Are You Physically Here? Grounded To Planet Earth

So many of us are not actually on this planet even though we may think we are. We are elsewhere thinking about the future, reminiscing about the past or doing a multitude of other things, but how physically present are any of us? I walk everywhere as we haven’t got a car and I rarely get the bus so I am very physical, yet this week I discovered I am…

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The Mindful Way Through Depression – Freeing Yourself From Chronic Unhappiness – Book Review

Title: The Mindful Way Through Depression – Freeing Yourself From Chronic Unhappiness Authors: Mark Williams, John Teasdale, Zindel Segal & Jon Kabat-Zinn Published: 2007 Publisher: Guilford Pages: 273 Price:  £15.99 (paperback) 20% discount for UK readers using MINDKMS13 code (Valid from 1st August – 30th September) Click HERE Other parts of the world : $21.95 (RRP) Click HERE Genre: Self Help   Winner of the Association for Behavioural and  Cognitive Therapies (ABCT) Self-Help Seal of Merit!…

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Attached To Feeling Good

Many ‘spiritual’ teachings encourage positive thinking, yet by doing so they are resisting the entirety of our human experience. The teachings can often be so generalised that they do not take into account an individual’s personal history, conditioning and much more. What we need is balance, and to not be attached to feeling joyful or blissed-up and happy. In Buddhism it is said non-attachment to everything is the key to…

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Holding Fear With A Compassionate Heart – Anxiety

When fear arises, most of us will do anything to not feel it. We use all kinds of mechanisms to resist fear; overeating, drinking, watching TV, playing computer games, listening to music, over-socialising, over-working and generally keeping busy. Yet the underlying fear still remains.  It’s like trying to hold a balloon under water. All these attempts to diffuse the feelings simply do not work. I was like this for most…

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Anxiety & Mindfulness – Seeing The Noise Of This World As Family

    As someone who has had anxiety since a young child, I know what it feels like to have the debilitating fear that floods you when the anxiety comes up, from panic attacks to social anxiety, to anxiety that just comes up for no conscious reason at all. So, I decided to try something new after years of using avoidance tactics. Mindfulness Meditation Last week I attended my first…

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Career Ladders Don’t Need To Be Climbed By Everyone

Since an early age I had a wide range of ideas about what I would like to experience in life, but these never stayed the same, they changed and evolved as I changed. Now in my late thirties, I am surrendering to the fact that a career is not for everybody. A few nights ago I had a long drawn-out dream. I dreamt that to get anywhere in the world…

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Wanting & Desires – Is ‘Creating Your Reality’ Bringing You Inner Peace?

  Many modern teachers tell us to focus on what we want; to focus on our desires, but what if it is not the object of desire that we want, but the relief from the agitation inside brought on by the wanting. Is this not what we truly desire? Living an unconventional life right now, where I have few material possessions, the desire and the wanting for more than I…

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Can You Be A Nobody? Instead Of Trying To Be Somebody

How does this make you feel? Deflated? Sad? Empowered? Now what if I said:  “You Are A Very Special Somebody.”     How does this make you feel? Better, happier?  Well like most of us, you’re probably suffering from somebody-itis. This is the need to be a special somebody. You may think, ‘Isn’t that what life is all about? Striving to have some sort of impact on the world, add…

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No Fast Way To Self-Love : Self Acceptance Is The Beginning

The idea of self-love didn’t even cross my mind until 14 years ago. Before that time I assumed you get what you want in life, (money, job, partner, friends etc.) and that is happiness. Self-love was a foreign concept to me. While in Australia my world opened wide to a more feeling way to live in the world, and instead of my life revolving around outer change it became more…

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