The other day my workmates and I fell into one of those conversations where we reminisced about ‘what we did during Covid’. I won’t bore you with my own recollections, other than to say that I had surplus time on hands and, having dabbled in mindfulness for a while, decided to set myself a challenge: three hours meditation a day for ten days in a row (with breaks obviously). Why go to some misty mountain retreat when I could do my very own zen retreat - a sesshin - at home?

“And yet it moves.” is a phrase supposedly uttered by Galileo Galilei in 1633, after being forced by the Roman Inquisition to recant his claim that the earth moves around the sun. It has come to symbolize a kind of resistance in the face of oppression, a way of saying ‘these are the facts, whatever you say’. It would be nice to think the dark days of dogma are behind us, but any foray into the media shows a world still awash in it: Those who call for peace are accused of sp

Where does our energy come from? Where does it go? How can I get more? It's all about respecting your rhythms... I have a personal condition I’d like to share. Around the middle of almost every afternoon the wheels fall off my car, the air goes out of my balloon and the lead slips out of my pencil. I’m good for nothing. It’s not unusual to find me around 3pm sat gazing numbly into space, totally incapacitated. Where we have many words for it - malaise, torpor, despondency, la

There is an old Chinese proverb to the effect that a person can live for three weeks without food, three days without water and three minutes without oxygen, but you can’t survive for more than three seconds without Chi . Chi, Prana, Spirit, Mana . Ancient belief systems from India to Polynesia mention a Life Force that animates all living things. WIth the right cultivation, this force can be harnessed: for health, for longevity, to gain mastery over oneself or opponents. Har