High stress levels, fatigue and emotional overwhelm are in abundance these days and on the downside, these things affect our mood, skin quality, our digestion, and our bodies, and sadly, […]
Hello and thank you for your patience. It’s been a few weeks since I penned a Letter to you. I initially took a week off to recalibrate, and reconsider what […]
Occasionally, when I am going about my day, not necessarily doing anything that interesting, simply out of the blue, I can experience an overwhelming sense of love. It shifts me […]
When we are stressed, or a little anxious at work, or perhaps exhausted with schooling in isolation (I refuse to call it homeschooling, which is an entirely different education), or […]
I love this quote, for I really agree with the why settle for less BUT I would also highlight, the world is often working against us when it comes to […]
Often people wait awhile to learn to meditate. It feels like something that can be learnt later, or when life gets really challenging, people tend to engage then. Thankfully it’s […]
When in times of immense stress and pressure, it’s so good to just come back to the basics. Today the sun dawned. Today I woke up. Today I get to […]
Today I want you to undertake a little exercise. Carve out 30-60 minutes and sit down and write out how you hope your life will look like in 20 years. […]
I’m not sure about you but sometimes I feel joy is very close by, popping in and out of my day, saying hello, smiling inside, draping a lightness over all […]
I often teach about our personal seasons. Summer being hot, full, lengthy and abundant, but also with the chance of burnout. Autumn being a time to pare back, and prepare for battening down […]
We must abandon the idea that stability exists. Change is the only thing that is constantly happening. It’s the only thing that ever existed, we simply engaged in denial of it. We can […]
The Mushroom At The End Of The World, is a fascinating and rich read into capitalism and nature and diversity that I am diving into after this book sat on my bedside table […]
We see too often not what’s there, but what we are conditioned to see. Our brains override new possibility to take shortcuts that previously made sense. Passages like this; it deson’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers […]
Have you ever noticed that one day you can feel fabulous, the next horrible? How actually one single hour you can be frustrated, the next light and buoyant. Lockdown really shows us […]
There is very little that I do without my ego chiming in about what a bad job I am doing of it. It took quite a while for me to stop engaging […]
The brain is so remarkably plastic that we can quite easily wire in all sorts of habits, responses, and reactions. This can work for us, or it can work against us, […]
Today I want to ask you, what is the thing that you’re putting off? Not ’the big dream’, but the small thing you know you should do, the thing you know deep […]
The brain and mind we tend to flog, relentlessly. If we want to be brain and mind fit, we need rest periods. In the same way that if we want […]
Often resilience is viewing as a strength, a tough as nails approach, unwavering attitude after so much endurance. But, resilience is the result of facing and embracing our humanity over […]
I always laugh with my really fit friends, about my constantly wanting a short cut. Any shortcut. But it’s just a continual commitment and accumulative effect that creates transformation. On every level. And meditation is […]
Our relationship to ourselves is the most important relationship we have. Yet it is often shelved due the demands placed upon us by our relationships to others. I want you […]
How will you hold your awareness this week? Scattered or as something sacred? Fractured, or utterly focussed on the present? When we feel overwhelmed, or fatigued, or frankly, flat as […]
Ordeals are challenging. Lockdown is boring and frustrating. Illness is the terrible. Divorce is horrible. Or, are they and they and their siblings of change, simply grist for the mill? Are […]
Every day, we saturate ourselves in thoughts, unchosen, not always well meaning, often chaotic. We must reconcile this is the case. We can’t choose our thoughts, but we can choose […]
What conditioning of your mind might you recognise is robbing you of reality? What reactions are taking you out of your body and driving your mind wild? Are these reactions […]
When in those perfect, clear moments when we are cleavered away from our overthinking, and we are just absolutely present to life, we understand how fleeting life is. I teach […]
One of our beloved students Juana, introduced me to the writings of Richard Rohr. ‘Just This’ is a beautiful collection of his works for when you want a little shot […]
Zen meditation teacher Susan Murphy writes in her brilliant book Upside Down Zen, “Meditation is lonely as any practice is lonely – no one can make it easier for you, no […]
One of my favourite Zen fables, that I will alter for more colour, goes like this. A very young monk wished to study and reside with a prestigious older monk. The […]
I think we all know we’re probably pushing it a little hard. We all have past experience with burnout, having lit ourselves alight for others needs, our work, our expectations, others expectations. That smouldering […]
My friend sent me the cover of this week’s New York magazine with an enormous gold title The Return Of FOMO. Which stands for Fear Of Missing Out. And it’s […]
I spent the weekend studying with the phenomenal Rose Baudin, and the amount of rapid scrawl notes I took is going to take some time to dissect BUT this one […]
‘Happiness is your natural state. You don’t have to do anything to acquire it, because you have it already’ says Anthony De Mello (one of my favourite spiritual teachers). So […]
The challenge we have with a lot of modern spirituality and modern meditation is all the spiritual bypass and nonsense that goes with it. It becomes not about Self, (alignment […]
It’s so desirable to make the ‘right decision’ and so challenging in knowing what the heck that is without all the information available in that moment. I seem to have […]
This is really a follow on from yesterday, which was a Letter to you about the challenges that expectations bring into our life, which you can read HERE if you […]
I find it personally really challenging to not have expectations. My mind is always working away ferociously, painting vivid imagery and so the actions of surrender and letting go have […]
In truth I found this little Letter sitting on my desktop, and now I am unsure if I have already sent it to you. I work like this, little snippets […]
I would also add to power, is the education about oneself. To know oneself is to understand our conditioning and personality, and our habitual ways, our nuanced approach of being […]
Can you even fathom this?? In one century, we’ve added 28 years to our average life span – a change so rapid that our brains couldn’t possibly have evolved to accommodate […]
Our Integrated Meditation students report that they tend to engage with technology differently once meditating regularly, and they frequently question why? There’s suddenly more discipline and a natural propensity to […]
This week I really, really felt drawn to working with our emotional landscape, neuroscience and relationship to technology and social media. This is because I have been trying really hard […]
Time to take stock. I love doing this. Creating lists of all the things I know deep down aren’t working for me at the moment. This spans spiritually, physically, emotionally, financially. I spit out […]
I work with so many creatives, and frequently the biggest block to building anything in this world, is the idea that it will fail. Instead of welcoming the potential failures […]
I have of late been diving more deeply into studying the Tao Te Ching and the Heart Sutra. The wisdom infused within these texts is a soothing balm for a […]
I love this story, for it demonstrates how quickly we can get caught up in concepts, and delusional about where we are at. Striving to be better, at all costs, […]
As a follow on from the last Letter, I thought it would be helpful to return to our intentions behind our actions. I had a student I am privately mentoring […]
We cannot control our lives. Read it again. It took me way too long to grasp this and I still flounder with it. Control is just so tantalising at times! […]
I am often teaching students, don’t sweat your actual seated meditation, do it, and see the results in your daily lives. Too often new students can become obsessed with having […]
I don’t know about you, but I have been experiencing huge waves of grief, sadness and anger. It might be the womens march, sometimes it’s hearing from a friend still […]
Our bodies are the host for our consciousness, and when we are fatigued, physically have overdone it, or unwell, consciousness will respond. We know that when we have burnt out […]
Breathing, a life-force which we so often forget about. Unconsciously, we move through our days with around 20,000 breaths. How many go unnoticed? When we are stressed our breathing gets […]
This week marks a year since we went into lockdown in the UK. Many countries were ahead of this, or swiftly followed suit. And what a year it’s been. Part […]
One of the often unnerving things that come with wisdom, is seeing parts of ourselves, that once recognised, cannot be unseen. Growth, isn’t always fluid. It can be at times […]
When we prepare a recipe, there’s much that goes into it before the moment of eating. The creative process, the sourcing of ingredients, the setting out of all that is […]
Let’s talk about perspective. What does it really mean and how do we get it? Everyone says think ‘big picture’, but how do we do this when we’re flailing around […]
If you had all the money in the world, how would you spend your time?If you had no one to answer to, what would you be doing? If no one ever […]
If you have been a student of mine for awhile, or reader of these Letters, you will have at some stage encountered my love for the teacher Ram Dass. I […]
This is such a beautiful way to describe the limitations of the human mind. Often we get so caught up in our ‘little screw’ state that we forget about the […]
I know, yet six weeks into this year, there is much weariness. A fatigue, that became like a heavy coat last year, ill-fitting and musty is being worn past its […]
“Yet”, a powerful word, brimming with potential and possibilities, the perfect finisher to many sentences, the opener of doors, the cheerleader of growth, it’s tiny and jam packed with promise. […]
It’s so important to remember this. The other day flying to Sydney, I had an old friend visit with force, anxiety. It was a combination of factors that brought my anxiety in, […]
Before technology and modern times, people used to be far more attuned to nature, to the rhythms of the universe, but we have fallen out of these rhythms as a […]
I want you to think of how many books you have read this year. How many online articles? How many magazines? How many instagram posts and Facebook posts have you […]
Humour is one of my core values, it gives me energy, inspiration, connection. It has the ability to reset me, remind me and change my perspective – its power is […]
I think we all use the language ‘just do your best’ a lot when going through something challenging. Sometimes it’s ‘well I am sure they meant their best’ and is […]
I wanted to take a moment today to invite you to be kind to yourself. A lot of the time we are focused on being kind to others, sometimes at […]
Have you ever sat and eaten a meal with someone who on that occasion was rushing through their food, barely chewing, barely finishing their mouthful, hastily getting through until their […]
The Buddha was once asked, “What have you gained from meditation?” He replied, “Nothing!” Then he continued, “However, let me tell you what I have lost: anger, anxiety, depression, insecurity, and fear of old age […]
Have you ever waited for just the right moment, just the right words, just the right look, just the right time, you know when all the stars are in perfect […]
Wisdom is knowledge put into action, refined over many seasons, carved out through many storms. Wisdom is acceptance of what is whilst also putting our boots on the ground to […]
Being a human can be challenging stuff, we’re an intricate web of thoughts, bias, prejudice, conditioning and the expressing of all of that, our ability to give and receive love, […]
Sifu Shi Yan Ming is RZA from Wu Tang Clan’s teacher (sifu) in kung-fu, and I really like this simple breakdown of what he called ‘basic messages’ to his disciples […]
At any given point in time, we never really know what’s actually going on. We have the experience, the moment, the situation but the bigger picture, the full story, the […]
Today choose one single thing that can elevate you to your highest grade self. Is it… – drinking two litres of filtered water– moving your body for 30 or more […]
I have been doing a lot of Workplace Program work, and the fatigue and burn out is real right now. A lot of people are taking a day a week […]
Thanks to my friend Jen, I have discovered the wonderful writing of Edward Abbey, who I am diving into. I’m sure I will share more of his words soon. Shadow […]
“Hello, my name is Jo and I’m a Starter not a Finisher, please help”. How many projects, ideas, practices, dreams, tasks have I started and never finished? (a lot). Grand […]
Isn’t this brilliant. How can we be afraid of that which we don’t know? What we are really afraid of is the thing we know, might not continue and instead launch […]
Have you ever gotten so caught up in a story that you couldn’t see the forest for the trees? This is embarrassing to admit, but I go so caught in […]
A victim mentality can really block us from a whole lot of connection with other people. The ego bleating that no one understands and that we have it harder. I […]
Viewing our world, our lives, our experiences from a lens of abundance versus a lens of lack is something very appealing. I love the idea that it is all there […]
I think we are all at times confused about the essence of compassion because we think it’s just for others and not ourselves. So I have dug up some older writings […]
How do I do so many creative things and put them into the world? It’s a question I am asked a bit so it seemed worthwhile taking a moment to […]
Try this, Get some paper and pen. Sit down some place comfortable, slow your breathing, relax into your body. Imagine it’s six months from now. Really dive into this experience. […]
Balance is tricky, as it doesn’t take into account our forever shifting psychology, neurology and physiology. What might seem like balance one day, won’t continue on others, and trust me, […]
I’ve been getting lots of emailed questions from students and I put a call out on Instagram for questions recently and wanted to answer some of them here, as they […]
One of the most powerful choices we have is where we put our attention. This is always within our control, it is always available to us and the flow from […]
Are you waking up and first thing in the morning checking your phone? Or are you creating sacred space in which to navigate the day? Are you diving into emails […]
Life is like riding a roller coaster, there will be times of great fun and joy and times of white-knuckling it, knowing this to be the case and having some […]
I hope these three key things stay with you all day, like little planted seeds – accepting things that are out of your control– embracing the courage to change the […]
I am doing a lot of private mentoring at the moment, with students around the world, and the same themes are coming up over and over. Distraction, a lack of […]
Forgiveness. Bring to mind someone that you can’t seem to forgive about something. It might be old, or fresh. What would it feel like to forgive them? What would your […]
