Following one of the live sessions, Alistair talks about the experience of dissociation. This is a natural function of our minds, but it can also erase our natural kindness - especially towards ourselves. How do you work with dissociation? #dissociation #psychology #Buddhism #MindspringsPlease do join our 3x weekly meditation group on Zoom. You can…

An excerpt from the Holy Island Retreat October 2022. Alistair is talking about the theory of Buddha nature, that we are already enlightened at our core. And even it's not true - is it beneficial? Does it change the way we are in the world. And does it lead us to the beautiful moment of taking our bodhisattva vow.…

This is an excerpt from the Holy island Retreat in October 2023 which was focusing on the wisdom aspect of compassion. Alistair sketches out the way compassion is seen within the various yanas of Buddhism and how 'forgettery' lies in the centre of our suffering and the suffering of others.Af Alistair Appleton

Discussing with Mindsprings member, Dameon, about the issue of other people's anxiety. Our anxiety work often - rightly- focuses on getting our own nervous systems under control. But what about the people around us? if you would like to join the Mindsprings anxiety community come along on Tuesday evening 6pm UK for an hour's stressbusting practice:…

Following a meditation exploring self-love, we were talking about the nuttiness of hating your experience. After all, it's the only one we're going to have. I then went on to flag up the social prohibition against loving ourselves - it's a bit "grandiose", or "selfish" or worse: "narcissistic. But narcissism is very different from love... Please do…

The negative news industry.Responding to a student’s comment on the distractions of the news media, Alistair speaks about the nature of news as an industry and the myth of ‘being informed’ that drives it.What if we were to question the mechanism of news and what it means for us?Join in the conversation live at the Mindsprings Practice Space. It's f…

Jane asked: "Is awareness the same as consciousness? And how do you deal with someone with a lot of shame or someone with no shame, like Donald Trump?" Alistair discusses how the definitions of awareness and consciousness are different in Buddhism and Psychotherapy.What do you think?Af Alistair Appleton

In this podcast, Alistair, (after being interrupted by Ben the dog 😀) discusses distractions with the Mindsprings students. He says tension is the motor of distraction. The tenser you make the mind the more thoughts and thinking arise. Just as the more you squeeze the bottom of the toothpaste the faster it comes out of the top.Do you get distracted…

Alistair talks about the three things that dance the waltz of Samsara - Delusion, Wanting & Hatred .Af Alistair Appleton

From a Mindsprings meditation Zoom class discussion. Buddhists take aim at the fixed nature of our sense of selves. They believe suffering is caused when we try to keep ourselves in a fixed state. Alistair says at Mindsprings we are exploring if there really is an unchanging person within us, a 'self.' Perhaps we will find out the Buddhists are wro…

Alistair discusses lasting happiness following a question from Jane, a Mindsprings student. We have to look in the right place for bliss. Blissful happiness is in the field of awareness, not in our emotional bodies.Af Alistair Appleton

Are you a worrier?In this Podcast recorded from a Mindsprings meditation class, Alistair busts the myths around worrying.Af Alistair Appleton

Alistair discusses toxic relationships and how to empower yourself to change things.Do you have any difficult relationships in your life?Af Alistair Appleton

We're not made up of one coherent self, Alistair explains, but rather there are different parts of us at play or at war. When our internal managers, firefighters and exiles are fighting we suffer. Loving our different parts is a route to finding inner peace.Af Alistair Appleton

Alistair discusses Maitri with his students. Maitri meditation is kindness and compassion for ourselves and others. He says it starts with recognising the knarly patterns within ourselves that get in the way of loving other people.Af Alistair Appleton

Alistair remembers his mother saying 'People who ask don't get.' Yet, he says, in Tibetan traditions asking for blessings is an act of devotion. This discussion with students centres on the differences between western attitudes and religion where prayer and asking are supreme spiritual activities. Can you ask for help or are you afraid of asking?…

Alistair talks about Internal Family Systems. The different parts inside us, identified by therapist Richard C Schwartz. We all have parts playing out an internal role, some are vulnerable, whereas other parts of us are protectors or managers. Learning to recognise these parts and understanding how they interact is key to understanding ourselves.…

How do you react when someone hurts you?In this recorded teaching, Alistair says it's not ok to be a punchbag. A healthier way is to acknowledge our pain and then try to understand where it is coming from in the other person.Af Alistair Appleton

It's easy to be compassionate with yourself when you're feeling OK but we are often very mean to ourselves. In this recorded teaching, Alistair says the essence of self-compassion is being OK with whatever our experience is. Even if that experience is crazy-nuts.Af Alistair Appleton

We don't meditate to become good meditators. We meditate to become kind human beings. In this recorded lesson, Alistair discusses steadying the mind and the benefits of different mediation teachings.Af Alistair Appleton

From a recorded lesson: Alistair discusses thoughts and thinking with students. It is not thoughts that make us unhappy. Thoughts come and go but it is unconscious thinking, ego thoughts that cause suffering to arise. Soothing our minds soothes our thoughts. If the body is unified our thoughts ride the Windhorse of the bodys energy.…

In answer to a students question, Alistair discusses thoughts and feelings. Instead of being bulldozed by our thoughts, we can learn to dance with them. Gentle familiarisation of the inner landscape increases our wisdom and reduces suffering.Af Alistair Appleton

Alistair discusses suffering in a teaching session. We are conditioned to believe that we should be suffering but when you remove 'me' you end the struggle.Af Alistair Appleton

In this lively recorded teaching Alistair discusses how we can stay in love with our mind and be happy in the here and now.Af Alistair Appleton

In this Podcast, Alistair discusses Jaak Panksepp's Wheel of emotions. Emotions, which pre-date thoughts aren't bad or wrong but all animals share them. Panksepp identified seven primal emotional patterns, as well as negative emotions such as fear, sadness and anger there is also caring, lust, seeking and play.…

In this podcast Alistair discusses Selfing V Being. It's a bit like salt, a little bit for flavour but too much is bad and it spoils everything. Too much self gets in the way. When we limit ourselves to our idea of ourselves, we run into problems.Af Alistair Appleton

Alistair discusses the Lojong slogans - Don't talk about injured limbs, translates as don't focus on other peoples wounds and defects. Don't be judgemental.Af Alistair Appleton

Yoga V Buddhism: In this recorded teaching, Alistair speculates that the emphasis in Yoga is on improving oneself, but Buddha would call this poisoned foodAf Alistair Appleton

Was Freud right - is it all about sex? From the Live Sessions in February 2021. Tamsyn mentioned her dislike of reading Freud during her therapy training, and Alistair jumped to his defence.Af Alistair Appleton

Recorded teaching from the Mindsprings mediation school: Thoughts, feelings and unexamined beliefs become visible, during the practice of the Four Fields. We become aware of all the clutter we have in our experience and the tragedy of spending years disassociating from life. Alistair explains to a student, having preferences is part of being human.…

Having an ego is part of being human. Our sense of ourselves, our reality, rests on activity in certain parts of the brain. But identifying as only an ego can be problematic. When the ego believes it is the only thing, we can become fixated, leading to self-absorption and paranoia.Af Alistair Appleton

It's not the experience that's the problem, we can't control that. It's the stance we have towards the experience that generates the suffering and negativity in our lives. In order to reach an openhearted space of awareness without preference, we need to be compassionate to ourselves first.Af Alistair Appleton

Recorded teaching from Alistair: Many of us live our lives inside a well-oiled cocoon and run on autopilot like zombies. Others find the cocoon creepy and diseased and experience a calling to find out what is outside of it. Outside the cocoon, we can find a sense of aliveness and the fullness of life.…

In this podcast, Alistair considers religion. Different faith traditions have different names for awakened energy but everyone plugs into the same supercharged higher power regardless of the name it is given and all races and religions concur that this power is love.Af Alistair Appleton

Shame is the fear of ostracization and it is one of the key practises to work with in Therapy. In this Podcast, Alistair concludes that shame is the glue that holds much of our pain-creating unconscious patterns together. These damage us and those around us. By sitting with 'what is' we can feel pain but ultimately it is a healing pain.…

Life hurts! A recorded teaching from Alistair on the inescapable suffering of being alive. The first hurt being getting sick, particularly relevant in this time of Covid. And the second is the hurt we cause ourselves which, when we are trapped in the dark prison of ignorance, is more difficult to love.…

In this teaching, Alistair shows students an exercise to demonstrate there is no fixed self. We are not just our skin, hair or bones. By putting awareness into our hand and knowing it from the inside, we become more plugged in and get a more accurate overall reference point.Af Alistair Appleton

Our sacredness is occluded from us because of the world we live in. Cultural forces conspire to make us needy and greedy. Bigger than our rational thinking minds, the full potential of being human is magical.Af Alistair Appleton

We think our bodies are one fixed thing and should be perfectly balanced. Still, when we start to live in our energy body we see that we are actually wildly asymmetric and different sides are dominant at different times during the day.Af Alistair Appleton

The way we look after ourselves is important but it is easy to get into a state of poverty mentality when we are ill. By embracing a time for convalescence and plugging into a care network, we build support with others in the same situation. These types of resources help us expand our empathy as we realise that our suffering is a part of much wider…

Where is your sense of self within your body? Where is the core of your awareness? In the west, we often think we're situated behind our eyes but in this podcast, Alistair discusses that in the here and now we have more of a sense of ourselves along the front of our spine.Af Alistair Appleton

There is more to us than just our thoughts. In this podcast episode, Alistair discusses our notions of our higher self. How we can forget our higher self and the need to reconnect with a bigger portion of ourselves. When we start to connect with the bigger sense of ourselves we realise we are the universe experiencing itself.…

In the final part of Alistair's 2020 Cardiff talk he explores the 'endpoint' of purification. What is the space that we would experience free from any distortion?Af Alistair Appleton

Part three of the 2020 Cardiff talk sees Alistair move into the world of therapy and how this intersects with the concept of 'emptiness'. Can Game of Thrones help us grasp this?Af Alistair Appleton

In the second part of the Cardiff 2020 talk on purification, Alistair explores how this concept functions in Tibetan Buddhist practice.Af Alistair Appleton

This is the first part of Alistair's March 2020 Talk at the Cardiff Buddhist Centre on Cowbridge Road. The talk was on the subject of 'purification' and in this first part Alistair explains why it's interesting to him and how a false and correct understanding has played out in his life to date...Af Alistair Appleton

We can use the breath like a tiny, powerful spotlight into our inner experience. In this excerpt from the Spa Road weekend course on IFS in 2019, Alistair explains how somatic practice puts us in direct contact with the power of awareness, what Trungpa calls 'ordinary mind'.Af Alistair Appleton

Alistair gives a very clear and insightful definition of maitri or love to the self. In an excerpt from the Spa Road Weekend in September 2019, he points out how we habitually ignore the very things that actually need the love...The weekend is happening again in London, 11-12 January 2020: https://mind-springs.org/courses/maitri-meditation-and-inte…

From the October 2019 annual Mindsprings retreat for more advanced practitioners, this podcast is an exploration of why we end up spending so much time on the cushion thinking, thinking, thinking. Instead of demonising it - maybe there's something to understand?Details of 2020's advanced retreat are here: https://mind-springs.org/courses/autumn-ret…

Excerpted from the October Holy Island Retreat in 2019, this is an inspired exploration of why we practice. What's the point of maitri, of using internal family systems, of the whole path of meditation? This podcast gives a good answer...The IFS weekend is happening again in London, 11-12 January 2020: https://mind-springs.org/courses/maitri-medita…