I’m a little nervous about releasing this episode. It’s just me today, no guests, and I’m talking about my experience of depression, and how it is to be a Buddhist teacher and psychotherapist and have the ‘black dog’ as a companion on the path.
This is an important topic. We are all human and some of the trickiest situations arise when we don’t recognise all the different parts of ourselves, and all the different parts of the people we are in relationship with.
In this episode I’m talking to Jayne Johnson about life in community, and about the nomadic life.
Jayne got rid of most of her stuff, sold her flat and now lives nomadically.
Why leave the householder life? How do we live in community? And what is it like to leave the settled life? What are the benefits, and the costs?
Jayne is a body psychotherapist, and therapy trainer. Her website is here: shamanismembodied.com and you can find many of the courses Jayne teaches on here: erthworks.co.uk
Other episodes you might like
In this episode I’m talking to Clark Strand and Perdita Finn.
It was a quote by Clark that first grabbed my interested in speaking to them – he wrote about moving from ‘spirituality to ecology’.
In the end I forgot to ask about that quote, but we had a great conversation about lots of things and that theme found it’s own way in to the conversation.
We talked about Zen, about different kinds of practice groups, touched on the twelve steps, talked about the importance of trees and I heard about the history and importance of rosary practice and making prayers to the divine mother… great stuff
They are both writers, Perdita’s most recent book is The Reluctant Psychic, with Suzan Saxman, Clark’s most recent book is Waking Up to the Dark
As well as meeting in real life, you can find and join The Way of the Rose through their Facebook group.
Other episodes you might like:
You can view all episodes here: Rainforest Mind archive
In this episode I’m in conversation with Allison Priestman, body psychotherapist and wild psychotherapist.
We talk about spirituality coming through or from the body, receiving something from the natural world and examples of wild spirituality.
I’ve looked for the C.S. Lewis quote, ‘God is wild’ and it looks like Allison was right – it is from The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, “He’s Wild you know, not like a tame lion.”
I mentioned Gerald May’s book Wilderness and Nick Totton’s book Wild Therapy.
Other related episodes:
Allison’s website for her therapy practice is here: http://www.allisonpriestman.co.uk/ and details of the Embodied Relational Therapy and Wild Therapy training courses are here: http://erthworks.co.uk/
In this episode I recount three experiences of being in sacred space, one on a rooftop in Delhi, one on a campsite in Harlech, and one during a five day chanting retreat.
What was I encountering in those moments, and does it matter what it was?
How do we interpret spiritual experience? Did I find God, the Buddha, or just the world?
This month I was asked to write about coping with the disappearing sun, for our local magazine All About Malvern. This is the article I wrote:
Worcester has disappeared into the mist that is sitting in the Severn Valley. The garden is damp from a wave of rain that passed over the hills. Soon, the sun will dip under the horizon and the dark night will come.
I’m writing this in early September, and it’s not quite evening. The days have been getting noticeably shorter recently, and I am reminded of winter days in my youth when I would walk to work in the dark, walk home in the dark and spend the day longing for natural light rather than the fluorescent glow of the department store I was working in.
As summer draws to a close I also find myself remembering those first days of sunshine this year, after the long snowy winter. The sprits of the whole town seemed to lift when the bright weather arrived.
What can we do to stay happy as the hours of light become less, the temperature cools, and the clouds roll in?
Hygge
Lots of you will have heard of Hygge. Pronounced Hue-guh, this is a Danish word that means something like cosiness. When interviewed by the BBC Susanne Nilson said, “Hygge could be families and friends getting together for a meal, with the lighting dimmed, or it could be time spent on your own reading a good book.”
Maybe we can think of Hygge as creating conditions that help us to relax: Lighting candles, or sitting around a fire (inside or outside), creating a winter evening playlist that slowly gets more and more chilled, or sharing a good meal with friends.
Getting outside
As Arthur Wainwright famously said, “There’s no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing.” Getting outside means getting vitamin D. It means moving the body, and it means you’re more likely to look at trees. All of these things are really good for you. In cold damp weather I pften feel reluctant to go up onto the hills, but every time I do I feel better afterwards.
Eating well
This summer I’ve been enjoying lots of wonderful salads and Buddha bowls for lunch. Our veg. patch needed plenty of watering but the results were amazing, and it’s been great to go outside pick something and have it on my plate minutes later. Now the earth is turning different things are coming into season, and I’ll be enjoying homemade soups with squash, leeks and other winter goodies.
Sometimes – particularly when I’m on my own – cooking can seem like a chore. But when I eat good food I always feel better.
Community
Maybe it feels easier to meet people when the weather is good, and easier to stay at home on your own on cold dark nights. But we are social beings. We each like different amounts of company, but some company is good for the soul, so host a dinner party, meet a friend for a coffee, or join a book club.
Plan something you enjoy
If the thought of a long dark winter really does lower your mood then make sure you plan some bright spots. Make a date with yourself, or a friend, and put it in your diary. Having something to look forward to in the future can make you feel better right now.
As the weather changes, and the light changes, it can be easy to fall into wishing for the autumn and winter to already be over. All of the suggestions I’ve made today are based on accepting the reality of what is, and finding ways of appreciating and making the most of what is happening right now.
Whether you are a cold weather person or a hot weather person, I hope you have an easy and enjoyable autumn and winter.
In this episode we explore Wildness and Wild Therapy. Stephen Tame is a trainer on the Wild Therapy training course, and also on the Embodied Relational Training course that I’m currently taking.
We talk about what wildness means. Is it chaos and unpredictability? Or something else? We talk about what supports wildness, and wildness in urban settings.
We talk about the ideal of Wild Therapy – what kind of people is it trying to produce?
You can find details of the Wild Therapy training and Embodied Related Training on erthworks.co.uk, including a Wild Therapy weekend workshop in October 2018.
Nick Totton’s book is called Wild Therapy. The Charles Eisenstein essay Stephen mentions is Invitation into a Living Planet and James Lovelock has written about the Gaia hypothesis in many of books. Stephen also mentions Joanna Macy (if the world’s dying, let’s go down with some grace) the environmental social activist, and Buddhist scholar, who has written eight books.
Stephen’s own website, with details of his therapy practice is: https://www.stephentame.com/
Following on from the last episode Empathy With My Enemies, I ask the question what supports empathy? How can we be more empathic.
To help me answer this question I’ve roped in a special guest – psychotherapist, Buddhist priest and writer of novels and self-help books, Satya Robyn.
Satya also happens to be married to me, and we co-run the temple here in Malvern.
We talk about the therapy/client relationship, emapthy in friendships and how spiritual experience can support empathy.
Apologies for the slightly echoey audio in the conversation. I had a one microphone set up and as we were different distances from the mic you could hardely hear Satya on the recoding 🙁 I fiddled around for ages to get the levels right, but there were some unwanted side effects. I’m still learning!
You can find Satya online (including details of her books) at www.satyarobyn.com
In this episode I talk about the power of dialogue across difference, using the example of two counsellors who now work together, both grieving the loss of their sons. One killed by an ISIS suicide bomber, the other whilst fighting for ISIS.
I talk about processing my own feelings that came up when I took part in the Worcester March for Unity on September 1st, marching past an EDL protest taking part on the same day.
And I talk about my vow to save all beings. All of them? Even the ones I don’t like.
I couldn’t think of a good image to illustrate this, so today’s photo is of our brand new mandala in the temple hallway, painted and donated by the artist Mathew Casey.
Today I enjoyed spending some of the morning with Rev Ian Spencer. Ian is an Anglican priest and runs a retreat centre not far from here. He’s very involved in interfaith work and is also a Zen Buddhist. He seemed like the perfect person to speak to about Buddhism and Christianity.
In this conversation I ask him what Zen Buddhism offers his Christian practice, how he makes sense of ‘The only way to the Father is through me’ and we get to the mystical heart of each tradition.
We cover topics like intimacy, holiness, relative and absolute truth.
Ian mentions books by James Finley and Thomas Merton.