I once met Roshi Philip Kapleau, the author of The Three Pillars of Zen. He was one of the first Westerners to go to Japan and do intense practice there. He was suffering from very advanced Parkinson’s disease and had terrible physical discomfort, along with the involuntary spasms that come from the disease. One thing …
Here’s something for your Friday afternoon to take you into your weekend with a gentle smile. It’s a charming unbridled tale about a ‘typical, institutionalized educated Western man’ that touches something quite deep within all of us. Well worth a look, enjoy. A film by Josh Izenberg. Video from KarmaTube This film was first shown …
Mindfulness is in the news. Ruby Wax and Julie Myerson have sworn to its efficacy in helping them with depression and anxiety. But mindfulness programmes aren’t just being used within mental health. Similar interventions are taking place in education, criminal justice and the workplace. This year over 70 MPs and Peers attended mindfulness classes and …
Sharon Salzberg (born 1952) is a New York Times Best selling author and influential teacher of Buddhist meditation practices in the West.In 1974, she co-founded the Insight Meditation Society at Barre, Massachusetts with Jack Kornfield and Joseph Goldstein. Her emphasis is on vipassanā (insight) and mettā (loving-kindness) methods, and has been leading meditation retreats around …
Ajahn Chah (1919–1992) was admired for the way he demystified the Buddhist teachings, presenting them in a remarkably simple and down-to-earth style for people of any background. He was a major influence and spiritual mentor for a generation of American Buddhist teachers, including Jon Kabat-Zinn, Sharon Salzberg, and Jack Kornfield. Moreover, he was a master …
This post brings you up-to-date with the latest developments at Embrace Mindfulness. 8 week MBSR programmes This is the core teaching programme of Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). In the course you will become more aware of the unhelpful thought patterns that can trigger and perpetuate stress, anxiety and low moods. With that awareness comes choice …
Success and sex can sell most things and the disciplines of meditation and mindfulness based practices are no exception. There is a lot of press concerning mindfulness nowadays, ostensibly concerned with the task of raising awareness, selling its therapeutic benefits and establishing its efficacy through scientific research. For any mindfulness or meditation teacher, myself included, …
A vital, but often understated part of mindfulness practice is to slow down long enough to actually notice and appreciate the richness and meaning of what is before us in the present moment. If we pay attention with enough allowing in our heart, there is beauty, pathos and grace to be found in the mundane, …
On newstands this week, the cover story of the February issue of Time Magazine investigates the Mindful Revolution, a detailed look at the exponential growth of Mindfulness Based Approaches in the United States. The article, written by journalist Kate Pickert, is top and tailed by her own personal experiences of the MBSR programme and pays …
This is the tenth and last video segment of the ‘Mindfulness for Life’ interviews by Jon Kabat-Zinn. The quote is also by JKZ, excerpted from a longer article that used to be on his Mindfulness CD website but is no longer there. Fortunately I reposted it back in September and you can read it in …