Mindsprings Podcast With Alistair Appleton

This is an excerpt from the 6 week course in Mindfulness taught in 2016 at St Mary's Church in Brighton. Alistair uses the image of the scrunched up scarf (which he, in turn learned from the Dharma Ocean teacher, Neil McKinlay)to illustrate how awareness becomes claustrophobic in direct relationship to the number of I-me-mine thoughts

In memory of the great affective neuroscientist Jak Panksepp who died 2 weeks ago, I've extracted a short explanation of his brilliant work on human emotions and how we can understand them so much better by seeing their mammalian roots.

This is an extract from the 6-week compassion course that I taught in Brighton in early months of 2017, looking at the demanding 'next step' of compassion practice.

This is Part 2 of 2 from a talk I gave in Norwich back in 2012, looking at the alternative spiritual view on sexuality and sex. The Tibetan shamanic traditions and the Tantric deities give a different take on how to be sexual and spiritual.

This is Part 1 of 2 from a talk Alistair gave in 2012 exploring the nature of religious attitudes to sexuality. This part touches on some of the archetypes of the Old Man and Mother that prevent sex becoming central and explores the alternative notion of exuberance as a way of framing sex.

This is an excerpt from the Mindsprings Holy Island retreat in October 2016. The theme of the retreat was Samadhi and here Alistair talks about our resistance to meditation...as well as his rather dramatic experience up in the snowy mountains of Colorado in 2016.

This is an extract from some teaching Alistair gave as part of a study day on Compassion - he is outlining the benefit of the Buddhist practice of 'tonglen' which involves giving away the good and drawing in the bad - the opposite of our usual egoic way-of-being. It's a counter intuitive practice but from the Buddhist point of view, ultimately effective.

This is a recording of the 45-min lecture I gave at the magical woodland glade that the folks at the Southbank created for the events around Opera North's performance of the whole of Wagner's Ring Cycle.

This is an excerpt of the 2016 Winter Eight Week course taught by Alistair at St. Mary's in Brighton. It's from the seventh week where we started to explore the experience of what Alistair calls the "fifth field": the stance of the experiencer to what is experienced. Enjoy!

This is a talk Alistair gave at the Samye Foundation Wales in Cardiff on Friday 26th February 2016. It was outlining the historical precedents of the current vogue for mindfulness; making some distinctions about what exactly it is from a Buddhist point of view; discussing how it can be problematic when dealing with people who dissociate; and - in the Q&A - talking about the merits and demerits of 'mindful' colouring-in books!

This is a public talk and Q&A, Alistair gave in the Scarborough Art Gallery on June 26th 2015. In it he talks about the unprecedented nature of the 'social media revolution'; how the internet and social media works on the brain; how we can understand it in the buddhist terms of attachment, aversion and dissociation. And how mindfulness is the skill we need to develop to survive it.

This was a talk given by Alistair Appleton at the CABS Business Centre in Harare, Zimbabwe during his trip to Africa in February 2009. It’s an impromtu ramble over many subjects connected to Mindfulness and Alistair’s experiences in Zimbabwe - fairly relaxed and chatty. The talk is introduced by Alistair’s fantastic hostess in Africa, Pam Sheehan.

Talk given in Norwich in 2012 on the knotty subject of sexuality and spirituality.