Meditation

What do we offer?

Our experienced facilitators guide participants through various mindfulness and meditation practices, and help in establishing a personal meditation routine that accords with your and lifestyle and commitments.

  • For Complete Beginners: Embark on your meditation journey in a non-religious manner with our 2-day “How to Meditate Course.”
  • For Intermediate/Advanced Practitioners: For those with a strong commitment, consider our 4-year In-Depth Meditation Training, an online collaboration between three international centres.
  • Going Deeper: Our structured meditation retreats are led by highly qualified and experienced teachers and give the opportunity for a more profound experience of the benefits of meditation which will then strengthen your ongoing practice.

Our regular meditation classes, courses, and meditation retreats provide guidance from highly experienced practitioners who, over the years, have worked on developing a stable, strong and spacious mind. These meditation practice sessions will provide an opportunity to go deeper, and to keep moving forward, as you refine and strengthen your own practice.

We support anyone who is new to meditation, as well as more advanced practitioners, and we offer completely secular courses and practice sessions for those who want the simplicty of a strong mindfulness practice without any religious concepts.

We also offer practice sessions, weekend courses and longer retreats for anyone interested in pursuing a path of meditation in the Mahayana Buddhist lineage following the teachings of H.H. the Dalai Lama.

What is meditation?

Develop a more harmonious relationship with your own mind and body through the profound practice of mindfulness meditation. Learn to stabilise your mind and thoughts, and be less affected by distractions and repetitive or unhelpful thinking habits. With a clear and supported approach to meditation you can discover a more balanced, peaceful, and mindful way to live your life.

Meditation is the intentional act of placing the mind, over and over, on the precision and clarity of the present moment. When distraction arises you can recognise it, without judgment or resistance, and simply let it go, returning your awareness to the here and now, using the breath as your anchor.

In this way, we can steadily reduce the power of distracting habits of thought, and strengthen the minds natural ability to be fully engaged with the richness of the present moment. Through meditation, we can access a healthier relationship with our own thoughts and emotions, and cultivate compassion for oneself and also for others. We can become less reactive, and more able to respond genuinely to the joys and challenges or our lives.

How to meditate

Some people think mindfulness meditation means ‘stopping thinking’, or ’emptying the mind’. In fact it is about being willing to fully experience the ways in which our mind distracts itself. We can only do this through allowing distractions to arise, noticing them, and then letting them go. Think of it as like watching traffic flow on a motorway, or clouds drifting in the sky – you are allowing thoughts to come and go, without feeding them or resisting.

Through regular practice, you will improve your ability to let go of unhelpful thoughts and instead remain focused on what truly matters. In doing so we can gain more insight into the nature of our thoughts and emotions, and the mind itself.