What’s the mindful response to coronavirus? Amid the turmoil, is it possible to create peace? Is it all just a horror show, or may it be that somewhere in the experience we can find a silver lining? Mindfulness of hand washing I must begin with a confession. I recently read an article offering medical advice on...
INTRODUCTION I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestioned ability of a man to elevate his life by conscious endeavour. Henry David Thoreau Yes, it’s a deliberately provocative title. After all, being in a hurry is the opposite of meditating, isn’t it? If we have a lot going on in our lives,...
When I was growing up, Dr Dolittle wasn’t so much my hero as my role model! Just like him, I could think of nothing better than to be able to talk to the animals, walk with the animals and chatter to a chimp in chimpanzee! Much later in life, my boyhood dreams well behind me,...
When practising meditation our first experiences of a mind free of all agitation or dullness are usually all too brief. A fleeting glimpse, like catching sight of a rare fish beneath the surface of a river – unmistakable but elusive. For a few precious moments we may enjoy the peaceful spaciousness of mind, perhaps begin...
Every day when I go online I find myself facing a barrage of emails, Facebook messages and blogs, with many of them urging me to do something. No doubt you have the same experience. Whether it’s Amazon prompting you to buy a new book, a thought leadership coach urging you to monetize your ideas, or...
I had the very good fortune of hearing Professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi deliver a presentation at a Happiness & Its Causes conference on one of the concepts for which he is world-famous: flow. ‘Flow’ is the state of being we all experience – however briefly or infrequently – when we become completely immersed in whatever it is...
Book titles can be challenging for an author. In a noisy world where everyone is competing for people’s attention, how do you distill the essence of a 300 page book into a title and strapline of just a few words? And do so in a way that makes a reader want to pick the book...
One of the most stress-inducing ideas, when we’re crazy busy, is the one that we just don’t have time to relax. We’d love to push back for a while. In fact, we’re desperate for it. But we put the idea out of our mind because we’ve still got a pile of work to get through,...
Among the most widespread images of Tibetan Buddhism are those showing multi-coloured prayer flags catching the wind, or Tibetans whirling prayer wheels, or monks chanting in temples. Mantras are the focus of these and other activities in our practice. But what is a mantra, exactly? And why the emphasis on repeating mantras? Like most other...
One of the most predictable outcomes of any meditation program is that several months afterwards, most people who attended will not be meditating. This may seem a bleak assessment. And although it’s based on personal experience, it is by no means my experience alone. According to Joshua Smythe, a biobehavioral scientist at Pennsylvania State University,...
