Autumn and Winter Well-being

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.

Rainforest Mind: Wild Therapy with Stephen Tame

Rainforest Mind with Kaspa Thompson
Rainforest Mind with Kaspa Thompson
Rainforest Mind: Wild Therapy with Stephen Tame
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Stephen Tame

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/

Rainforest Mind: Developing Empathy with special guest Satya Robyn

Rainforest Mind with Kaspa Thompson
Rainforest Mind with Kaspa Thompson
Rainforest Mind: Developing Empathy with special guest Satya Robyn
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Me and Satya on holiday, exploring the Yorkshire moors

Following on from the last episode Empathy With My EnemiesI 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

Rainforest Mind: Empathy with my enemies

Rainforest Mind with Kaspa Thompson
Rainforest Mind with Kaspa Thompson
Rainforest Mind: Empathy with my enemies
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Freshly painted by Matthew Casey

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.

Rainforest Mind: Zen and Christianity: An Interview with Rev Ian Spencer

Rainforest Mind with Kaspa Thompson
Rainforest Mind with Kaspa Thompson
Rainforest Mind: Zen and Christianity: An Interview with Rev Ian Spencer
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Rev Ian Spencer (front row, 2nd from left) in his Zen robes at Amida Mandala

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.

Rainforest Mind: Places of Worship? What’s the point?

Rainforest Mind with Kaspa Thompson
Rainforest Mind with Kaspa Thompson
Rainforest Mind: Places of Worship? What's the point?
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After listening to episode three: wildness, someone asked me, “If the jewelled forest in the Buddhist teaching is a call back to a real wild forest, why build temples?”

I take that question as my springboard this week, thinking about how both wildness and temples have supported my spiritual practice and drifting off into other interesting and not completely unrelated areas.

Hope you enjoy listening. Do drop me an email or comment below.

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Rainforest Mind: Wildness

Rainforest Mind with Kaspa Thompson
Rainforest Mind with Kaspa Thompson
Rainforest Mind: Wildness
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The importance of wildness, why wildness is fundamental, and trusting the process.

I talk about getting out into the natural world, and touch on the process that led to the creation of the Amida Mandala Temple.

In this episode I refer to Isabella Tree’s Wilding, and Nick Totton’s Wild Therapy.

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Rainforest Mind: Needs, Gratitude and Grace

Rainforest Mind with Kaspa Thompson
Rainforest Mind with Kaspa Thompson
Rainforest Mind: Needs, Gratitude and Grace
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In this episode I recount discovering a deep need (that’s probably impossible to meet),  what helps me work through such needs, and how I can land in a place of feeling deeply satisfied.

The Buddhafield talk is below, as is the talk from Sarah Boak that I mention.

Kaspa’s talk from Buddhafield Festival:

Sarah Boak’s talk:

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Rainforest Mind: Buddhism and Christianity

Rainforest Mind with Kaspa Thompson
Rainforest Mind with Kaspa Thompson
Rainforest Mind: Buddhism and Christianity
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This week I’m talking about Christianity and Buddhism, inspired by a recent (good) experience in a church, and Justin Whitaker’s blog post: The three Jewels of Buddhism and Multi-faith Affiliations

I also draw on Paul F. Knitter’s book Without Buddha I Could Not Be A Christian and David Steindl-Rast’s Deeper Than Words.

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Letting go, unravelling and something new

There is a time and a place for most things.

When I started teaching mindfulness classes when we moved to Malvern I was excited to offer them, and I’ve always enjoyed the energy of the groups.

Back in late spring/early summer I took a break from teaching. At the time I imagined this would be a short break but I noticed a reluctance to programme in any more courses, so I gave myself a longer break.

Now – at the end of summer – that reluctance remains.

In his book on vocation, Let Your Life Speak, Parker J. Palmer describes speaking to a Quaker elder about vocation and calling. When is my calling going to appear, He wonders. He talks about how long he’s waited and yet how nothing is calling him forward. The elder tells him that she was born into a Quaker family, and now decades later she has still never heard her calling. Then she pauses for a moment and says that what she has experienced is paths closing off behind her, and that she takes this to be God’s way of showing her the way.

Teaching mindfulness meditation is a path that is closing behind me.

Personally meditation has been a great support, but it’s not my own core practice. My core practice is nembutsu – reciting the name of the Buddha and trusting in the light of unconditional love.

I’m not sure what I might do in that Tuesday evening space yet. I’m not sure if mindfulness will appear in a different form in the future. I am sure that teaching classes in the way that I used to feels like stepping back into an old version of myself.

Earlier this year Brenè Brown wrote about mid-life crisis as an unravelling. She described the process as a letting go of what no longer serves. I don’t think I’m having a mid-life crisis, but I do like the idea of a healthy unravelling, and of letting go of what no longer serves. Letting go of the classes is a part of that.

I hope you can take this as an invitation to let go of what isn’t serving you at the moment, and an invitation to find your own way forwards into something fresh, and supportive.

I’m still offering mindfulness one to ones, working individually with people either with mindfulness or therapeutically gives me a lot of pleasure and satisfaction. When I’m working from that pleasure, satisfaction, and inspiration, the people I’m working with get a much better experience.

I don’t know exactly what the new shape of my life looks like yet. I love running services at the temple, I love putting energy into my new podcast, and I’m looking forward to more closely integrating body-work and ecology with my therapeutic work.

Thanks to everyone that has taken part in classes in the past, and I do hope our paths will cross again sometime.