We had lots of people get in touch to say they wanted to do the course but would have to miss one or two sessions due to summer holidays etc. So, I decided to put the start date back to September to these new dates.
In the meantime if you fancy a getting started then there are a few places left on the one day Introduction to Mindfulness in Nottingham on the 8th of July.
“Chade-Meng Tan’s job description would never get past most companies’ human resources departments. As the head of mindfulness training at Google, his role is to enlighten minds, open hearts and create world peace.”
Here is the full article: Google’s ‘Head of Mindfulness’ Speaks Out | NewsFactor Business.
“But he hopes that one day, his role will become commonplace. A growing awareness of the importance of our emotional fitness, he says, is mirroring the same journey of acceptance that physical exercise took in the last century. And he believes that scientific evidence of the benefits of the Buddhist practice of mindfulness will be instrumental into catapulting it into the very heart of the business world.”
Contrast this with the heart breaking story of the horrors of slave labour in the the prawn industry as reported recently in the Guardian . And here are some ideas on what we can do about that.
Is it too much to hope that we can work together so that one day human beings can live in a world where kindness and fellowship are the norm?
Do you ever get that thing where you remember something you did in the past and cringe? There is a reason why this might be such a universal experience: we are wiser now than we were then.
One thing that makes us wiser (we hope!) as we get older is that we’ve had more opportunities to make mistakes. And mistakes are a powerful way to learn. One of the standout things for me is about learning to really listen.
It seems to me that often when we miss an opportunity or get things wrong, it is when we weren’t listening well enough. What kind of listening are we talking about?
The common way of listening is through the filters of what we already know, of what is already important. If we are able to listen to our experience with fresh eyes, fresh ears, open heart, we can see new possibilities and learn new things.
This is one of the big secrets of living and communicating with others. How can we cultivate this? In connection with meditation we sometimes come across the phrase “seeing things as they really are”. It sounds wise but we are not so sure what it means. As we spend a bit of time practicing we notice this ability to experience things in a spacious, open way, beginning to unfold…