Silent retreat: what you need to know
My first silent retreat was challenging, and yet I have gone back for more again and again. Try your first silent retreat, and perhaps you w
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Jun 1010 min read
How to find a mindful therapist in the UK
When I qualified as a Clinical Psychologist, I had one overriding ambition: to be a mindful therapist, bringing mindfulness and...
May 315 min read
An honest guide to mindful parenting
Before I became a parent, I was pretty mindful. I meditated each morning for as long as I wanted, and I maintained my practice throughout...
May 235 min read
Breaking down is updating
I very much enjoyed this podcast - https://fitmind.com/podcast-collection/ruben-laukkonen-neuroplasticity-meditation - in which Ruben...
Apr 86 min read
Compassion: obstacles and objections
A striking fact about meditating on kindness is how little people do it. Even experienced meditators seem to avoid the practice
Dec 30, 20235 min read
Effort in meditation: in praise of doing and striving
I was practising in a very goal-focussed way for a while, aiming for kensho, which is the breakthrough experience of Zen, in which the...
Dec 11, 20234 min read
A profound cliche
Meditation is a microcosm of life, in that you get to see how your mind works, do your best to manage it, and along the way find out what...
Dec 11, 20233 min read
Enjoy what you have
In my last post, I suggested that in meditation and in life you should hew to the cliché about putting one foot in front of the other. In...
Dec 11, 20234 min read
Mindfulness isn't what you think
Most people who are interested in mindfulness know that it comes from Buddhism. Fewer know, however, how far the modern, popular...
Dec 11, 20234 min read
Admit what you don't know
It is possible to really hold yourself back by not wanting to admit your failings, in both meditation and life. My father has a good...
Dec 11, 20235 min read
Breaking down is breaking through
Since my Zen retreat the other week, I've been thinking about the relationship between catharsis and Awakening. I've experienced a fair...
Dec 11, 20236 min read
Function over form
Lately I've been running into a dilemma that is familiar to many modern meditators: should I do exactly as the teacher tells me? What if...
Dec 11, 20235 min read
Breaking down is updating
I very much enjoyed this podcast - https://fitmind.com/podcast-collection/ruben-laukkonen-neuroplasticity-meditation - in which Ruben...
Nov 16, 20236 min read
Mindful parenting: the unbearable annoyingness of children
There is a story from one or another spiritual tradition in which a great yogi dwells upon a mountaintop, meditating ceaselessly. One...
Nov 13, 20234 min read
The single most useful thing that I have learned from meditation
The single most useful thing that I have learned from meditation is to feel my body, and to feel my emotions in my body. This is an...
Nov 13, 20235 min read
Enjoying meditation
Enjoyment in meditation is a somewhat vexed question. People often assume that it's the point of the exercise. Aren't you meant to...
Nov 13, 20233 min read
When meditation is awful: attitude
A lot of the time, meditation is no fun at all: you're tense, uncomfortable, distracted, and bored. You can't stay focussed on the...
Oct 24, 20233 min read
Breaking Through to Zen
I did one of these retreats a couple of weeks ago - https://zenways.org/event/breakthrough-zen-retreat-online/- and it felt quite powerful.
Oct 13, 20234 min read
Compassion: a load of techniques
In my last-but-one post, I offered three general principles to apply when cultivating kindness in meditation. In this one, I'll be more...
Sep 30, 20233 min read
How to read this blog
Before you dive into the blog, I’d like to issue a few caveats and disclaimers about how I come to be writing it, and how you should...
Sep 30, 20237 min read
The single most useful thing that I have learned from meditation, part 2
In my last post, I made a rather speculative case for body awareness as a natural state, to which we should all wish to return. In this...
Sep 28, 20232 min read
When meditation is awful: investigation
I've already written about how "bad" meditation is in fact invaluable because it teaches you how to relate to unpleasant things. But...
Aug 10, 20235 min read
Waking up Sam Harris: what Sam Harris gets wrong about awakening
Cmichel67 (Christopher Michel), CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons First, let me say...
Aug 8, 20232 min read
Compassion: cultivation
If you've read my last post, then hopefully you've started to work on building up some awareness of your emotions in the area of the...
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