. Environments profoundly shape how we feel…
What is Second-Generation Mindfulness? The Mindfulness Association’s mindfulness trainings, including our eight-week Mindfulness Based Living Course (MBLC) are second-generation mindfulness-based approaches (SG-MBAs). Second-generation mindfulness-based approaches represent a development beyond traditional, first-generation approaches, such as MBSR and MBCT. Second generation approaches aim to offer a more comprehensive and authentic approach to mindfulness by grounding it more…
The Healing Power of Nature When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron…
Motivation for Living Well to Die Well “Even death is not to be feared by one who has lived wisely” Buddha As I reflect over my life and some of the extraordinarily difficult things I have had to go through, somehow, I have always had a sense of joy. Moments such as welcoming the…
Some days, hearing about what’s happening in the world just feels too overwhelming to let in – do you get that? On days like that, it feels like my ‘sphere of concern’ is so massive that it dwarfs my ‘sphere of influence’, as Stephen Covey would call that. And not only is that sphere of…
I led a session on this topic at the membership weekend and it went down very well, and the group asked for my notes. Rather than sending my notes, I’ve converted my notes into a blog, which I hope that you find helpful. First of all, we can spend some time reflecting on what are…
You’ve spent time learning to sit quietly, observing your inner experience with gentle curiosity. But now, the next step invites you to venture deeper—not just to observe, but to embrace every part of yourself with tenderness and discover how in doing so we can nourish the heart of compassion in ourselves. This is the essence…