The media tells us that ‘Blue Monday’, the third Monday of January, is the most depressing day of the year. The fact that this was originally proposed and popularised by a travel company back in 2005 causes me to take this idea with a pinch of salt. They even used an equation to calculate it … Read more
An excellent article published by the Psychosynthesis Trust summarises the benefits of meditation. Read about those benefits here. The benefits are both mental and physical. Practice is deceptively easy but takes a lifetime to master. When you’re starting out it’s difficult to do it on your own. If you want to practice meditation near Hungerford … Read more
Evidence from research suggests that mindfulness style meditation helps you relate to your thoughts and feelings in a non-judgemental and non-reactive fashion. This can bring you to a place where you are more able to observe how you are in the present moment with compassion, hold emotion better, and be less harshly critical of yourself, … Read more
You can think about the human personality as a number of layers, each folded around early ones, rather like an onion. At the centre are the youngest parts of you, on the outside you older parts. While the skin we present to the world is adult, at our centre we still carry a part of … Read more
Unreal City, Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many. Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled, And each man fixed his eyes before his feet. Flowed up the hill and down King William Street, To where Saint Mary … Read more
Right now I’m feeling anxious. The catch on the boot of my car has broken, locking in a bag with my diary inside. The local garage has no time, and I’m waiting for a call from another mechanic to find out if he has time to get my boot open. Only a small anxiety, perhaps, … Read more
It’s tempting to look at a new piece of technology, such as Facebook, and think of it as either a ‘good’ thing or a ‘bad’ thing. I’m certainly guilty of trying to decide on those terms, rather than thinking about if and how I want to engage with something new. I think everything has a … Read more
I spent today reflecting through two self-assessments. Sounds dull, and the formal one was; an academic self-assessment based upon learning criteria and… yes, I soon lost the will to continue. That’s why I’m blogging, because I’m avoiding! The other I did enthusiastically and unprompted earlier today. After some gardening in the crisp Wiltshire air, and … Read more
