Freelance Writer
My loop of north-east Vietnam wasn’t my first bike trip, and I was happy that the sum total of my prior experience meant that, if nothing else had been learned over the years, at least on this one I didn’t pack much. Another product of experience revealed itself quite early on, as I became aware…
There are many reasons to run a long-distance race. Achievement is one of them. I’ve done that before, and it did me the world of good. But this time I decided not to ruin a sunny day.
Mountains beyond mountain. Photo by Yannic Läderach on Unsplash It started as a physical thing I’ve been doing yoga on and off, regularly and irregularly, for a few years now. Like a lot of lads, I started because I was interested in the physical side of it: the stretching, the flexing, the strength training that…
Photo by Nathalie Désirée Mottet on Unsplash That’s not me in the photo obviously, but you get the idea. Running during lockdown – running away from home, if you will – has made me realise just all the things other than training that I love about the sport: the non-competitive, non-performance-enhancement side. To me they’re just as important…
An overview of some of the practical aspects of joining a silent meditation retreat run at one of the Dhamma Centres around the world
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Blaise Pascal “All right, brain. You don’t like me and I don’t like you, but let’s just do this and I can get back to killing you with beer.” Homer Simpson “It’s a DEAL!” Homer Simpson’s brain I’d just arrived…
I did a 10-day Vipassana meditation retreat in Japan earlier this year. There were so many things I could say about it and the benefits intensive meditation can give you, as can establishing a long-term practice. But after numerous failed attempts to put these things into sufficient words, I gave up. That’s when I noticed the one thing that has stuck with me – I’ve learned how to take action