In this Podcast, Alistair discusses Jaak Panksepp's Wheel of emotions. Emotions, which pre-date thoughts aren't bad or wrong but all animals share them. Panksepp identified seven primal emotional patterns, as well as negative emotions such as fear, sadness and anger there is also caring, lust, seeking and play.

Panksepps Wheel

Alistair discusses suffering in a teaching session. We are conditioned to believe that we should be suffering but when you remove 'me' you end the struggle.

Addiction to suffering

In answer to a students question, Alistair discusses thoughts and feelings. Instead of being bulldozed by our thoughts, we can learn to dance with them. Gentle familiarisation of the inner landscape increases our wisdom and reduces suffering.

Bulldozed by thoughts

From a recorded lesson: Alistair discusses thoughts and thinking with students. It is not thoughts that make us unhappy. Thoughts come and go but it is unconscious thinking, ego thoughts that cause suffering to arise. Soothing our minds soothes our thoughts. If the body is unified our thoughts ride the Windhorse of the bodys energy.

Thoughts ride the Windhorse

It's easy to be compassionate with yourself when you're feeling OK but we are often very mean to ourselves. In this recorded teaching, Alistair says the essence of self-compassion is being OK with whatever our experience is. Even if that experience is crazy-nuts.

Being OK with the not OK

How do you react when someone hurts you?
In this recorded teaching, Alistair says it's not ok to be a punchbag. A healthier way is to acknowledge our pain and then try to understand where it is coming from in the other person.

On being a punchbag

Alistair talks about Internal Family Systems. The different parts inside us, identified by therapist Richard C Schwartz. We all have parts playing out an internal role, some are vulnerable, whereas other parts of us are protectors or managers. Learning to recognise these parts and understanding how they interact is key to understanding ourselves.

The Genesis of Parts

Alistair remembers his mother saying 'People who ask don't get.' Yet, he says, in Tibetan traditions asking for blessings is an act of devotion. This discussion with students centres on the differences between western attitudes and religion where prayer and asking are supreme spiritual activities. 
Can you ask for help or are you afraid of asking?

Looking for blessings in the right place

We're not made up of one coherent self, Alistair explains, but rather there are different parts of us at play or at war. When our internal managers, firefighters and exiles are fighting we suffer. Loving our different parts is a route to finding inner peace.

Managers, Firefighters & Exiles

Alistair discusses toxic relationships and how to empower yourself to change things.

Do you have any difficult relationships in your life?

Dealing with toxic relationships

Are you a worrier?
In this Podcast recorded from a Mindsprings meditation class, Alistair busts the myths around worrying.

The Truth About Worrying

Alistair discusses lasting happiness following a question from Jane, a Mindsprings student. We have to look in the right place for bliss. Blissful happiness is in the field of awareness, not in our emotional bodies.

Don't look for chocolate at the ironmongers

From a Mindsprings meditation Zoom class discussion. Buddhists take aim at the fixed nature of our sense of selves. They believe suffering is caused when we try to keep ourselves in a fixed state. Alistair says at Mindsprings we are exploring if there really is an unchanging person within us, a 'self.' Perhaps we will find out the Buddhists are wrong.


You can join Alistair in 3x weekly live sessions to practice meditation. Interact with the Mindsprings community and join in these conversations about meditation, Buddhism and life. It's free!

https://mindsprings-practicespace.org/sign-up/

Is the word 'self' meaningless?

Alistair talks about the three things that dance the waltz of Samsara - Delusion, Wanting & Hatred .

The Infernal Waltz

In this podcast, Alistair, (after being interrupted by Ben the dog 😀) discusses distractions with the Mindsprings students. He says tension is the motor of distraction. The tenser you make the mind the more thoughts and thinking arise. Just as the more you squeeze the bottom of the toothpaste the faster it comes out of the top.
Do you get distracted by thoughts when meditating?

Thoughts are like Toothpaste

Jane asked: "Is awareness the same as consciousness? And how do you deal with someone with a lot of shame or someone with no shame, like Donald Trump?" 
Alistair discusses how the definitions of awareness and consciousness are different in Buddhism and Psychotherapy.
What do you think?

The eight conciousnesses and the 45th

The negative news industry.

Responding to a student’s comment on the distractions of the news media, Alistair speaks about the nature of news as an industry and the myth of ‘being informed’ that drives it.

What if we were to question the mechanism of news and what it means for us?

Join in the conversation live at the Mindsprings Practice Space. It's free and friendly. https://mindsprings-practicespace.org/sign-up/

The Negative News Industry

Following a meditation exploring self-love, we were talking about the nuttiness of hating your experience. After all, it's the only one we're going to have. 
I then went on to flag up the social prohibition against loving ourselves - it's a bit "grandiose", or "selfish" or worse: "narcissistic. 
But narcissism is very different from love... 

Please do join our 3x weekly meditation group on Zoom. You can find the details on how to come along here: 
https://www.mind-springs.org/online-live

Narcissism vs.  Love

Discussing with Mindsprings member, Dameon, about the issue of other people's anxiety. Our anxiety work often - rightly- focuses on getting our own nervous systems under control. But what about the people around us? 

if you would like to join the Mindsprings anxiety community come along on Tuesday evening 6pm UK for an hour's stressbusting practice: 
https://www.mind-springs.org/online-live

Other People's Anxiety

This is an excerpt from the Holy island Retreat in October 2023 which was focusing on the wisdom aspect of compassion. 
Alistair sketches out the way compassion is seen within the various yanas of Buddhism and how 'forgettery' lies in the centre of our suffering and the suffering of others.

Forgettery

An excerpt from the Holy Island Retreat October 2022. Alistair is talking about the theory of Buddha nature, that we are already enlightened at our core. And even it's not true - is it beneficial? Does it change the way we are in the world. And does it lead us to the beautiful moment of taking our bodhisattva vow.

Mud on the Buddha

Following one of the live sessions, Alistair talks about the experience of dissociation. This is a natural function of our minds, but it can also erase our natural kindness - especially towards ourselves. How do you work with dissociation? 
#dissociation #psychology #Buddhism #Mindsprings
Please do join our 3x weekly meditation group on Zoom. You can find the details on how to come along here: 
https://www.mind-springs.org/online-live

Dissociated Love

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.

Part One is here: https://soundcloud.com/mindspringspodcast/why-do-most-religions-grudgingly-tolerate-sex-rather-than-celebrate-it

Sex Is Not About Making Babies, It's About Making Friends

Recorded at the August 2017 Gayles "Drawing on Mindfulness" retreat, Alistair gives a fundamental overview of the different streams of meditation coming out of the Indian Tradition and notes how mindfulness is unique and distinct from other forms.

Definitions Of Mindfulness

Alistair guides you in a 25' meditation exploring the somatic tool of the 'three levels of the breath'. The practice is done lying on your back, comfortably, with your hands on your belly and feet flat on the floor, knees together. [Excerpted from the Scarborough "Tender is the Heart" course in March 2018]

Guided Meditation - Levels Of The Breath

During a discussion in the Summer 2018 Retreat on Holy Island, Alistair speaks to a mother's worry that she has over-mothered her children and explores the way somatic practice improves relationships.
You can book for the 2019 Retreat here: https://mind-springs.org/courses/summer-meditation-retreat-2019-the-body-is-the-ground/

How To Survive Families And Relationship Somatically

This is Alistair Appleton's guided meditation 'Polyvagal Tuning' based on the neuroscientific work of Stephen Porges. It's 25 minutes long.

Polyvagal Tuning

In the second part of the Cardiff 2020 talk on purification, Alistair explores how this concept functions in Tibetan Buddhist practice.

Silencing A Billion Whispers

Part three of the 2020 Cardiff talk sees Alistair move into the world of therapy and how this intersects with the concept of 'emptiness'. Can Game of Thrones help us grasp this?

The Dragonglass Of Emptiness

In the final part of Alistair's 2020 Cardiff talk he explores the 'endpoint' of purification. What is the space that we would experience free from any distortion?

What Is Left When Trauma Is All Gone?

Shame is the fear of ostracization and it is one of the key practises to work with in Therapy. In this Podcast, Alistair concludes that shame is the glue that holds much of our pain-creating unconscious patterns together. These damage us and those around us. By sitting with 'what is' we can feel pain but ultimately it is a healing pain.

Mindsprings Podcast - Staying with Shame

Staying with Shame

Podcast from meditation teacher Alistair Appleton on dharma, psychotherapy, neuroscience and more. Info at www.mind-springs.org

Mindsprings Podcast

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