Meditation
Meditation is living with awareness – the practice of meditation is learning how!
Meditation can open space to interrupt our habitual ways of living; it can disrupt hyper-reactivity and hyper-vigilance and enable us to have a more grounded, spacious, and open-hearted way of approaching the world.
I often hear people say "I can't meditate because my mind is too busy, it won't stop." Mine too. The fact that you’re aware of your thoughts and fast mind means that you are meditating. Please read on!
These are the three types of sessions I currently offer, and they’re all suitable for those new to meditation through to those with years of experience.
To start the week I run an online meditation every Monday from 7.00 to 7.30 am, UK time, bringing a different theme to each six-week block.
Each session is recorded and made available later in the day, so it’s accessible even if you didn’t attend the live session.
There’s no charge, but I suggest you donate to a charity whose work you admire.
This is my unique "non-retreat day", bringing awareness right into the heart of what you do, in the midst of your normal everyday life.
We join together for short online meditations during the day and I send a deep relaxation recording for you to listen to at the end of your day.
There is a sliding fee for these days.
Sitting with another person in a 'sacred mirror' offers a safe way into meditation, self-inquiry and the power of awareness.
In one-to-one meditation sessions – online or in person - I offer questions and invitations which you reflect back.
For these sessions I offer a sliding scale and invite you to choose the amount that is right for you.
My Approach to Meditation
I love the way that meditation can disrupt our usual ways of being in the world and open new possibilities of awareness. I'm most interested in how we can bring the qualities, the insights, and sense of being that meditation generates - into the midst of everyday life.
And there lies the difference between a contained practice of meditating – time slots of trying to sit still that we may use as a sticking plaster to counterbalance our busyness – and Meditation as an on-going and pervasive qualities of awareness. While the former is useful in creating pauses and noticing our thought patterns it is the latter that brings the possibility of experiencing inner peace, love, joy, and a sense of being alive.
Living with awareness is not a passive state. It doesn't mean hey, chill out, everything is lovely! That kind of ‘teaching’ starts to deny life, to deny what we are really witnessing, such as our own feelings of anger or resentment or unworthiness. And it also doesn’t come with a list of ‘shoulds’, such as I should be calm, I should be present, I should be non-judgemental.
Meditation for me is not about cutting anything out, nor aiming to transcend into something that little bit unreachable as a promise for the future. It’s simply about being present and aware of how life is showing up now - including observing a busy and anxious mind! With acceptance and non-judgement of this moment, we can start to see the comings and goings, and ask what is this? We tend to identify with our busy mind, yet what about the part of you that is experiencing a busy mind? What if we pay attention to that?
I find meditation to be both liberating and frustrating! There are moments where staying with awareness in the midst of everyday life feels spacious and free, where the cages of my habituated physical, emotional, and cognitive reactions seem to drop away. But being and staying aware is easier said than done! I can find it deeply frustrating to navigate the process of remembering and then forgetting, sometimes in a short cycle back and forth, and sometimes with longer gaps and accompanying doubts about the meaning of all this experience! It's a mystery, and bearing witness to this mystery is part of the meditation.
My approach comes from teachings that invite the fullness of life right in. If you’re angry, for example, rather than deny the anger, repress it, or try and sidestep it, what happens if you fully acknowledge the anger as present, and get to know it? Can you be at peace with the presence of anger while not reacting to it? Might you then find a conscious response rather than reactivity? What happens as you become better at realising you're aware of feeling angry? Can you get to know it more closely, to see what lies behind it, understanding how anger emerges in your experience? More generally, can you be aware of yourself, of your unique personality living life?
People say ...
Monday Morning Meditations
“Monday meditations with Will offer a place to both deepen and renew my meditation practice. I am amazed with both the variety Will is offering and the level of depth he is able to get me/us to. Every time I can’t attend I know I am missing out on a new step towards more true presence to what’s alive in me.” (JF)
“Will’s Monday meditations provide the best start to the week, as he leads our little online community with such gentleness, warmth, and wisdom. For me these sessions set up the day and week with renewed clarity of intention, re-connecting me to what is most important. On those occasions when we have a break or I am travelling, I resort to following a recording from a previous week. Not to be missed!” (PY)
“Life is feeling a little bit more spacious, interspersed with more pauses (where habitually I would have filled it with my reactions). I’m feeling a healthier distance to those knee jerk responses and acting more from that space of safety. Of course, I suspect my daughter and partner would say I have some way to go on this path (!!!!) but I’m feeling a kind of difference that I’ve been looking for for a long time.” (LT)
Pause with Purpose Days
“I enjoyed your guided meditations and the flow of the day. It offered a new perspective on morning, afternoon and evening and how I approach each part of my day. I also noticed how I felt energised and focused throughout the day. It was a unique experience of how a day, or different parts of a day, can feel.” (SP)
“I actually don’t feel exhausted and desperate for a break from everything going into the weekend, and have been enjoying time with my daughter a lot more this week for not feeling so maxed! I wasn’t sure how it’d work being online, but I found it so helpful – working proof that slowing down a normal day doesn’t mean not getting the things done that I need to.” (JT)
“The days themselves have a profoundly positive impact on me. I am slower, more mindful and at the same time, more energised. It is an intriguing combination. What works for me is the discipline of points in these days to stop - together - and to being guided.” (KF)
One-to-One
"It really is one of the most helpful, powerful and settling things I have ever done." (LH)
My personal experience of meditation
I first stumbled across meditation as a student in my early 20s, learning mindfulness and loving kindness meditations. While it wasn't always easy, I found it brought me relief from underlying anxiety and depression. Yet somehow, once I felt 'better', I let it go. After a long gap, and revitalised by yoga practices, I came back to meditation as an important practice both to navigate and celebrate all that life offers. While some people find a single method and stick to it, I draw on various traditions, practices, and experiences and learning from others. I trained in teaching mindfulness and also in iRest Yoga Nidra Meditation.
I'm no guru telling you what you should be doing - rather I invite inquisitiveness from a place of ‘we’re all in this together!’ There are plenty of people claiming to have reached a version of enlightenment from which they teach. Why would anyone enlightened need to claim they are? We’re in this mystery of life together and I teach - share - as someone curious in the practice, curious in my own experience as much as yours, and curious to know what happens when we engage together in becoming more aware in the midst of everyday life.
For more on meditation
If you’d like to explore meditation options with me, please get in touch.
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