Who are you? By - Dr Liz Sparkes 

 

If you are searching for that one person to change your life, just pause, and look in the mirror. 

 

The first time I properly started to consider this was during my early experiences of meditation. My teacher Suryacitta, spoke of a beautiful jewel which represents us. This jewel over time becomes covered in ice, the ice represents all of the beliefs that we take on from our culture, religion, family, friends and our experiences. How we view things is very much a matter of perspective. Taking on all of this 'stuff' can really distort our perspective. These views and ideas can distort our true nature and in my experience 'lead you down the garden path'! I went pretty far down it! However, with the support of meditation and healing to help me let go, I am back on track and in touch. 

 

Ongoing research suggest that mindfulness practices can bring real benefits when applied in work situations. A review of research into mindfulness in work concluded: 

‘mindfulness influences attention, with downstream effects on functional domains of cognition, emotion, behaviour, and physiology. Ultimately, these domains impact key workplace outcomes, including performance, relationships, and well-being’ 

(Good et al. 2015: 118 - 115) 

 

 

While in Glasgow facilitating a retreat some months ago, Suryacitta asked me to write a blog for him and I said yes, having no idea at the time what on earth I would write about but figured an idea would come at some point! Lots of ideas did come- and then they went– my story from going on Suryacitta’s eight weeks beginners’ course to becoming a teacher myself; how Mindfulness helps me be more of the parent I want to be to my two daughters; writing about The Wee Retreat (the Community Interest Company I set up which organises meditation and wellbeing events in Glasgow)… none of them really struck a chord. It was when I was sitting on the veranda on the first morning of the retreat in Spain this summer that I knew what I would write about- meditation. 

 

Our meditation retreats UK seem to becoming very popular. More and more people seem interested in attending either a meditation day retreat, a weekend meditation retreat or longer, perhaps a seven day mindfulness meditation retreat. 

 

But what is a meditation retreat? Normally our attention in life goes onto the people and things in our life. We have responsibilites; dogs need walking, dinner needs cooking, meetings take place, phone calls to do and so on. In all of thise activity is can be difficult to sense who we are and what we really want in our lives. A meditation retreat is a time and place where we take our attention away from the external responsibilites and to begin to pay attention to ourselves. 

 

There is much more understanding and greater publicity than ever before of the real human cost behind the mental health issues that so many of us deal with everyday. 

 

Our young student's powerful blog of her mindfulness classes last year, gives us another dimension to the power of friendship, the need for perseverence and her courage. 

 

When my best friend asked me if I wanted to go on a mindfulness course, I was immediately doubtful. 

 

I'm the type of person who can't ever mentally switch off. Add to that a lot of external factors - an intense relationship breakdown, debt, stresses at work, an upcoming house move and a masters dissertation and you're left with extreme insomnia and severe depression. I was at a point in my life where I did not want to live my life, my thoughts were a constant stream of self criticism and on several occasions I tried to end this. 

 

One of my most profound lessons from Suryacitta’s teachings is: understanding the true value of direct experience…. 

 

As a traditional acupuncturist, steeped in Daoist theory (Yin/Yang, the Law of the Five Elements, the Eight Principles etc.), my critical thinking often prompts me to challenge new teachings to see how they fit into the law models that are familiar to me. 

 

Your body holds a lot of answers, a lot of wisdom. All of the experiences that we have, people we meet, and the things we are told create a series of reactions within the body. Spending so much time in the mind often reduces the amount of awareness we have about how our body is responding to the environment. 

 

 

The Latin derivative for the word emotion, ‘emotere’, literally means energy in motion. We can find ourselves searching for a cure, when actually what we are looking for can be found right here, within our physical body. We can notice the energy in our bodies change when we experience strong emotions.  

 

Around 10 years ago I spent a month in Nepal with Gaynor my wife trekking the Himalayas, it was a good trip. Whilst there I must have contracted some sort of virus which my body didn’t like. 

 

One evening whilst having a meal together I felt awful, I was sick and needed to go to the bathroom. 

 

I actually passed out and my wife got me back safely to our hotel. The next day there was so no sign of anything amiss. 

 

I listen to Surya’s Monday morning meditation on Facebook as he guides us to, “Drop into the body”. And it feels like a drop. I’m off to Krakow this summer and a friend recommended I go to some underground caves, which involves a dabble in pot-holing to get there. So now I don’t meditate as often, coming into the body feels like delving into the depths of a cave, with a hint of trepidation at what might be lurking around the next corner. After the initial drop, I’m fine – which I imagine is similar to the actual cave experience – but I’m definitely more tentative when it’s time to ‘come home to the body’ compared to when I was regularly practising throughout my course. 

 

Mindfulness is now being taught in so many ways, in so many settings and by many different people. 

 

Mindfulness to me is something of beauty. Although it is not a thing, an object, to me it is still beautiful. I often use the image of a jewel to illustrate mindfulness in teaching. A jewel has many facets, you turn the jewel a fraction and there is another facet, shimmering right at you. When running a course, or a series of workshops what we are really doing is exploring the jewel of mindfulness or awareness, and it is something we explore for the rest of our lives if we commit ourselves to it. 

 

All plants and trees are healthier and stronger when they have healthy roots, they have more stability if those roots reach deep into the earth. 

 

If we take a plant out of the earth and lay it on the ground it doesn’t take long before it withers and dies. 

 

Mindfulness is like a tree, it too has roots, and its roots go very deep into the Buddhist tradition. Roots which go back 2500 years.