mindfulness

Struggling to Meditate?

Part One.   Meditation is great, we all know that now. Long since disregarded as merely an esoteric activity for hippies and followers of Eastern religions, there is now a plethora of supportive medical research, classes in almost every town and village, and more apps than you can fill your …

Everyone Should Practice Qigong

I believe that everyone should do qigong. Young, old, and everyone in between. It’s the perfect activity and here I offer three all encompassing reasons why:   Mind “You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realise this and you will find strength” Marcus Aurelius, Meditations.   Whilst social …

Martial Arts for Stress, Balance, and Happiness

During the 15 years that I had a career in the corporate world, I was often asked how I was able to not display signs of stress when everything seemed to be going wrong – as it very often does when you work in IT!   My standard answer was, …

Just get started…

This week’s theme is all about how to get yourself started on a task, instead of delaying, and I have to admit that I don’t have anything other than a general  topic for this blog post as yet. So, I’m just starting… One thing that I like to do sometimes …

Dealing with Stress in the Workplace

I’m lucky enough to be able to work for myself now but I spent the best part of 20 years in a corporate career. Whilst I didn’t always feel that way, many times over the near two decades people would frequently comment on how un-stressed I was at work. My …

This week in the UK it is mental health awareness week. According to the charity Mind, approximately one in four people will experience a mental health issue every year, and one in six people report a mental health problem – such as anxiety or depression – every week.   These …

Qigong

Okay so let’s get the two most important and commonly asked questions out of the way first:   What does it mean? How do you say it?   You will see it translated as ‘Energy Work’, ‘Energy Cultivation’, ‘Working with Energy’, ‘Energy Life Cultivation’ – and other similar terms.   …

Mindfulness of Breath – a meditation in four parts…

Following on from my blog post of yesterday, where I wrote about the importance of a good breathing practice – here is a very simple meditation that I learnt when I used to visit the Brighton Buddhist Centre on my lunch breaks. Working in technology and computing, these lunch breaks …

The Best Medicine: East Meets West

Western medicine is amazing, one of the wonders of the modern world and how could I fault a medical system that keeps billions of people alive by curing illness, disease and improving quality of life for many who live with chronic conditions? Including members of my close family. There are …

8 Ways Tai Chi Improves Health [INFOGRAPHIC]

  We can’t express enough the many health & wellbeing benefits of tai chi practise. For the body and mind, there are few forms of exercise that bring so many rewards with no harmful effects. Tai chi is low impact, so the perfect complement to other more intense workouts or …