Introduction to mindfulness

Guided bodyscan and mindfulness practice. This practice invites you to rest deeply into any sense of ease, bliss and rapture you may be feeling as you bring your attention to rest in the present moment. If you notice more difficult […]

Smiling Meditation

Last week I was writing about ‘following your bliss’, but what happens when we do not feel in touch with our bliss, when we feel low, sad or despondent? This morning I watched the video below by Prince Ea which addresses this. He speaks of […]

Follow Your Bliss

I was teaching a group of students this week about Buddhism and how Buddhism came to the West and was talking about this phrase: “follow your bliss”, which Joseph Campbell would always encourage his students to make central to their […]

How to be Happy

I sometimes talk about Oxytocin in the class and the various activities we can engage with to produce it. Known as the love hormone or cuddle chemical it is quite self suggestive for how it is primarily produced – touch, loving contact, sex, and […]

Opening to Joy – The Path to Awakening

Buddhism is often accused of being pessimistic due to the focus on suffering as the entry to the path of self knowing. It´s cettainly true that what attacted me at the beguining was this acknowlegement that there was suffering. And […]

Compassion and the loving heart

This week we turn to the second of the Divine Abiding meditations, compassion: the heart’s response to suffering. Compassion (Karuna) Here one opens the heart to its capacity to be with suffering (one’s own and others) rather than run from it or […]

Humour and the spiritual life

In my last post I was reflecting on the phrase ‘follow your bliss’ and how humour and joy are part of  what supports us in our practice. Someone sent me a link to a video recently which made me laugh […]

Habit 3: Feed your passions and talents

It can be easy to get into a mode where one feels more as if one is enduring life rather than enjoying it as an adventure: work,commitments, chores, the drudgery of life all seem to have taken the place of […]