This podcast is designed for you to listen to while on your walk. There are places where I suggest you pause the recording and where it cycles, and can be repeated, so you can make the walk as long as you wish.Here is the link to a video explaining the walking meditation and a meditation you can do to prepare for it on my YouTube channel:Click here to view the YouTube video.Here is the link to the blog entry for this podcast on the podcasts page of my website:Click here to visit the podcast entr...
Apr 24, 2020•9 min
There is a set of practices that I teach which are largely based on the wonderful Buddhist tradition of Metta Bhavana which is the practice of Loving Kindness.These practices are the ones I am teaching this month in #LovingKindness month.Essentially they are meditations in these areas: appreciation, gratitude, compassion, self-compassion, and connection.In this weeks meditation I have added all of these into one single meditation that I am calling the #LovingKindness meditation.This is from a se...
Apr 17, 2020•24 min
This mediation was taught in one of The Meditation Course Group’s Private training sessions which is part of the benefits of joining the course. Visit https://www.meditationcourse.live/ to learn more.Loving Kindness (Metta Bhavana) is the Buddhist tradition of engaging with our comfortable emotions and using them as a way of making progress in our personal development. This includes gratitude, appreciation and compassion. All of this is deeply connected to Mindfulness.This mediation was taught i...
Apr 09, 2020•29 min
The Appreciation MeditationThis practice is part of the core training of The Meditation Course and is fully supported for course members with additional content, training and personally coached support.To find out more about the course, visit our website at: https://www.meditationcourse.live/ You can also just subscribe to our mailing list and get updated with new sample content and offers.The modern mind is culturally conditioned to focus on lack. So much in our lives becomes 'not good enough' ...
Apr 06, 2020•12 min
On Saturday, the 28th of March 2020, I ran an online training class entitled the Two Wolves.There is a Native American tradition which says we all embody two wolves that are constantly fighting for control over our attention, actions, and choices - I call these The Wolf of Fear and The Wolf of Freedom.There is a story that a wise man once taught his grandson that... "The wolf that wins is the wolf that you feed".The previous episode (Episode 15, The Two Wolves Meditations - The Meditation of Sta...
Mar 31, 2020•35 min
In response to the onset of the current crisis, on the 28th of March 2020, I ran an online training class entitled the Two Wolves.There is a Native American tradition which says that we all embody two wolves. The wolves are constantly fighting for control over our attention, actions, and choices.The Wolves represent our better nature and our tendency to be selfish and greedy.I call these The Wolf of Fear and The Wolf of Freedom. The Wolf of Freedom, in my mind, represents freedom from fear.There...
Mar 30, 2020•13 min
This practice is part of the core training of the 2020 Meditation Online Course and is fully supported for course members with additional content, training and personally coached support.This is a meditation that I devised to help calm stubbornly busy mindsIdeally, use it as a precursor to following the breath and not as a replacement for it.Or use it to calm your mind if your mind is stubbornly busy.• Begin by focusing on the breath for about five or ten breaths.• Construct the image of a candl...
Mar 10, 2020•13 min
This practice is part of the core training of The Meditation Course and is fully supported for course members with additional content, training and personally coached support.To find out more about the course, visit our website at: https://www.meditationcourse.live/ You can also just subscribe to our mailing list and get updated regularly with new sample content and offers.Labelling the Quality of Thoughts is a meditation that I have devised. It is possible that I heard it somewhere but if so I ...
Mar 06, 2020•12 min
This practice is part of the core training of the 2020 Meditation Online Course and is fully supported for course members with additional content, training and personally coached support.To find out more about the course, visit our website at: https://2020meditation.comYou can also just subscribe to our mailing list and get updated regularly with new sample content and offers.Compassion isn't an emotion, it is a basic drive for social animals. Chimpanzees for instance, consistently display compa...
Feb 27, 2020•9 min
This practice is part of the core training of The Meditation Course and is fully supported for course members with additional content, training and personally coached support.To find out more about the course, visit our website at: https://www.meditationcourse.live/You can also just subscribe to our mailing list and get updated regularly with new sample content and offers.It is traditional in secular mindfulness courses to teach the body scan. The body scan was popularised by Satya Narayan Goenk...
Feb 18, 2020•14 min
Labelling the thoughts is one of the key mindfulness meditation practices that I teach as a foundation for mindfulness meditation in The Meditation Course.For information on how and when to use the practice and how you can benefit, join our course by subscribing from The Meditation Course Website.To find out more about The Meditation Course, visit our website at: https://www.meditationcourse.live/ You can subscribe to our mailing list and get updated regularly with how to join the course, notifi...
Feb 10, 2020•10 min
The Meditation of No Meditation is partly a meditation and partly an experience of Mindfulness. It is a window into a present moment that isn’t crowded with repetitive thoughts, memories, anxieties, tasks, priorities, worries and all the other baggage of the 21st century. Mindfulness is “The undistracted awareness of the experience of the present moment.” - My definition. The attributes of the Meditation of No Meditation are: - It is entirely frictionless for most new meditation students. - It c...
Feb 07, 2020•11 min
We all have a collection of memories of our difficult past experiences. These can stay with us for a lifetime. Sometimes these experiences can build up and become a very real burden that is unhelpful for our happiness. There are a number of ways that students of meditation can release their emotional baggage. Compassion, gratitude and self-compassion are key practices that I teach regularly. At the heart of these practices is the self-compassion meditation which consists of three statements. May...
Jan 28, 2020•5 min
A guided version of the following the breath meditation.The following the breath meditation teaches us two things: We have an alternative to being ruled by random thoughts. There is a neutral place, the breath in the present moment, where we can find a refuge from the stresses of everyday life. We learn all of this in the best and simplest way. Gentle repetition trains our mind to return to the present moment from wherever it has taken us. This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Lo...
Jan 18, 2020•15 min
This is an example of the sort of content I will upload into the Meditation Course.I have added it to the Meditation Podcast so that the course students can listen and practice.Visit https://www.meditationcourse.live/ for more information.The following the breath meditation is an ancient practice that was taught in India about 2500 years ago.The way I teach it is essentially the same.Following the breath is the key mindfulness meditation training practice that helps us learn how to return ou...
Jan 17, 2020•59 min
You can practice the Four Tens Meditation to help you to learn to relax.It is also a mindfulness practice as when your attention wanders, you return yourself to the present moment by starting again. Focus your attention on the area of your eyes: forehead, eyebrows, eyes and cheek. Relax this area on ten successive out-breaths. Focus your attention on the area of your jaw: mouth and lips, jaw and throat. Relax this area on ten successive out-breaths. Focus your attention on the area of your shoul...
Jan 07, 2020•17 min
The first meditation taken from The Meditation Course.This training is from Month 1, Unit 1 - 'How to Meditate - Building the Foundations of a successful practice'When we breathe in, we are activating the sympathetic (fight and flight) nervous system. When we breathe out, we are activating the parasympathetic (relaxation) nervous system.By increasing the ratio of time spent in the out-breath (relaxation) we relax the body. This sends a much-needed signal to the brain that *all is well*.By breath...
Jan 06, 2020•5 min
First of all I’d like to say thanks to all the supporters of the restful mind podcast and the More than just mindfulness podcast. It’s been a source of constant inspiration to me to check my stats and discover people all over the world listening to the podcast, some of you quite regularly. I want to explain my plans for future podcasting, and also, for future meditation training online. Throughout 2020 and beyond, I will be offering the following things: Free of charge, an online meditation clas...
Jan 06, 2020•6 min
Human beings are creatures of habit. To build a new practice such as meditation, it is necessary to do two things. We need to build a habit, and more difficult, we need to intervene in the habits we already have. Intervening in our habits is difficult because they become combined. One habit brings another and this fills our day with a subconscious process I call the Autopilot. The Autopilot consists largely of instinct and habit. Throughout most people’s days in the modern world, control of thei...
Nov 27, 2019•59 min
The Yoga of MeditationReferences:The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali - Swami SatchidanandaBhagavad Gita - Stephen MitchellInner Engineering - Sadhguru This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course.You can join us for four live-streamed guided meditation classes on most weeks of the year for the price of a weekly Starbucks latte. https://meditationcourse.live
Nov 05, 2019•58 min
I recorded this episode at a global corporation in the City of London that I have been teaching at since 2014.For them, and for most people working in the square mile, this is the busiest time of the year. Many projects and deadlines finish at Christmas as does accounting periods so the stress is on.My students here also have extremely busy lives and so fitting in a meditation practice can feel like a bridge too far.Because of this, I taught a class that is partly stress-management and also medi...
Oct 31, 2019•37 min
In the Modern World, our minds have been captured by a narrative that also runs in the minds of many others around us. With variations, this is true for almost all of humanity.This incessant train of repetitive thought rationalises and justifies and rehearses and reconstructs our pasts, our futures and our life situations. All in an attempt to make sense of it. To try to explain this complexity, we all construct a narrative. This personal explanatory narrative is not helpful for our happiness. I...
Oct 13, 2019•56 min
This episode is a recorded training session that I ran at a global law firm recently as part of training that I have been giving there since 2014.Exactly what is the Present Moment?What is the continuum of the Life Situation?How can I find my way out of the mashup of the past, the present and the future and into The Present Moment mindfully.Why would we want to extract ourselves from the grip or the Life Situation?Some quotes from the talk on the topic (the first 13 minutes)."Modern life is like...
Oct 07, 2019•35 min
Visit https://therestfulmind.com/blog for a more readable version.The common narrative is the cultural story which we all share, rooted in folklore, that we use to explain our reality. The common narrative is a fluid construct of our collective consciousness. We also all have a version of this common narrative which is our personal narrative. This is the tape that runs in many of our heads. The purpose of the narrative is to explain our reality and update the set of beliefs we already hold known...
Sep 23, 2019•56 min
This week is an exercise in Focus and Attention.Trataka is a focused attention meditation practice designed to help us build our personal mindfulness while developing our awareness and training ourselves to focus.It helps us to become aware of our focus and our awareness, internal and external.Trataka helps us to become aware of our internal focus and our external focus and the difference between them.Trataka also enables us to become aware that we can move our focus from our internal experience...
Sep 15, 2019•34 min
Much is written about how suffering is anchored by the illusion of permence and a craving for, and attachment to, those things that bring us comfort and pleasure. The response of many ancient cultures to this realisation was to renonouce all material possessions which led to the aceticism of hermits and monks. Other philophical perspectives try to find a middle way (buddhism). What does it actually mean to let go for a meditator and what do we actually do to practice it. In this episode, Robert’...
Aug 27, 2019•39 min
#Mindfulness and #Meditation is all about the #Mind.To work with the mind, it helps to have some models of our inner processes. These models need to model the mind in a way that helps our practices.There is too much dogma associated with the mind. Most of it has historical roots and is part of the tangle of our broken cultural narrative that tries to explain our experience while remaining mainly in denial of some of the key elements of our experience such as the mind.Where is the education about...
Aug 10, 2019•53 min
In which Robert explains when and why he began to learn how to meditate, the distractions and diversions on his meditation and mindfulness journey.Robert describes his early meditation practices and the changes of focus that he has taken over the last thirty years of meditation practice.Robert also explains, and guides, his current meditation practice.Meditations are: The Meditation of no Meditation for Sound, The Meditation of no Meditation for the Breath, Following the `Breath, Labelling the T...
Jun 15, 2019•59 min
The self-help genre is flooded with a deluge of advice relating to Acceptance. Usually the advisory sentence begins with the words ‘just’ or ‘simply’. These diminish what is the most difficult thing that anyone can do which is to confront their internal reality when it is what is causing them to suffer. In this context, there is no such thing as ‘Just!’. In this episode, Robert teaches, in a 30 minute session, how to actually accept your internal suffering, as a personal experience and in a way ...
Jun 12, 2019•30 min
Most of the content that fills our minds is a reflection of our common cultural narrative. The goods and bads, rights and wrongs, fairs and unfairs that we adopt from what we learn and from trying to interpret the beliefs of our peers. The modern mind then judges, compares, complains, and weaves a compelling narrative (which we often accept unquestioningly) that much of what we experience, often including ourselves, is not good enough. The resulting inner narrative couldn't be more destructive f...
May 26, 2019•54 min
