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Overcoming Overthinking with Mindfulness

 

A Swirl Live event 25th September, Newcastle upon Tyne

I’m delighted to be offering an introduction to mindfulness practice  together with Andy Walton, Founder of Swirl, on 25th September. Details as follows:

Tuning into your breath and focusing your attention is a key first step to overcoming a distressing level of overthinking. Mindfulness is a technique that can strengthen this ability. A practice aimed at using your senses to ground yourself into the here and now. Yet, it’s a practice that takes discipline, perseverance and patience and it’s not a quick fix.

Join Swirl as we take you through key approaches to effective practice, discussing common barriers, busting myths and providing clarity on how it works. The session is led by Gwennie Fraser, a mindfulness teacher with over 25 years of experience and Andy Walton, Community Mental Health Nurse and Swirl Founder.

The session includes takeaway copies of the Swirl Guide to overcoming overthinking to ensure participants build on what they have learnt and continue an empowered outlook.

Capacity — 10 participants

Price £15 (£13.50 for Swirl Members)

Date: Wednesday 25th September, 2019

Time: 7–9pm

Venue: Tyneside Cinema, The Headspace Room, 10 Pilgrim St, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 6QG

Contact: andy.walton@swirlzine.com for further information.

About Swirl:

Swirl is an outlet for those wishing to overcome overthinking in positive, proactive and practical ways. We provide evidence-based, uncomplicated and empowering guidance through vibrant, artful print and thoughtful real-life conversations.

Swirl is a project led by a transatlantic, multi-disciplinary team with lived experiences of anxiety. We are a social organisation, aiming to break down barriers and encourage dialogue in spaces not usually entered by mental health-specific services. We create opportunities to engage everyday people proactively in approaches to better manage worry and rumination.

www.swirlzine.com

A Reflection on Personal Practice Mentoring

The following is a post written by a mentee and shared recently with the Mindfulness Network.

For further information about personal practice mentoring:https://www.mindfulness-supervision.org.uk/personal-practice-mentoring/

“I’ve been practising mindfulness since I did my ten-week course with a local Buddhist centre in 2004. I came to mindfulness because I felt a desire in myself to experience life in a new way – a way that was more open to awareness of the experiences of life as they unfolded. Since then, I have undertaken various mindfulness training courses and retreats. In 2016, I completed the distance learning MBSR course with Bangor as a refresher. Afterwards I found it difficult to find people to practise with and so when an opportunity arose to take part in personal practice mentoring I jumped at the chance.

A mentoring session is a very gentle experience and has evolved into its present structure as a result of a dialogue between the mentee and the mentor. My overriding experience of the process is that it is centred around the needs of the person receiving the mentoring. The mentor acts as guide and facilitator and allows the person receiving mentoring to navigate their own course.

Each session is an hour in length and I usually have one session per month, although at times I prefer to have two sessions if I am working through some more complex experiences. We begin with a short check-in to see where I am at and then move into a time of guided meditation. This mediation is always focused on what is most relevant and necessary for me right now and is based upon what I have told the mentor that I would like the session to be. After the meditation, we spend the remainder of the session reflecting on the experience – searching for the nuances at the edges of my experiences. We finish by exploring what might be helpful to me to allow my practice to deepen.

For me, the benefits have been immense. The personal practice mentoring sessions have become an island in an often turbulent and fast flowing river of experience. They have been an opportunity to deepen my practice and to weave it into the fabric of my daily life. Most of all, practice mentoring has been an opportunity to remain engaged with practice in a way that I never could have done alone. My mentor is a person I can trust and whose wisdom and generosity of spirit I deeply value.

I would highly recommend personal practice mentoring to anyone who wishes to deepen practice and integrate it into their daily lives. In short, I’d recommend it to anyone who really wants to live a mindful life.”


Fr Martin Bennett OFM Capuchin is a Capuchin Franciscan Priest, Chaplain, Life Coach and Mindfulness Practitioner.


Being in The Digital Age

The Word

Down near the bottom
of the crossed-out list
of things you have to do today,

between “green thread”
and “broccoli,” you find
that you have pencilled “sunlight.”

The opening lines of Tony Hoagland’s poem, The Word, have been circling through my mind recently. I read it aloud in a recent session of my eight-week course.  A distance learner had also described how pausing at intervals in her day had become like moments of “sunlight.” The word “sunlight” captures the effect of pausing to allow awareness to illuminate our present moment experience, lifting us out of the fog of distraction and doing mode, and then dropping beneath the layers of discursive thought and the conceptual mind and to rest in awareness itself.

My practice brings an increasing appreciation and gratitude for the simplicity of these “sunlight” moments, allowing ordinary qualities and details of daily life to show themselves and be fully absorbed. It could be as simple as: hearing the raindrops on my coat; the hiss of passing traffic on a wet road; glimpsing the sodden leaves by the front door; the pale blue of the early morning sky through the outline of a tree; or the texture of a bowl of thick winter soup with my spoon. It brings to the forefront a more valued recognition of the completely ordinary textures of daily life. It also brings more conscious recognition of the gift of awareness itself.

Sunlight moments are not necessarily special moments, they are simply a doorway to “the very drab, the common, the daily presentations” as Mary Oliver describes in her poem Mindful. But they can also bring pleasure, and life shines brightly through these simple details. Allowing the warmth of sunlight to soak in helps me lean towards a more grounded simplicity and contentment that is also the basis of courage to deal with the more difficult aspects of life when they occur. It is part of the conscious holding space, the subtle backdrop of daily life, and opens to a broader landscape, a feeling of being part of an interconnected world.

The importance of sunlight moments came home further to me after reading a recent article in The Guardian newspaper on the impact of the digital world  –including smartphones and other devices – on our ability to concentrate (https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/oct/14/the-lost-art-of-concentration-being-distracted-in-a-digital-world). Apparently, according to research conducted in 2018 by the UK’s telecoms regulator, Ofcom:

  • people check their phones on average every 12 minutes in their waking hours
  • 71% never have the phone switched off; and
  • 40% check their phones, often within five minutes of waking.

The article says:

by adopting an always-on, anywhere, anytime, any place behaviour, we exist in a constant state of alertness that scans the word but never really gives our full attention to anything. In the short term, we adapt well to these demands, but in the long term the stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol create a physiological hyper-alert state that is always scanning for stimuli, provoking a sense of addiction temporarily assuaged by checking in.

In other words, always being digitally available has an insidious impact on long-term mental health, and sunlight moments are even more important for our well-being. I was quite shocked to see this stark evidence on the pages of a national newspaper.

One evening, after teaching an eight-week MBSR course in Newcastle upon Tyne, my train home was delayed. The waiting room where passengers gathered was quite full and I took one of the last seats available. Everyone around me and in front of me had their heads down, absorbed by their phones. No one spoke and it was very quiet.

I sat down and felt glad for the opportunity of a few moments to settle after all the packing up following the session, and to reflect on things.  As I sat opposite the row of people on their phones, I wondered if, in this situation, the distraction of being on the phone removed some of the perhaps understandable social awkwardness of sitting so closely opposite total strangers. I also wondered what people were using their phones for.

My own mobile phone was tucked in my coat pocket with my return ticket home. I had put them there so they were both easily and readily accessible, instead of having to retrieve them from the bottom of my bag during the journey. I noticed how the opportunity to check my phone passed through my mind as a compelling consideration. Perhaps there were messages from the family? Perhaps some emails I hadn’t seen before leaving home? Nobody would have thought it strange if I had pulled out my phone too. It would have been entirely normal. In fact, I was the odd person out, by not getting my phone out and checking it. I let the impulse pass, settled into the hardness of the seat and listened to the hum of the bar heater overhead.

The train came into a station and people boarded. It was old train stock, not with the high-backed seats where you can slump into a corner, but rows of low-backed seats with a metal rail more like the seating on a bus, so that you are sitting quite close to the person in front, acutely aware of the detail of their hair. As the train engine roared to life, the sound of the train moving out of the station muffled the quiet tones of conversation of an older couple two seats further in front, the animated  bubbling laughter of young girls at a table further up the carriage with their shopping parcels piled up in a flurry, and the slurred efforts of a drunken man who was trying to explain something of importance to his neighbour. These were the textures of the last train home.

As the train crossed the Tyne Bridge, I saw the coloured lights of the city laid out like a firework display, sparkling in the river below. I wondered how I would spend the journey. Could I look at my phone, and see if my daughters had left a message or photo? I could call my husband, text a friend, or read the news. I had a book in my bag and a notebook for journaling and reflection, and my to-do notebook was in my bag too. I decided to do nothing and settled into the slowing of my breathing and listening to the rhythmical slowing and speeding up of the train, the hissing of brakes and vacuum doors opening and closing, and the automated announcements as we heaved to a standstill at each stop on the line. Gradually, the residues of the day began to settle and ease within me – fragments of visual memories and thoughts, mixed with the hum of conversation in the carriage, the heavy metallic clunking of the track and the shuffling of the man in the seat behind me.

Stop by stop, the train gradually emptied and the number of passengers dwindled rapidly once we had left the Metro Centre stop. Nobody new boarded either. The drunken man had slumped asleep in his seat and the girls had left in a whirl of paper parcels and bags. The lines from the poem Adlestrop by Edward Thomas came to mind, “No one left and no one came/On the bare platform.” Nothing happened. No latest news of Brexit. No likes or shares. No messages. No emails. No texts. No posts. No alerts. No new friend requests. No weather updates. No new photos on Instagram. Just the buzz of the departure signal, the train restarting and the swaying motion of the carriage and the odd glimpse of the moon, a white coin moving between the trees as the train curved along the line of the river.

By the time I stepped out at Hexham station, I felt a quiet alignment with the gradual slowing of the train to the platform edge. The journey home had been a coming home to myself at the end of a full day, a time without any to-dos, where I allowed the business of the day to quietly settle within me. I walked slowly to the car and drove out on to the dark winding roads home. I chose not to put on the radio. No late night news. No interviews. No latest from Parliament. No discussion. No interesting book reviews. No traditional fiddle music. Instead, the colours of the waving autumn trees flashing by in the car headlights, the glistening stone walls and the moon still making its ghostly appearance through skimming clouds.

The Guardian article has made me more conscious of my mobile phone usage. I have poor signal where I live, so this naturally limits activity. However, with both daughters now away at university, I find myself checking my phone more often as we exchange messages and photos together. I love to see and laugh with them on Facetime, and I often wonder what it would have been like before this was possible. Keeping in touch with them by phone also means I see when emails have come in, even when I may not wish to look at them, or Facebook notifications, which are a lost cause as I never manage to keep up with them. It’s not an easy balance, having a smartphone these days! I have by no means mastered the art of it. But increased awareness of phone usage  helps me to notice the subtle moment-to-moment choices around when I pick up my phone, such as when and how often I check it;  what I choose to look at; how long I spend on it; and  when I switch it off altogether. I am making more of a conscious effort to notice how the reality of my day is shaped by the presence of the phone and the activity that surrounds it.

So here it is. A question of balance. How do we participate in achieving a spacious balance in an age of digital and social media, and in a world that is saturated with information triggered by the slight pressure of a fingertip upon a portable screen? Nowadays, appreciating the fleeting and ordinary may be even more revolutionary and vitally linked to our well-being than is recognised. It would seem that today, social and digital media offer limitless and world-embracing benefits of communication, creativity and connectedness, but that on a personal level, can also strain our capacity for focus, flexibility, concentration, and calm. Continuous partial attention (CPA) threatens to become the new normal along with the catapulting rise of online shopping trends. The Guardian article points out, “What is noticeable is that you cannot just go from a state of distraction to one of concentration.”

Pema Chodron repeatedly calls us to witness and appreciate the ordinary fleeting moments of everyday life, stepping out of our cocoon of over-involvement. She writes of these moments “… we usually speed right past them. So the first step is to stop, notice and appreciate what is happening. Even if this is all we do, it’s revolutionary.”  We benefit hugely from being part of a digital age, and we also need to have moments of pausing to allow sunlight in. We also need space to breathe in a highly stimulating world that leads us to switch between multiple screens and multiple activities, potentially disrupting the focus and rhythm of our attention and our capacity to absorb the reality of what is really taking place within and around us. Awareness, rather than an app, keeps us connected.

The gift of practice is that it serves to bring us to the gaps that exist between stimuli and input and allows spaciousness to manifest. Like the, the essential nature of the mind is already there, waiting to shine. We are participants who shape our own reality, and through awareness we become more aligned with the creative possibilities and choices that exist in the fullness of life’s many seemingly competing and complex textures.  As the Irish philosopher, John O’Donahue has said, quoted in Joyful by Ingrid Fetell Lee, “Each of us is an artist, everyone is involved, whether they like it or not, in the construction of their world.”

So “whether we like it or not,” we are all part of a digitally communicating age. The title of The Guardian article was “The Lost Art of Concentration.” In all our losing of concentration, there are multiple opportunities for remembering and recognising awareness in the subtle details of ordinary life. As a course participant of mine wisely said, “If mindlessness is definitely with us, then mindfulness is more than possible.” If there are limitless possibilities for doing, then there are limitless possibilities for being that lie not in opposition, or as self-correction, but in leaning towards more creative, spacious and harmonious balance. This is the gift and art of practice itself.

Tony Hoagland’s poem, The Word, continues:

Resting on the page, the word
is beautiful. It touches you
as if you had a friend

and sunlight were a present
he had sent from someplace distant
as this morning—to cheer you up,

and to remind you that,
among your duties, pleasure
is a thing

that also needs accomplishing.

Mindfulness-Based Compassionate Living course

My first Mindfulness-Based Compassionate Living course is well underway in central Newcastle upon Tyne and we are now currently looking forward to our day of practice which follows week 7 of the course, which will be held in the rural, tranquil setting of Newton and Bywell Community Hall, near Stocksfield.

MBCL was developed by two experienced mindfulness trainers, psychiatrist/psychotherapist Erik van den Brink and meditation teacher/ health care professional Frits Koster who pioneered mindfulness-based work in the Dutch mental health services. I completed training over the course of 3 years with Erik van den Brink in 2017, and I am delighted to be offering  this deeply life-enriching course in the north-east.

The aim of MBCL is to deepen the mindfulness-based path to alleviate suffering and enhance physical, psychological and social well-being by offering a secular advanced training in compassion practice towards oneself and others. The programme integrates wisdom from the contemplative traditions with modern scientific insights drawn from neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, positive psychology and therapeutic models such as mindfulness-based approaches, Compassion Focused Therapy and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.  The practices offered build on the skills developed in mindfulness practice and the course is suitable for anyone who wishes to deepen their personal practice with the heart qualities of  compassion.  The course is designed as a group training for participants who have previously followed an MBSR,  MBCT, Breathworks or equivalent programme and anyone who wishes to deepen their mindfulness practice with heart and the focus of compassion.

Compassion is defined as the capacity to be sensitive to the suffering of ourselves and others and the willingness to relieve and prevent it (Paul Gilbert, 2104). Compassion has a transpersonal quality, as it involves commitment to alleviate suffering, whoever is the potential sufferer. Therefore, when we speak of compassion, we include ‘self-compassion’ . What we do for ourselves we do for others, and what we do for others, we do for ourselves. Many recognise their tendency to overlook themselves while trying to be compassionate and the course helps to find greater ease in dealing with life’s inevitable pain and ‘dis-ease’, as well as developing a kinder and warmer attitude of receiving and giving of care, to self and others.

The emphasis on the course is on experiential work and building up the practice of compassion,  and participants are encouraged to spend 45 mins to an hour daily on the  formal and informal exercises in daily life.  A range of suggestions for home practice are given following each session, rather than specific homework. This enables participants to tune in to their deeper needs and to work at a suitable pace . Key practices include; soothing breathing rhythm; kindness meditation; compassionate imagery; dealing compassionately with resistance, desire, and inner difficulties; compassionate breathing; walking and moving and bringing kindness to the body; compassionate letter writing; practising sympathetic joy, gratitude, forgiveness and equanimity; cultivating a compassionate mind and inner helper and learning to work with  the ‘inner critic’; taking in what nourishes us and contributes to happiness.

The course is greatly enhanced by the key teaching themes of the MBCL curriculum, including the evolutionary perspective of the multi-layered brain; acknowledging pain and suffering as part of life; gaining insight in to the three basic emotion regulation (threat, drive and soothing) systems and how to recognise them in ourselves and cultivate a healthy balance in daily life; deepening understanding of stress reactions like fight, flight and freeze, tend and befriend, and their psychological equivalents; understanding how influences from outside  such as an ‘inner critic’ and maladaptive inner patterns  can easily cause imbalances;  seeing how to build an “inner helper” and compassionate mind. The course also looks at the process of over-identifying and de-identifying; our social connectedness and cultivating a sense of common humanity;  our capacity for absorbing positive experiences and perspectives that contribute to happiness;  and developing the Four Friends for Life (a secular naming for the Four Boundless States or Brahmaviharas): loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity.

The combination of practice and theory in the course  work beautifully together. The process enables a language and understanding  of compassion to grow up experientially, as an infusion of understanding and skills, rebuilding new perspectives in the inner landscape of the mind and heart and helping to  engage more compassionately with life itself. The course sessions are held weekly to fortnightly to allow space to explore and integrate the practices fully and regular calendar exercises are offered to help with practising mindful compassion  in daily life. A traditional metaphor of compassion that suits the learning of the course well is that from the mud of suffering, a new lotus is given space to bloom, each with its own individual patterns of experience and developing potential. The compassionate mind that is within each one of us is given space and courage to  connect with its own capacities and qualities, and find renewed expression and care.

“Out of the soil of friendliness, grows the beautiful bloom of compassion, watered by the tears of joy, under the cool shade of equanimity”.

Longchenpa

I will be offering the MBCL course again in the coming months.  If you are interested in attending this course, please register interest via the MBCL page on my website or drop me an email at gwennie@mindfulnessinlife.co.uk

 

 

 

 

The value of retreat

Retreat, however long a time we can manage to commit to, enlivens practice and it enhances life. It supports the development of practice and our own potential for living a meaningful and fulfilled life. Just as simple moments of awareness bring us valuable space, clarity and  perspective in our busy everyday lives, retreat offers a unique opportunity for time especially focussed on developing all the benefits that come from  cultivating this awareness. It allows us to simply extend our time for practice, in a way that compliments and benefits both our daily lives and practice itself.

In the time and space offered by retreat, and through being in an undistracted environment, we can renew our motivation, intention and inspiration for practice. We re-connect with that heart felt spark of intention that drew us to embark on practice in the first place. We have space to allow experience to unfold and open, without the pressing limitations of external pressures. Through retreat, we are able to dedicate our time in a way that supports our practice to develop and deepen, far beyond the time of retreat. We can become clearer and more simple in our intentions, and discover how this benefits us.  We become more familiar with the basis of our awareness and our capacity to pay attention. Through the continuity of practice, we remind ourselves, over and over again, how to pay attention and relate to our experience without striving to manipulate it,  make it something different or contrived.  We see more clearly what gets in the way, the places where we get caught up,  where we can learn to let go.

Being with the process of practice over an extended period of time, we rediscover how experience is impermanent and constantly changing, and how each moment unfolds into the next. We deepen our trust in allowing experience to be just as it is, and  ourselves to be just as we are. Through this, we develop greater  kindness and compassion for ourselves and how this naturally  opens  our understanding and compassion for  others. The many moments and opportunities for being with our experience more clearly, offer us a chance to slow down, quieten the mind and calm the heart. We learn how all our changing experience, including our mundane distractions, our sorrows and our joys, can be held in the space of a gentle and loving awareness, enabling us to come closer to ourselves and to the basis of life itself. We gain a deeper appreciation of our common humanity. Being with others in retreat, in itself, reminds us that we are not alone in all that we experience.

Renewing our capacity and willingness to be with our experience moment by moment, also gives us courage to work with the grit of our lives, to be with our rawness and difficulty, all that is tender and uncertain, our hopes and fears, the ways in which we resist life and feel held back. We learn to open to the full range of experience, pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral, rather than a selected, cautious part. We learn it is possible to step out of reactivity, and have courage to be with ourselves, feeling what we are feeling, and experiencing what we are experiencing. Moving into greater familiarity with the flow of experience, with its countless new beginnings, and kindly seeing its unfolding moment by moment, builds self-understanding, resilience and care. It has direct relevance to how we respond to life, how we learn to give ourselves space to breathe. Being in practice, in a supportive environment, enables us to step out of our busy, full and distracted lives, and see life with fresh eyes.It offers us the possibility of developing beneficial insight in to the nature of awareness and all our mental activity and perception. We allow time to rest our minds and hearts and fully be the human beings that we already are. Gently settling in to being with just what is, we allow ourselves compassionate space to open more fully to living the moments and the gifts of the unique life we have.

Through 2018, we are offering possibilities of different lengths of retreat in Northumberland, suitable for all stages of practice. This includes regular days of mindfulness practice, offered termly at Newton and Bywell Community Hall near Stocksfield, a two day non-residential retreat also at Newton, and a 5 day residential retreat at Shepherds Dene Retreat Centre. Further information about all of these retreats can be found on the Practice Support page of my website. All the events are listed on the Course Dates page and application forms will be forwarded through registration of interest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Keeping Practice Alive Through Personal Practice Mentoring

As we continue our journey of mindfulness practice, it is vitally important in the long term that we keep our engagement and motivation alive, with a wind of enthusiasm and purpose at our back. We need to nurture a clear intention of why we’re practising and how we are engaging with what arises along the way. In so doing, we keep close to the possibilities that practice offers us for leading a meaningful life, of benefit to ourselves and others.

Whether you have recently completed an eight-week MBSR or MBCT course, or have been practising for some time, the journey of practice involves a continuous enquiry in to how we relate to our practice, as well as specific considerations about the experience of practice itself. It matters that we maintain interest in what happens, even when the journey seems boring, frustrating or irritating, when we lose inspiration or experience bouts of laziness and discouragement, when we question what we’re doing and perhaps encounter difficulties with practice.

As mindfulness-based teachers, it is especially important that we keep closely connected to the roots of our own practice and maintain an active and clear interest in how our practice unfolds and develops over time, as this will naturally inform our teaching practice, and allow it to be authentic and vivid.

The Mindfulness Network has recently launched a new provision in the form of personal practice mentoring to facilitate the exploration of ongoing mindfulness practice in our everyday lives and work. The aim of this provision is to support ongoing personal mindfulness practice within a secular framework and context, through one-to-one sessions, with an experienced mindfulness-based teacher/supervisor.

As a mentor, I greatly value the richly creative space that mentoring offers for sharing the unique journey of practice with others, and enquiring into something that is so fundamental to our human growth, development and evolving potential.

Our mentors at the Mindfulness Network have a wealth of practice experience between them and they are all deeply committed to offering this opportunity for an enhanced focus on personal practice and to providing supportive connection and guidance along the way. However long you have been practising and however you feel your practice is going, practice mentoring can encourage you in your endeavours, and offers valuable space for reflection, fresh inspiration, and renewed enquiry.

Do you think this might benefit you? For further information about practice mentoring, how it works and who it is for, and to see a list of mentors, please go to www.mindfulness-supervision.org.uk.

Generosity

The 6 week Attitudinal Foundations of Mindfulness course which I have been running in central Newcastle upon Tyne has recently concluded. It has been a rich journey of sharing and reflection together as a group.  The course  has offered a more expanded “vocabulary” for exploring how practice can be applied in the fabric of day to day life, through greater familiarity with  the ways in which these qualities show up  time and time again in our experience of practice. This has brought new insights, and has opened the door to new possibilities for responding to what we meet in the flow of life, and through recognising the places where we habitually struggle.

The attitudinal factors of mindfulness have been described by Jon Kabat-Zinn as “the pillars of mindfulness practice” (Full Catastrophe Living, Piatkus, 2004. )These fundamental qualities include: beginner’s mind, non-judgement, patience, trust, non- striving, acceptance and letting go. Together they constitute interconnected qualities of heart and mind which bring an essential attitudinal approach to how we relate to experience through practice, and which are naturally developed through the course of pracice itself. Recently Jon Kabat-Zinn  has included generosity and gratitude as additional qualities which are also essential to practice.

As a spontaneous expression of generosity, on the final evening of the course,  a participant  who runs a speciality bakery, brought along the day’s surplus of loaves, cakes, mince pies and Christmas biscuits which were bought by members of the group, and all donations made given to the charity Shelter, and also the food distributed that evening to homeless people on the streets in the vicinity of Neville Street and Central Station.

At Queen Elizabeth High School in Hexham there has also been a recent collection made by the school Human Rights Group of second hand waterproof jackets, mens shoes, hats, scarves, gloves and toiletries for donation to  the Newcastle  West End Refugee Service (www.wers.org.uk) which is an established charity supporting assylum seekers and refugees in Newcastle upon Tyne. And right out in Northumberland National Park, the community of Tarset is running a donation “hub” at the local Holly Bush Inn for donations of children’s Christmas gifts and seasonal food treats that can be added to much needed food parcels at this time of year at The Newcastle West End Foodbank (www.newcastlewestend.foodbank.org.uk). This offers emergency support to local people in crisis as part of  a nationwide network of foodbanks, supported by the Trussell Trust working to combat hunger and poverty across the UK. These individual and community gestures make a direct difference in significant ways at a time of year when human need is at its greatest and needs to be remembered, and which we can all find ways of contributing to.

8 week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction course in central Newcastle upon Tyne

This autumn, I’m really looking forward to offering the next 8 week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction course, which will be starting on Tuesday evenings from 27th September , 6.30- 8.45 pm in the Grainger Suite of the Mercure Newcastle County Hotel, Newcastle upon Tyne, immediately opposite Central Station The course is a wonderful opportunity to build a strong foundation of mindfulness practice in daily life, and to develop and reflect on the experience of this in a supportive group learning environment. The course is completely secular and no previous meditation experience is required. It can also provide a way of  integrating a more established meditation practice more deeply in to daily life.

Bringing awareness and acceptance to our immediate experience can help us to notice stress developing and to respond skilfully. Developing this awareness through practice is the process through which change and transformation become possible. The aim of the course is to learn new ways of handling challenging physical sensations, emotions, moods and life situations by helping us move towards greater balance, resilience and self -care. Challenges and difficulties are part of life, but by changing how we respond, rather than react to them, moment by moment they can become workeable. Each moment is a new beginning. This continues to be a profound inspiration for me in my own personal practice and daily life, and in sharing the benefits of this course.

For further detailed information about the course, or to check availability,  please read the course information on the courses page of the website, where there is also a link to a booking form.

 

 

Warp and weft

In the last Staying Mindful: Monthly Practice Group meeting we explored the attitude that we develop towards practice as we continue to practice over a period of time  beyond our initial training. While the regularity of daily practice, what and when and where we choose to practice, and how we build this in to  the routines of daily life, is of continued importance in the long view of practice, our attitude to practice is just as important as the patience, effort and discipline required. Like the warp and the weft of a weaving, both directions are needed to bring things towards a balanced whole. We need the structure and routine of practice to build the habit of awareness in our lives, but we also need the kindness and care  towards our practice and life experience to help us become clearer, more open and compassionate. Both are mutually independent.

Pema Chodron, in her lovely book “How to Meditate : A Practical Guide to Making Friends with Your Mind”(Sounds True, 2013) talks about steadfastness and loyalty towards ourselves as one of the primary qualities that we cultivate through regular meditation practice. We cultivate steadfastness through continually allowing whatever is happening in our experience to be there, and through staying with the experience. The “practice ” of meditation means that we are helping this attitude and quality of mind translate itself in to our life experience at other times.

“We have such a tendency to lay a lot of labels, opinions, and judgments on top of what’s happening. Steadfastness- loyalty to yourelf – means that you let those judgments go. So in a way, part of the steadfastness is that when you notice your mind is going a million miles an hour and you’re thinking about all kinds of things, there is this uncontrived moment that just happens without any effort; you stay with your experience.

In meditation, you develop this nurturing quality of loyalty and steadfastness and perseverence towards yourself. And as we learn to do this in meditation, we become more able to perservere in all kinds of situations outside of our meditation, ot what we call postmeditation.”

In our meeting,  we reflected on what cultivating steadfastness and loyalty might really mean to us in our practice, and how it might be relevant to the reality of how we practice from day to day. Does practice become a rather hard, rigidly carved out space in daily life? Do we contrive things so we only sit when we feel like it, or wish to feel good? Do we give oursleves a hard time when we don’t manage to practice when, or as long, or as regularly as we would wish? How can we more loyal to the process, to the experience itself? What would steadfastness in practice look like to each of us individually? Would it involve a change in what we choose to do, or how we approach our practice, the intention we bring to it, the way in which we relate to oursleves?

A word that came up in our reflections was “relationship”, a sense of how we build relationship with ourselves through practice, through beginning in the moment, with whatever is here. Some of us thought that “steadfastness” seemed like quite an old-fashioned word, but that it had qualities of rootedness, holding, persistence, not giving up, a sense of honesty and truth with ourselves. Staying close to our values and what really matters. Choosing to sit with ourselves  on a regular basis is a way of developing a steady relationship to the ups and downs of experience,  but it is also a gateway to a less contrived way of living and perceiving, in which honesty and steadiness are allowed to flourish without striving for things to be other than they are.  It can perhaps be helpful to hold both the warp and weft of practice in mind, as we continue to open to the journey of practice in daily life.  We can think about our practice freshly and consider if we need to give more nurturing care to the warp or the weft. We can begin to see the way the weaving holds together with an inbuilt strength and integrity, instead of flopping and unravelling and dropping out and all the million ways our energy is dissipated when we do not pay attention. We can perhaps see our practice more clearly and value it more deeply.

Staying Mindful Monthly Practice Meetings take place monthly in The Grainger Suite of the Mercure Newcastle County Hotel (directly opposite Central Station) 6.30pm- 8pm. The next meeting will be Thursday 19th May. The meetings offer a chance to drop in and continue to practice together in a friendly group environment  and reflect on practice together (with all its many new beginnings)  in a supportive, non-judgmental way.

 

 

 

Mindfulness course in central Newcastle upon Tyne

The next 8 week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction course will be commencing on 26th April on Tuesday evenings  from 6.30 to 8.30pm at the Mercure Newcastle County Hotel on Neville St, Newcastle upon Tyne, immediately opposite central Station. Booking is now open and full course and booking information can be found on the courses page of this website.

The 8 week course offers a unique opportunity to develop a strong personal foundation of mindfulness practice in everyday life. At times of stress we can feel overwhelmed and react in ways that are automatic and reinforce unhelpful patterns, leaving us feeling stuck. Bringing awareness and acceptance to our immediate experience can help us to notice stress developing, and to respond skilfully. The aim of this course is to learn new ways of handling challenging physical sensations, emotions, moods and life situations by helping us to access our own powerful inner resources, developing greater awareness, understanding and resilience.

Mindfulness practice can support us in moving from reactivity and being caught up in trying to fix or solve our difficulties, to responding to life’s challenges with greater wisdom, skill, kindness and self-care. By being present in more of our moments, we can open to more skilful responses, choices and possibilities and enrich our experience of life, reconnecting with ourselves so that we can  live more fully and clearly.

The course is completely secular and takes place in the supportive learning environment of a group, with time within sessions to share and  reflect on individual experiences of practice.No previous meditation experience is required.  Participants are encouraged to commit to a daily home practice sessions which is supported by guided practices on CDs. The cost of the course includes a full set of CDs with guided practices for use at home, course handbook, in between session practice support from your teacher if required, and the opportunity to deepen and integrate learning from the course with a day of mindfulness practice after week 7, on Sunday 19th June  at Newton and Bywell Community Hall, Stocksfield (15 miles from Newcastle).

Following the course, participants are offered the opportunity to attend monthly practice support sessions, further days of retreat and an annual residential retreat in rural Northumberland.

“Anyone can learn mindfulness. It’s simple, you can practise it anywhere, and the results can be life-changing.”

Be Mindful ( www.bemindful.co.uk)