Articles and blog posts written by team members, tutors and supervisors of the Mindfulness Association about how they bring mindfulness into their lives.
Since we set up the MA, we have been trying to support our course participants in their Mindfulness practice, recognising that only by practicing will we become less neurotic and more able to flourish in our lives. This was our motivation for the membership and I think that particularly the online sits are helping with…
A few weeks ago, I came across some teachings by an ancient Indian Buddhist teacher called Tilopa. It’s a very brief teaching about Mindfulness and quite secular, so I want to share it with you. Tilopa’s 6 words of advice: Don’t recall– let go of what has passed Don’t imagine– let go of the future…
I have had a happy weekend at Samye Ling with our year 2 MSc students who happen to be beginning their Insight module. Coming back together after the summer break feels like a reunion of old and valued friends that are a bit more chilled and happy than when we first met together one year…
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…
I spent this last weekend at Samye Ling with Fay, Kristine, Jane and staff from the University of Aberdeen and our new cohort of MSc students. They are a friendly group who are committed to developing their Mindfulness and Compassion practice with whom we explored the core sitting practice of intention & motivation, settling, grounding,…
Recently on my Facebook feed, one of those beautifully scripted nuggets of prophetic wisdom came through and caught my attention: Practice the Pause Oh, the pause… the pause has helped me out in so many instances. I don’t always remember the pause, but when I do I am grateful for it. So, what is this…
It’s that time of year again, the landscape is slowly turning, colours are changing and there is a chill in the air most mornings that sometimes lasts all day. The last cling of Summer is slowly giving way to a season of quiet rest. And it is in this transitional time of Autumn where we…
I am not sure exactly how they measure these things, but popular belief is that in any given day we have between 60 000- 70 000 thoughts (Salla, 2000; Trieschmann, 2001; Williams 2014). That is a lot of thought energy flowing in and out, enticing us to engage, to move away from what is actually…
Last week I was at Samye Ling teaching the first Compassion Based Living Course (CBLC) teaching skills retreat. So we now have 21 Compassion teachers trained to teach the course, ready to share the transformative power of Compassion, which is wonderful. During the retreat we work in groups with each person delivering part of the…