07792 689857Meditation is living with awareness – the practice of meditation is learning how!
Meditation can open space to intersect the hyper-reactivity and hyper-vigilance of our habitual ways of living and offer alternative ways to approach the world, a more spacious perspective.
MONDAY MORNINGS – to start the week I run a regular Monday Morning Meditation in 6 week blocks (7.00-7.30 am, UK time). I bring a different theme to each block. Suitable for those new and those experienced in meditation. Please see here for details. I ask for a donation to Charity for these sessions.
PAUSE WITH PURPOSE DAYS – Roughly once a month I run a unique non-retreat day – Pause with Purpose – in which we bring the qualities of meditation into the heart of our everyday life, including your working day. Click here for more details on my Pause with Purpose day.
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My approach and interest
Meditation offers us a way to interrupt our habitual ways of being in the world and open new possibilities. I’m most interested in how we can bring the qualities, the insights, the sense of being that the practice of meditation offers, into the midst of everyday life. That is the difference between the practice of meditation – that we sometimes risk using as a sticking plaster – and Meditation as a quality of awareness that invites us to move away from the world of hypervigilant reactivity, and into a space of response. This space of response has the potential of being one informed by the experience of peace, love, joy, and sense of aliveness.
Meditation for me is not about cutting anything out or transcending into something that little bit unreachable – meditation it is about being fully present with how life is showing up for us. Indeed, it is not so much about a method to cope with life, rather, the very experiences that show up for us, are a way to remind us into Meditation as a quality of being in the world.
Easier said than done! Partly, I find staying with awareness in the midst of everyday life exciting and liberating, especially those moments that feel most spacious and free, where the cages of our habituated physical, emotion, and cognitive reactions seem to drop away. And partly I find it deeply frustrating as I navigate the process of remembering and then forgetting, sometimes in a short cycle back and forth, and sometimes with longer periods when I wonder where it all went and what is the meaning of all this! It’s a mystery.
So, I teach meditation not as a Guru telling you what you should be doing and rather from a place of ‘we’re all in this together!’ There are plenty of people claiming a version of Enlightenment from which they teach. I can’t help feeling anyone truly enlightened would never claim there were. We’re in this mystery of life together I’m teach as someone curious in the practice, curious in my own journey as much of yours, and curious to know what happens when people engage together in becoming more aware in the midst of everyday life.
I’m also not trying to say, hey, chill out, everything is lovely! My experience of that kind of ‘teaching’ has been one in which we start to deny some of what we are really witnessing. And it’s so frustrating – it creates another huge ‘should’: I should be calm, I should be present … The approach on offer here has a different tone and comes from teachings that invite the fullness of life right in. If you are angry, for example, rather than deny the anger, repress it, or try and sidestep it, what happens if we fully acknowledge the anger as present, get to know it? Can we be at peace with the anger? Might we then find a place of conscious response rather than reactivity? What happens when we realise we are aware of the anger?
My teaching
I first began meditating as a student in my early 20s, learning mindfulness and loving kindness meditations. I then let it go and after a long gap, and revitalised by yoga practices, came back to meditation as an important practice to both navigate and celebrate all that life offers. What I offer draws on various traditions and practices, informed by my own practice and interests as well as my certification in teaching iRest Yoga Nidra Meditation and Mindfulness.
What people said about a 6 week iRest Course …
“I looked forward to coming each week. I use the breathing exercises and do short meditations which are extremely relaxing. I am more aware of myself in the world which is interesting!.. I found it addictive! The 1:1 was really good. It was interesting to delve into your thoughts, something I hadn’t done. Thank you it was all fabulous.”
“I loved the course. The 1:1 was an excellent way to focus on the process and really allowed me to get it in a very personal and real way at my own pace with my issue …I would say it’s a unique comprehensive meditation experience that offers a range of tools that can to use to help maintain a healthy balance of perspective to respond to life”
“I enjoyed the course and found it very supportive and engaging. It was well-organised and the booklet and the emails with the sessions was so useful with the meditation at home.”
“You will not be the same person who walked in the door on the first day. You will be a better, happier, functioning you, when you walk back out”
“Thoroughly enjoyed the course and the highlight for me was the 1-1 … The quality and quantity of my sleep has improved, and my anxiety levels are much improved”