Mindfulness in Action

10/02/2025

Expertise, ideas and conversation about mindfulness, mindful learning in schools, for educators, teachers and parents.

31/10/2024

Heart of Imagination Day.

Saturday 16th November. Join us for a day of awareness and creativity and the imagination. Through meditation, poetry and drawing, we'll tap into our imagination and explore what it means to be more connected and whole.
ONline via Zoom. 10 - 1pm & 2.30 - 5pm -

Join us for a day of awareness, creativity and the Imagination. Through meditation, poetry and drawing, we'll tap into our imagination and explore what it means to be more connected and whole.

10/10/2024

Meditation Morning - Join me for a morning of meditation at the Cardiff Buddhist Centre

23/09/2024

https://mailchi.mp/e7fed4ad0d6c/free-mindfulness-taster-for-all-school-staff-and-courses

Copyright (C) 2024 Mindfulness In Action. All rights reserved.Our mailing address is:Want to change how you receive these emails?You can update your preferences or unsubscribe

23/09/2024

Here's my Thought for the Day from this morning. I'll add a link to BBC Sounds when it's available).

Last week I picked up a pencil and, for the first time in many years, I started to draw. I was co-leading a retreat with an artist friend that combined meditation with art and poetry, and she told us not to worry about being good. ‘Start moving your pencil. Make a mark.’ At first, I reverted to the point at school when I’d become self conscious and lost confidence, but as the week went on I found myself playing with contrasts and textures, looking more closely, finding meaningful images, and becoming absorbed.
If this enjoyable but apparently useless activity seems far from the list of intractable issues the Labour Party conference is discussing this week, there is a link. The challenges of the NHS are high up the list and the Darzi report recently told us that our collective mental health is deteriorating. This isn’t news and nor are the measures Darzi favours that support people’s wellbeing before their problems reach a clinical level.
One approach is social prescribing, and I’ve seen many projects that benefit people’s mental health by volunteering, connecting with nature or engaging with the arts. One benefit is the connection people make with each other, but the activities are helpful themselves, and what strikes me as a Buddhist is how they engage our attention. When we’re in the grip of stress, anxiety or depression our thoughts are directed towards the past or future, sometimes with a compulsive force. Many mental health interventions, including creative activities, work by drawing people back to the present.
A superficial version of living in the present is the stuff of fortune cookies, but within Buddhism it’s a profound practice. The Buddha says: ’Let go of what came before and let what comes next disappear,’ but he adds that the key is how we relate to the present. ‘Don't hold on to what's in between, and you will be at peace.’ Absorbing ourselves in our present moment experience with awareness or mindfulness has a healing quality that stimulation doesn’t bring.
Making art and being in nature are important precisely because they’re useless. They show us the richness that’s possible when we set preoccupations aside and look more closely, ‘without any irritable reaching after fact and reason’ as Keats says: when, responding to what we see or feel, we pick up a pencil, and start to draw.

https://www.wiseattention.org/blog/2024/09/23/the-healing-power-of-the-present-moment/

03/09/2024

I'm really looking forward to the Heart of Imagination online retreat that I will be leading with Amitajyoti, starting next Friday. This podcast is about the imagination and what we'll be doing on the retreat. Do come!

A conversation about imagination and why it really matters...

03/09/2024

School Staff- Your Wellbeing Matters! Join us to learn strategies to help you step out of the mad rush and find peace...
*FREE* NEU Mindfulness Course for all School Staff in RCT (other Union members can come and a fee will apply)
Starting this October- don't miss out! Please share...
Clare JonesMatthew Jones@ Dale Lawrence Kaylie MortimerRhian PoacherSharon Catherine WilliamsIan EvansSion HowellsEmma JaneKaren Ann Sharon Williams

26/07/2024

Here's my Thought for the Day from this morning.

There’s been a sad prelude to today’s Olympics opening ceremony: the video of Dressage Champion Charlotte Dujardin whipping a horse’s legs. It’s a tough watch: the horse backs away, plainly distressed. The rider says she’s ashamed and has withdrawn from the competition.

The magic of dressage is creating an equine ballet that harmonises horse and rider, but the footage has raised questions about practices behind the scenes. In training, some riders may use reins, bits and whips more gently to guide a horse; others rely on weight and balance. But what constitutes undue control? When does discipline become abuse?

Every collaboration between humans and animals prompts ethical questions, and though I’m a dog owner, some of my friends would never even own a pet on the grounds that domestication means imposing our will on other beings. In this view, the natural way is the good way. There’s something in that, but I also reflect that Buddhist practice is called a training, and the guiding principle is the middle way.

One story describes a disciple of the Buddha’s who was so determined to become Enlightened that he practiced walking meditation until the soles of his feet were bleeding. Before becoming a monk, he’d been a musician, and the Buddha reminded him how he’d tuned a lute. If the strings were too taut or too loose, the instrument was unplayable, but tuned to the right pitch it resonated harmoniously.

This is the middle way. It means balance, not striving for an imagined perfection. As a mindfulness teacher I see the psychological strain that comes from judging ourselves according to how we think things should be. Many of us dwell on what we need to do to be good enough and how we lack discipline, but research links attitudes like these to stress, anxiety and depression.

The alternative isn’t making no effort. There’s a place for training. For Buddhism, ethics is a skill we develop through patient effort, and the Buddhist path is sometimes called the three trainings of ethics, meditation and wisdom, all of which are undertaken with a careful, balanced effort.

Psychological violence towards ourselves is bad enough, but physical force directed to other beings prompts an instinctive revulsion. Of course it will bring obedience. The animal will bend to our will. But there’s a moral cost. The alter

26 JULY 24

03/07/2024

Join me for this workshop on 17 July

Join mindfulness teacher, journalist and writer Vishvapani Blomfield for an online workshop to discover the poetry of mindfulness on 17 July.

22/06/2024

This is the Action for Happiness Livestream/podcast session I did last week. I was happy with how it went, overall. There's an element in situations like this of being offered a role as a self-help guru, and if you watch you will see me endeavouring not to accept it! It's valuable, though. Lots of people watch and I think the Action for Happiness approach is pretty sound.

How can we find balance in our lives?We tend to think of mindfulness just as a form of meditation - but it can also be an overall approach to daily life, whi...

19/06/2024

This is the Action for Happiness Livestream/podcast session I did last night.I was happy with how it went overall. There's an element in situations like this of being offered a role as a self-help guru, and if you watch you will see me endeavouring not to do that. It's valuable, though. Lots of people watch and I think the Action for Happiness approach is pretty sound. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CK_TKoSsF-k

11/06/2024

I'm looking forward to doing this podcast with Action For Happiness next Tuesday. It's a 'movement' promoting a very well considered approach to wellbeing, all based on research about what actually helps. Mindfulness is part of it. I want to have a go at discussing mindfulness from a Buddhist perspective.

How can we find balance in our lives?We tend to think of mindfulness just as a form of meditation - but it can also be an overall approach to daily life, which helps us find balance in our frantic world.At this special event, meditation teacher and Buddhist writer Vishvapani will explore how we can....