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We have to have the difficult conversations if we want to see change

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There’s a phrase that’s been doing the rounds, as individuals and organisations have been waking up to the need to take responsibility for addressing the power imbalances that beset almost every aspect of society – “do the work”. But what does it mean, and how do we begin?

I’m working with the UK Arts Marketing Association as part of their Show Up programme, which challenges CEOs to explore what it means to work towards inclusion and accountability. One of my responsibilities is to blog about the experience. This is the first in a series of reflections.

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On silence and wonder

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A good friend and yoga teacher alerted me to this wonderful book before leading me through a powerful pranayama practice involving The Pause, essentially allowing a natural break at the end of the exhale and the inhale, without strain, without effort.*

It was one of the most calming and elevating experiences that my ordinarily chaotic mind, so resistant to rest, has had the joy to experience. Moments of clear wonder.

Shut up and sit down: The simple practice of meditation

Meditation is such a simple practice - in purpose, theory and principle, if not as a felt experience of our mental landscape - that I sometimes wonder, when I come to sit down or lead a class, about why we get so hung up about it. I say we, I mean me, in terms of wondering whether I'm aiding the drift towards peace as opposed to the slipside towards more inner noise.

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What to do when feeling blue

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There are some books that I turn to regularly, mostly when I wake, as I did this morning, inexplicably a tad grumpy, maybe owing to interrupted sleep, compounded by the windy nature of the season and my likewise prone to mood-shifting inner state (Vata-inclined in Ayervedic parlance). Here are my tips, via the practices shared by the eighth century Dharma master and student Shantideva, on how to pivot your mind and your mood.

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Weathering: Racism and the slow erosion of self

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Weathering - the impact of constant and relentless racism leading to premature biological ageing, via the gradual erosion of a person's physiological and psychological being. As evidenced by the disproportionate deaths among Black, Brown and too many other people marginalised and minoritised by systems that ought to protect life but instead devalue it, selectively.

How to cultivate and nurture the practice of patience

Patience can be a trickster of a thing. We call it a lofty virtue as though it's something we can only ever aspire to. We know that it's something worth cultivating and yet we give it less attention or time than the things we and society convinces us we have to be doing all the time.

Conditioned as most of are to think our worth lies in all that we do, measuring that worth in the context of capitalism, ableism and consumerism, we put patience and pausing on the back-burner, telling ourselves we'll stop and give ourselves a break when things slow down.

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The enriching nature of mind weeds

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Meditation is tough. Sitting patiently with our selves, with our messy minds, is not an easy task. That's why we do it. Not for self-flagellation or ego-pumping determination. But to cultivate acceptance, discipline and calm.

The discomfort, the mess, the challenge, is part of the process. Intellectually that makes sense. Feeling it though, when you're sat there doing battle with your internal narrator (i.e. your little, vulnerable, weak and shouty self), it's enough to make you give up. Don't. Persist. This is where the lessons lie.

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On dis-ease

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A beautiful state of emergency, or a a scabrous state of foreboding?

To be diseased is to be ill at ease. Set apart from ourselves, hovering on the brink, unbalanced, neither fully right, nor fully wrong, a little out of tune, out of focus, fuzzed on the periphery.

A mind out of synch (disordered), a body out of touch (disharmony), a state of bewilderment (disarray), feeling lost (disorientation), hopeless (disbelief), and helpless (distrust).

Put your mind in the muscle: A call to attention

There’s a phrase that’s used in the fitness world that’s meant to help you focus: “put your mind in the muscle”. The theory is that by channelling your mental energy as well as your physical grunt, your efforts become more concerted, and you get results.

It’s a principle and a practice that I find makes the strain both worthwhile and satisfying. Not only does it keep my mind “in the game”, it helps me tune out all of the peripheral noise that would otherwise be a distracting hindrance to the reason I am in the gym in the first place – which is to develop strength, stability, balance and stamina.

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The nauseating weight of words, via Harold Pinter

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Whenever I get stuck with a piece of writing, when I have an idea but am unconvinced by my attempts to resolve it, I turn to the masters on my bookshelves for advice.

Always generous, always wise, eternally insightful, the books they have written and which I hold dear never fail to provide inspiration, sometimes usefully diverting me down another path so that I can return to my own with renewed hope.

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How other people’s stories teach us who we are

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It was DH Lawrence who said that “the only history is a mere question of one’s struggle inside oneself”. His point being that the collective story of humanity, whether in fact or fiction, as chronicled in the billions of words scratched onto paper and battered into computers by individuals across the world and throughout the ages, are testament to the enduring struggle that we all face to make sense of our place in the world.

The deceitfully simple idea that “to know thyself” is the reason for living, the ceaseless echo through the centuries of Socrates’ call that “the unexamined life is not worth living”, is the most maddening challenge there is.

As the philosopher Alan Watts once said: “Consciousness seems to be nature’s ingenious mode of self-torture.”

Why so? Because this interminable process of becoming who we are, of knowing what we should even aim to become, is exhausting. Writer or reader, the challenge is the same. We think therefore we suffer. That’s the unavoidable truth. The point is how you respond, which is where autobiographical accounts or indeed any story, fact or fiction, come in.

Read the rest of the article in the London Literary Review here.