The Reward is the Journey

They say a change is as good as a rest.  Travelling for nearly 20 hours across continents necessitated a serious rest.  Not being a seasoned long haul traveller, the flight (or more accurately flights) knocked me for six and my body demanded some serious respite on arrival.  Having overcome the jetlag, my body clock adjusted and has acclimatised to the altogether novel environment.  Hong Kong is something else.  I have never seen anything like the cityscape here which truly reaches for the stars and scrapes the sky.  The buildings stand proud, and the city as a whole commands subtle but reverent respect.  The energy is vibrant and optimistic, entrepreneurialism is the first language.  Service comes with a smile, and very often a giggle.  I have never before encountered such pride adjacent to genuine humility.  The product is true hospitality which is itself perhaps the real culture shock.   ...

As the end of the year approaches there is perhaps time for reflection and contemplation.  I'm no navel gazer, for the sake of it, but find much merit in taking stock of the year that's been, in order to appraise and inventory hurdles encountered, obstacles overcome, projects embarked upon and, hopefully, completed.  Our achievements are numerous, in each and every day, if only we stop to notice them.  Week on week we progress, and grow.  Sometimes we need others to reflect this to us, but a quick flick through an appointments diary can reveal some startling stats - where we've been, what we've accomplished, the people we've spent time with whose presence in our lives has added meaning.  "Contemplation seems to be about the only luxury that costs nothing."   Dodie Smith "Few people even scratch the surface, much less exhaust the contemplation of their own experience."  Randolph Bourne With 2012 just around the corner, who would you like to b...

At this time of year, it can feel hard to find time to breathe, let alone commit to a meditation practice.  At times of stress, we are most in need of what we find it hardest to give ourselves: a break.  Time out is more than a magazine and should appear higher up most of our priority lists.  Taking time when there feels to be none available can have a paradoxical effect: pausing just for a few moments, can enable us to see things more clearly, to feel less reactive, and better able to deal with the 12 days of Christmas when tensions tend to run high, even in the most zen of households.  The 3 minute breathing space is a technique developed by Professor Mark Williams et al., whom together devised the 8 week program Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy.  Practised regularly, as part of one's day, it can be a lifesaver and is an accessible bite sized introduction to mindfulness for anyone interested in the benefits it can offer. ...

"I'm not feeling myself today..." "He's not the person he was..." "...I just want my old self back again" Who is it that we want to feel like?  Surely we know that we can never be the same person two days running.  I believe that we change every moment, whether we like it or not:  I am not the same person I was yesterday, as I am constantly informed and influenced by my experience.  With each interaction, I change, as does whoever it is that I have come into contact with.  Tomorrow, I will be somebody else.  This outlook seems, to me, to make sense.  It also conveys hope.  We all have boundless potential to change.  We are capable of infinite growth.  So, what is it that we mean, when we say that we want to be the people we once were?  Do we not, more accurately, crave to return to our affective state at that point in time that was, apparently, preferable, to our current mood state?  I often encounter people wishing to be...

I came across this translation from the Tao Te Ching, a collection of writings attributed to Lao Tzu, the founder of Taoism and felt it resonated with something I've been considering recently concerning the consequences of the direction in which we incline our mind: "Watch your thoughts, for they become words Choose your words, for they become actions Understand your actions, for they become habits Study your habits, for they become character Develop your character, for it becomes your destiny." By becoming more aware of the inclination of our heart and mind, we stand a better chance of living the life we wish to.  According to the excerpt, our words are the 'daggers behind our teeth', and the patterns we are apt to fall into are themselves capable of powerfully shaping our lives.  Therapy can be a space in which to review whether we are in fact headed in the direction we intend to, and gain understanding of the factors which have maybe meant that we have end...

I was exactly where I was meant to be this evening.  I am so glad I attended the Carol Service at St. Martin-in-the-Fields to remember those who are missing this Christmas.  It was an extremely moving service, and I felt simultaneously humbled and privileged to be in the presence of so many families who have been left behind when someone they love disappeared and who continue to live in limbo.   There is something very special about the Church that stands on the edge of Trafalgar Square; it was where the work of Amnesty International was conceived of, and where the charity Shelter was born.  It is a haven for people from all over the world, and is a place of peaceful welcome, and tremendous inspiration.  The surroundings are both wonderfully impressive, yet somehow 'homely'.  The two choirs whose voices supported our own, were magnificent and reminded me of the power of the collective.  There was, for the precious hour of the...

Swimming affords me the opportunity to take a break in my day.  It opens a gap in which it is possible for me to truly abandon the conceptual mode my mind is apt to occupy.  Left unattended, my mind is full of language.  I spend much of my day speaking, and (hopefully) still more listening.  For leisure, I read and I'm rarely without my diary in which I record appointments, and a notebook and pencil - to jot ideas, map a new project, or compose yet another list.  I have no need for language of any sort in the pool, where it is therefore possible for me to switch into a perceptual mode - savouring my moment to moment experience of myself, swimming, right here, right now, length by length, breath by breath by breath... 

There are some conversations that will stay with us forever.  Certain things said to us by certain people are hard to forget, for all the right reasons.  They happen at moments that are apt to change our lives; they shape our characters, and finetune our relationships.  It is at these split seconds that we experience true connection: we truly feel heard, or really understood, appreciated or respected.  These vital snapshots of dialogue remind us of our humanity.  It is, after all, only through communication, that we differentiate ourselves from the rest of the animal kingdom.     "I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I'm not sure you realise that what you heard is not what I meant."   Robert McCloskey (1914-2003, Award winning author and illustrator of children's books)

I find that the older I get and the longer I study (as I seem unable to leave education the two are becoming increasingly synonymous), the nearer a deadline has to be before I spring into action.  Which isn't to say that I don't spend a great deal of time thinking about the assignment at hand, or energy contemplating what it might be like to sit down and grapple with it... It isn't all bad however, as I have discovered that procrastination is itself an art and a prompt for boundless creativity.  Whilst thinking about thinking and planning to plan, I find myself with endless ideas as to alternative pursuits that merit my attention and energy.  All of a sudden those tasks that have slipped off countless to-do lists resurface and are addressed; my correspondence is brought up to date; phone calls and emails are replied to, my admin is swum through and I manage to digest the supplements of the weekend papers.  Enough already!  When wi...

I think about very little when I swim.  The clarity I experience on leaving the pool however is quite noticeable.  This afternoon is occurred to me that I swim greater distances when I don't set myself the goal of doing so.  Whilst I still calculate how far I've swum (assisted by my nifty PoolMate that counts my laps) with nerdy interest as to my average number of strokes per length, and efficiency rate, this is a retrospective exercise.  On getting into the pool, I set aside targets, and goals, preferring instead to see how I'm feeling, and how my swim progresses.   "H 2 0: two parts Heart one part Obsession."   Unknown  No two sessions are ever the same, and I can never accurately judge my energy levels until I'm in the water.  In fact, my energy sometimes surprises me - and more often than not, I have more available than I estimate on my way to the pool.  Swimming in the middle of the day provides a tremendous boost to waning energy le...

I believe in groups.  They intrigue and excite me.  I have seen what they are capable of.  I have benefited from belonging to them.  I believe in the power of a group.  They have lives of their own.  The value of a group is always more than the sum of its constituent parts.    "In union there is strength." Aesop People join groups for all sorts of reasons.  We are born into groups; families, communities and others.  Later we become part of groups some that we come across by accident, by chance of our birth or our parents' decisions.  As adults, we have endless memberships available to us, overlapping and complementary, or at odds with each other, with conflicting ends and ideals.    "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent." John Donne Something very special happens when people get together.  United with a common aim, intention, goal or purpose, a great...