Category Archives: amida therapy training

What really matters

This is the house where I’ve been staying for the past ten days, minus my laptop.

I’ve shared those ten days with four Buddhist cats, 27 fellow psychotherapy students, three faciliators, a resident Buddhist community, and two Lord of the Rings geeks.

I’ve sat in a circle and sobbed. I’ve laughed at Pictionary until my stomach ached. I’ve sang Taize and floated in the bliss of sweet voices coming together. I’ve played Lord of the Rings Trivial Pursuits and been scared by the geekiness of the Lord of the Rings geeks. I’ve chanted Namo Amida Bu and bowed to the golden Buddha. I’ve drunk tea and tea and tea. I’ve sat in a circle and felt soaked in love.

Who am I now? My old life doesn’t quite fit me any more. I’m clearer about some of the things I do (a long story), and I know how I’d like to be different. I’m clearer about some of the stuff I’ve been wasting my time on (the internet, buying stuff, trying too hard at anything), and some of the things I’d like to do more of (creating space for poems to enter, journalling, walking outside and looking at the flowers).

What next?

Nick Drake is playing on my i-pod. I’m going to listen to this song. I’m going to give it my full attention, and I’m going to feel grateful, for Nick Drake, for my i-pod, for my black cat coiled on my white furry cushion, for the sofa I’m sitting on, for the Green and Blacks caramel chocolate on the table. I’m going to love it all. Does anything else matter?

Seven day and seven night internet fast (gulp)

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On Friday morning, I’m setting off to the second week-long residential course block for my Buddhist psychotherapy training with the Amida Trust.

I’m still seeking space.

The internet is very clever at filling in my space. There are always emails arriving, blog posts to be written, comments to reply to, Amazon rankings to check. I leave it on when I’m downstairs reading, and pop upstairs every so often to see what’s happening on Facebook. I know, it’s tragic.

My friend Lynsey challenged me to leave my laptop at home when I go away. LEAVE IT AT HOME? Was she mad? I could keep it under my bed like I did last time, and check my email at lunch times. I could keep on top of everything. I could stay ‘plugged in’ to the world.

She’s right, of course. Leaving it at home is the best gift I can give to myself right now. When I use the internet like that, I’m not plugging into the world, I’m pulling away. I’m avoiding what’s waiting for me in the spaces. The restlessness, the doubts, the insecurity. Who knows what else.

I hope I might find out next week. I’ll be surrounded by old friends and new, and Jodo, Sharry, Zen, and the fourth resident cat who’s name escapes me. I’ll be wearing big jumpers and sipping mint tea in the garden. I’ll be sitting as part of a group, looking at the faces of my fellow bombu human beings, and feeling safe.

When I return, I need to negotiate a different relationship with the internet. I’m not sure what it will look like, or how I’ll manage it, but I’m looking forward to a new chapter. Wish me luck.

Much gratitude again to the most wonderful whiskey river for finding the words (written by Annie Dillard this time) that say exactly what I want to say about myself. That’s what the best writers do.

Have wonderful weeks. I’ll be back. I hope you miss me, but Ruth will be here in my absence : )

“The gaps are the thing. The gaps are the spirit’s one home, the altitudes and latitudes so dazzlingly spare and clean that the spirit can discover itself like a once-blind man unbound. The gaps are the clefts in the rock where you cower to see the back parts of God; they are the fissures between mountains and cells the wind lances through, the icy narrowing fords splitting the cliffs of mystery. Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn, and unlock – more than a maple – a universe.”

Annie Dillard

Our business in living (according to John Cage) and bendiness

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As a part of my Amida Buddhist psychotherapy training, I’m getting to read a lot of interesting books.

‘Psychotherapy without the Self’ by Mark Epstein is a psychodymanic (Freud and all that) as opposed to a person-centred take on using buddhist psychology in psychotherapy practice.

I do like the epigram (that’s the word for the quote at the beginning of books, isn’t it?), by John Cage.

“The great Buddhist scholar D. T. Suzuki came to Columbia to teach [in 1951] and I went for two years to his classes. From Suzuki’s teaching I began to understand that a sober and quiet mind is one in which the ego dose not obstruct the fluency of the things that come in through our senses and up through our dreams. Our business in living is to become fluent with the life we are living, and art can help this.”

Good, eh? To become fluent with the things that come in through our senses and up through our dreams. To allow them in as they are, rather than as what we need them to be. To allow our ego’s tight structures to loosen a little, like a stiff old piece of rubber that can be warmed and massaged and made bendy again.

Here’s to getting a bit more bendy, and welcoming the world in as it is. Happy bendy weekends. And thank you for all the love after my last post. x

PS here’s a live version of a song I’m much enjoying on the radio at the moment – Four Dreams by Jesca Hoop. It’s lovely and chirpy and makes me happy.

Meeting others

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I feel like I’ve just got back from several months on Mars

I’ve only spent nine days away on my Buddhist Psychotherapy Training at The Buddhist House, but – oh my – what a nine days.

As someone else in the group commented, I feel like I’ve only let 1% of the learning from the past nine days soak into me so far. But it’s been about so much more than the learning.

The theme of the 9 days was ‘meeting others’. In our daily lives, how often do we really manage do this in an authentic way?

The people who’ve shared the past nine days with me have become special to me – every single one of them. Some of them have seen right inside me, and I’ve seen right inside them. Those kinds of connections don’t fade once they’ve been made. Whether or not we refer to them, they will hang between us when we meet again, like golden threads.

This meeting others has been bloody hard work. There have been tears, anger, confusion, disappointments, pain. There has also been a LOT of laughter (some of it hysterical) and a LOT of joy. Oh, I can’t avoid being soppy. There’s been a lot of love.

In gassho to every single person who sat with us in our group, and to Jodo, Sharry, Moggy and Zen. In gassho to the cooks, the cleaner-uppers, the smilers on the stairs. In gassho to the sunlight on the sofa, and the golden Buddha in the shrine room. In gassho to Eamon’s badly drawn ear, and to singing Taize. In gassho to all of us, and to all of you. Here’s to the space continuing.

My lips are (mostly) sealed

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I thought this might happen.

Most of what is happening here feels too private to share on this blog.

That doesn’t just include what’s happening to other people, as I thought it would, but also what is happening to me.

There are some things I can tell you about.

Jodo is a tabby who sat on my lap while we were in the training room. Sharry shamelessly accosts people on the stairs and forces them to stroke her by rolling onto her back and patting their hands with her paw. Zen is black and mysterious. Moggy is short for Mogdala.

Eamon made beautiful hot chocolate for everyone last night, with Butlers chocolates dropped into a huge pan of milk. I even got out my second bar of stashed Green and Blacks chocolate (which means I’ll need reinforcements before the week is out).

But all the rest needs to stay here at The Buddhist House, between me and my new friends.

It brings to mind when we spoke about confidentiality on our first day here. David suggested that we need to treat people’s material in a way that will allow them to continue to have confidence in us. This made a lot of sense to me. We talk to people ‘in confidence’. I hadn’t even realised the word confidential was so close.

In some ways I share quite openly here, but there are other parts of my life that I will never talk about. Isn’t this how it always is? It doesn’t mean that you’re not my friends too : )

I also wanted to share this prose poem from The Writer’s Almanac with you because I like it so much.

Anniversary

She says he isn’t as funny as he used to be. About fifty percent asfunny, maybe less. He thinks, but doesn’t say, no, it’s you, you’redepressed, you don’t find anyone funny anymore. She thinks, butdoesn’t say, I’ve always been depressed. I’ve never found anyonefunny—except you, once.

Jason Whitmarsh, from Tomorrow’s Living Room

Enjoy your Wednesdays. I can hear the bell ringing downstairs.

Knowing nothing all over again

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I’ve been at The Buddhist House in Leicestershire for the very first two days of my diploma in psychotherapy.

Knackered.

Beginnings are always knackering for me. The first day at a new job, first meetings with new clients, the first draft of a novel (all that white paper, aargh)… It’s a bit like being dropped onto a strange planet. It seems feel a bit less exhausting when you’ve learnt everyone’s name and you know where the coffee mugs live.

The other knackering thing is considering my practice as a counsellor anew. I’ve been doing things a certain way for many years, and this course gives me the opportunity to go back to scratch and reconsider everything.

Suzuki Shunryu talked about Beginner’s Mind in his seminal book, and how helpful it can be to approach every situation as if we were a complete beginner – to see it afresh, to assume nothing.

What strikes me is how easy it is for me to rely on the things I think I already know. I have been doing this a long time, therefore I know what I’m doing. I’m already valuing this course as an extended opportunity to stop, to stand back, to question everything. Who am I? Who am I as a therapist? Who are my clients? What is it I’m trying to do? What is it I’m doing?

Still, the whole thing is pretty knackering. I’ve eaten my bread and butter pudding and escaped upstairs to write this. I’ve got a stash of Green & Blacks under the bed, and a trashy novel. There’s no rush. I want to savour my learning rather than gulping it down.

What are you beginning right now? How are beginnings for you?