The 8 World Winds – Finding Peace Within Life’s Vicissitudes

Last week I introduced the 8 worldly winds as a topic. These are also referred to as the 8 vicissitudes, which refers to the experience of an alteration between opposite states. The ‘winds’ therefore describe this tendency of moving from a pleasant to an unpleasant experience […]

Gratitude To Your Body

Yesterday morning I heard Tracy Emin talking of her experience of cancer. She has had her bladder removed and a hysterectomy. She has just received a test saying she is now clear of cancer and she spoke of how she […]

Coming to centre: finding the still point in the chaos

When I was a junior monk my Abbot used to say that mindfulness training is like building a preasure cooker, a container, that can hold the intensity of the chaos that occurs within our mind and heart. Jon Kabbat Zinn, the founder of secular mindfulness […]

The Carefree Heart

A metaphor that is often used by meditation teachers is of thoughts being like clouds in the sky.  It can be easy to hear this and forget to feel what it is suggesting. When I was a teen I heard […]

Finding Peace Through Embracing Difficulty

.A few years ago I went to a talk by Jeff Foster and I refer back to it frequently as it really clarified for me what this process of embracing the present moment might feel like. I’ve included a clip form one […]