Whether on the physical, mental, emotional or spiritual plane, returning to neutral is one of the most important things we can do for our wellbeing.

Why?  Because it’s what keeps us alive.  It keeps us sane, happy and healthy. It’s what we do every night when we sleep.  It relieves stress.  It regenerates and rejuvenates us. From neutral we can move in any direction.  It’s the basis on which we make balanced decisions and the choices that bring the greatest joy and purpose to our lives.

And yet, in the so-called ‘Civilised West’ we are infatuated and ‘programmed’ with a need for speed, attainment and desire.  David Cameron talks about how ‘we must win the global race’ but that’s a perpetuation of the very thing that got us in such a mess in the first place!  The belief that we need to go faster and attain wealth more quickly; that things should be other than the way they are.  It’s the perpetuation of attachment and aversion; of ‘suffering’ in the Buddha‘s words.

So what’s a deeper truth?  Neutral is a powerful place, a powerful way of being. Just as those masters of the arts of Aikido and Judo demonstrate.  Be it through Aikido, meditation or creating a state of openness and presence through yoga or tai chi we can go forwards, backwards or sideways in any direction from neutral.  It’s where we relate to and tune in to our intuition; where Chi lives.  It’s where we connect with the quantum field as Deepak Chopra explain so beautifully in The Seven Spiritual Laws Of Success.  You simply can’t do that by staying in a high gear, perpetually running along on the ‘Hamster Wheel’ of life.  In driving, we need to pass through neutral to get into any gear, so arguably neutral is the most important gear we have.  We all need to relax, to recharge, to open and pause before continuing.  You’ll run your tank dry running in 4th or 5th gear pretty quickly!

Yet very few people have the discipline or practise of returning to neutral.  Neutral is evidently a powerful, indeed an essential state to be in whether you’re a leader, in a car, an organisation or attempting to create your life as a masterpiece full of fun, joy and passion.

So how do you access or create neutral?  Where do you access or create neutral?  And in what way might this be one of the most important things for you, in and through your future?

Michael Singer spoke in his book, The Untethered Soul, of sitting in the seat of your consciousness.  That’s neutral.  The ability to be objective while living a subjective experience.

It offers us – neutral that is – wisdom, insight, peace and ultimately freedom. Enjoy it!

With love, Tristan

It’s funny what one word can do to change our state or shock us right?

Just one word…. for example the F word!

Watch this Sixty Second Snippet now and find out how you can have more choice, freedom and possibility in your life….

So we create our state by what we say to ourselves and the images or movies we play in our mind.  That’s it.  It’s as simple as that.  Change your thoughts you change your reality right?

Well it’s not really as simple as that is it?

Because, what’s really running the show for most of us, most of the time, is our unconscious.  We are talking to ourselves throughout the day and imagining scenarios based on our patterned and conditioned way of perceiving the world that sabotage our success and sense of fulfilment.

In the field of NLP, the term known as a ‘not knowing state’ is one where you empty your mind of inner noise, pictures or movies – in other words patterned ways of thinking – and in stead open up to new ideas, information, possibilities and intuitions.  It’s about embracing a state of not knowing, what the Buddha might call equanimity and emptiness.  And from that openness comes freedom.

So just for today, or the next hour, or the next minute consciously decide to not label, to not know and to become open and aware in stead.  Sitting in the seat of consciousness without judgement or fear will give you immense freedom…. right now!

Until next time, live fearlessly!

When things in your life seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day are not enough, remember the Mayonnaise Jar and the 2 Beers.

This is a story about a professor who stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him.  When the class began, he wordlessly picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls.

He then asked the students if the jar was full…. They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar.  He shook the jar lightly.  The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls.  He then asked the students again if the jar was full.

They agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar.  Of course, the sand filled up everything else.  He asked once more if the jar was full. Read more…

Accelerated NLP Training – what is the barrier to you creating something amazing in your life – right now?

NLP Modelling – “Be The Change You Want To See In The World” Mahatma Gandhi

I don’t know a single person in the world with whom these words have not rung true.

I believe that the theme, the essence of these words – Be The Change – are more important and relevant right now than ever before.  In these times of incredible change in technology and human consciousness; in the way we do business; in the way we are called to show up in the World, we all have the capacity to be the change we want to see in this amazing World.

Its been some time since I’ve communicated with many of you, and there is good reason.  I personally have been through massive change in the last 6 months, having come back from a long hot winter in India.

Locals kids hitching a ride in Kerala

As most of you know I’ve taken the last couple of years off travelling, living in Ibiza and India, running workshops and developing my new venture – giving people the skills, experiences and models to literally Be, Do & Have Anything.

Really, the outcome of my ‘work’ is in marrying two apparently disparate concepts – Financial and Emotional Freedom. Success and Fulfillment.  Money and Happiness.

They seem to be very illusive for many people.  Often people make good money, but are not really happy.  And often they are happy and fulfilled, but do not have material wealth.

The question I have been asking for the last decade is, how can we have both?  How can we marry financial freedom – the ability to do what we want, where we want, when we want – WHILE also being truly and sustainably happy? Read more…

NLP Anchoring & Managing Your State

About 3 months ago I went to a friend’s house to deliver some coaching and have a joint heart-storming session.  Having taken Tracey through a load of coaching, it was my turn…. and what happened just as she was about to help me with some marketing stuff… well we had a cup of tea and I managed to spill mine ALL over my nice new Dell Notebook…Wooooooohhh… state management… “oh it’s ok, it’s cool… chill…. it will all work out, life rocks

NLP Anchoring Step 1

Identify a resourceful state that you would like to experience when you want, one that you have experienced before. For example, this could be a state of confidence, motivation or enthusiasm.

NLP Anchoring Step 2

Wait until the next time you have this state.  Be aware of what it’s like to be in this state: what are you seeing, hearing, feeling and saying to yourself?

NLP Anchoring Step 3

What is the trigger for the state? In other words, what set you on a sequence of getting to this state?

NLP Anchoring Step 4

What happened next? What did you see, hear, feel and say to yourself? You might ask yourself the question – “what am I doing in my thinking” each time you experience the state to unpack more of your strategy.  Asking the question ‘what happens just before that’ or what happens just after that’ will help you to understand the sequence you go through naturally to achieve this state.

NLP Anchoring Step 5

Write down the sequence of thinking patterns so that you can check it out next time you experience it.

NLP Anchoring Step 6

Test to find out if you can create the state without the usual trigger.  If you can create the state without the usual trigger (which you can) you’ll have access to that state any time you want.

An even longer story short (4 failed collect and return appointments, not being able to fix it, no reply to emails etc etc) I ended up splashing out on a Mac Air and…

My Office

It has been the most amazing life transforming awakening and empowering experience in my life and has enabled me to work, play and live life even more in the way that I want… PC’s are from the last millennium

So THANK GOD for losing things, breaking things and things not going the way we want  It allows us to let go and grow.  And thank God for being able to manage my state through anchoring techniques.

Here’s to a truly wonderful weekend all…

Lots of love and remember that there is no road to happiness, happiness is the road!

Tristan

For more on NLP Anchoring or managing your state for public speaking and other contexts join a free webinar by clicking “Sign Me Up” on the right…. or you can go here and sign up for a free 1on1 Business Breakthrough Coaching session.

Transform Your Life Right Now!

I woke up this morning and I didn’t feel great.  I felt a real resistance to writing.  I didn’t feel inspired.  Pretty normal occurrence for most people hey?

Having said that I woke up wanting to achieve something today and that was to design a structure around my new website; to come up with some ideas around logos, colour scheme and so on.

Where I’d normally set myself up for the day physically, emotionally and mentally by going for a run, stretching, asking myself some great questions and exploring my outcomes for the day, instead I went straight into focusing on and creating this new website layout.

The larger lesson I got from this experience was about decisions; more precisely, the power of decisions and how as humans we make them.  And how they can truly transform your life.  It’s more than I want to go into here and now – suffice to say there was a strategy I used there which is very useful and it certainly didn’t involve analysing much!

“It is in our moments of decision that our destiny is created” Anthony Robbins

You see, decisions happen in a moment.  Change happens in a moment!  You can transform your life in a moment.  But it can take a long time to get to the point of change or the decision.  A bit like when I woke up… it took me a while to decide to shift my attention to what was really important to me.

I’m writing a book called Be Do & Have Anything, which is a pretty big task and certainly a big claim! Having said that I do to truly believe that we can Be, Do & Have Anything… and that’s a good starting point.  Belief that is.  If we simply learn how to learn understand what we truly want, the patterns or stories that hold us back and perhaps more importantly, those patterns or strategies that can get us the results we truly want then we can be, do and have anything.

So if you really want to transform your life follow these three simple ‘secrets’…

Transform Your Life – by changing your story (your beliefs)

Transform Your Life – by changing your thoughts (the images and movies you play in your mind)

Transform Your Life – by changing your patterns (your physiology and language patterns)

There are people out there in this world who have achieved enormous success who came from nothing. In fact if you do some research, statistically most famous people and self-made millionaires have come from impoverished backgrounds, traumatic childhoods or are orphans!

So in many respects it’s the pain, or the ‘problems’ that can be the very catalyst or driver for success.  Today there is a significant move towards social entrepreneurship, the basis of which is solving problems in and for society.  If you look deeper you’ll discover that the route of the word ‘problem’ can be traced back to the Latin translation which goes something like this…. a ‘blem’ is something symbolic.  And ‘pro’ is something that comes before.  Thus the word ‘pro-blem’ derives it’s meaning from something symbolic that comes before… your outcome!

So in order to transform your life, the most significant shift you can make is to realise that all problems have within them the seed of an equal or greater opportunity.

This for me has been one of the most significant ways I have transformed my life… through the study of NLP which has helped me to consistently find the seeds of equal or greater opportunity.

I believe that success without fulfillment is failure.  So rather than beating yourself up about ‘failure’, or aiming at success and possibly achieving it at the expense of happiness or all the other important things in our life, I believe that we have the chance to be aiming at becoming something much more beautiful…. the expression of ‘the best you” possible.  A wholesome, loving, present and powerful soul expressing your true purpose on this magical planet.

You see most people in modern times have until now (and this is an enormous generalisation) aimed to have nice cars, houses, televisions, clothes and so on.  And to have what they think will make them happy. But generally it doesn’t create sustainable happiness or fulfillment because our emotional state changes all the time.

They tend to think in terms of…

HAVE  X by
DOING  Y… so that I can
BE  happy

Rather than BEING HAPPY, DOING WHAT THEY LOVE & THUS HAVING A LIFE FULL OF LOVE, LEARNING AND GROWTH

This is the paradox of humanity, impermanence.  We aim and strive for certain things like happiness, a bigger house or a good job and then the feeling we get is only temporary so in trying to accumulate or have we’re missing the rules of the game.  The question now then, is what do we do?

So why do you struggle to transform your life?  Well, we have been conditioned or taught in the so called civilised West to do what we’re told, to get a good education, then a good job. But this doesn’t make us happy in the long term.  There is a lot to be said for doing what you love or doing what you enjoy and we’ll be exploring how to find and follow your passions in life in due course (or you can join a free Webinar and request a free passion test exercise) but for now, and to illustrate a point – most people want to have so they can be happy and then they do things so that they can have things they think will make them happy and in doing so miss the rules of the game… the game of life. And that is that in order to be happy, we have to be.

There is no road to happiness, happiness is the road.

So the sequence I believe, in order to be truly happy is in fact to

BE
DO
HAVE

We don’t have or do happiness, we are happy.  We aren’t ‘human doings’ or ‘human havings’ but human beings. And some would say that we aren’t even that… we are spiritual beings having a human experience.

And that raises the question, how can you be in spirit?  How can you live in spirit and allow the Universe to flow through you?

Want to transform your life?

Then BE happy, DO things that make you and others happy and then, in time, you can HAVE Anything!

In learning how to be, and learning who you truly are; in being first, and then doing, you can have anything you truly want and embrace the paradoxical nature of the world by turning things upside down and going with the flow of the Universe, rather than the demands of our ego.  We then find our place in this world – where there is more joy, more possibility and more passion than most people would ever have dreamt of.

And the fastest way to transform your life?

“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”  Harold Whitman

So… how do you know when you are being your best, when you are full alive?

And I wonder how you can set yourself up each day to come alive and be happy?

If you feel like you’d like some support to transform your life then please feel free to join a live webinar.

“Meditation here may think down hours to moments. Here the heart may give a useful lesson to the head and learning wiser grow without his books” William Cowper

Grinning from ear to ear and very excited to be back, I have just arrived in the UK to grey skies and a damp Monday morning having been away for about 5 months. Time to reflect on what an amazing journey I have been on in that time, and perhaps what kind of journey you have been on too….

It has been about 8 weeks since I finished my Vipassana meditation where I spent over 10 hours meditating in silence each day and the other 14 hours not speaking, reading, writing or even allowed to look into other people’s eyes….

Meditating 10 hours a day!

You might be wondering then, what on earth I actually got up to and how that journey has affected me now that I am back in the UK. Read on to find out….

Day seven and I am all set to go – I’m fully committed – only three days left to go out of ten days in total silence, showing me Buddha’s path to enlightenment and liberation. Little did I know that when I decided to go on this experience, but I am here now and committed to finishing my stint!

And to be fair with six days behind me and only 4 days to go, it’s a walk in the park now, the final furlong! This is going to be great, having had a pretty tough time of it for six days, I’ve have had my breakthrough and I am committed to writing my book. It’s all good… I have even found that by sitting on my knees with my feet tucked behind me while meditating, I can sit still for over an hour without too much discomfort and without my back going into spasm. I’m not yet sure that I can do this for 10 hours a day, but it beats sitting in a half-baked backbreaking lotus position which I simply couldn’t handle with two crushed vertebrae in my spine.

So feeling rather confident and puffed up like a plump robin, I find myself sitting for 45 minutes after lunch when the teacher calls me up to the front of the dhamma hall as he does with most people to check they are doing things correctly. I get up and start walking towards him and notice that something’s not quite right. But before I know it my head hits the ground and I crumple into a pile on the floor. I don’t really know what happened so my natural instinct is to pull myself back up and start walking again. I collapse again. Only this time I don’t get up. The commands simply aren’t getting through to my lower body, I have two dead legs. Waking most people out of their deep trance, I realize I have caused an imbalance in the otherwise equinamous vibe of the afternoon’s meditation session so I slowly drag myself to the front of the room with my legs trailing like a leper’s behind me.

I sat there feeling slightly embarrassed, in pain and hopeless as the teacher completely dismissed the incident and instead checked to see if I was meditating correctly. He didn’t acknowledge that anything out of the ordinary had occurred and so I figured whatever did just happen couldn’t be that serious or injurious to my health. Now that is equinomous… model that!! After a few words from the teacher and reciprocating nods of the head from me, I quietly limped back to my matt and sat back in the same position with my feet tucked behind me. Within moments I realized that there was something adrift; all was not well. I slowly got to my feet and hobbled to the back of the room and then left the hall to journey once again to my home, this time hopping on one foot.

Oh dear, it would appear I did some serious damage to my foot. The rest of the day I am confined to my bed trying to make sense of what happened and more to the point trying to assess the severity or damage. Have I broken my foot or is it just badly sprained? Lying there feeling sorry myself, I eventually let go of what was happening to me and simply became aware of my feelings, aware of my foot, aware my unconscious mind, my untamed mind taking me on this journey.

Then as the afternoon passed I started to become frustrated and wonder what I was missing out on; the experience, the journey, the enlightenment that the others were having that I was missing out on.

After a few of hours of completely unequanimous behaviour I decide I can just hop my way to the finish line and I made my way to the meditation hall. I began to meditate again. The last two or three days were as usual challenging but also rewarding as I slowly began to accept and understand the teachings of Buddha and the universal laws of nature that were in those teachings.

To be honest, there’s nothing that profound or especially enlightening, or even that challenging in the teachings. They are to me and I believe most people common sense. It is not some religion, doctrine or dogma but an understanding of the universal laws of nature.

The meditation technique works on a practical basis by scanning the body for sensations and then ensuring our conscious minds do not react with craving or aversion to those sensations. How that works on an unconscious level I pretty much understand – reprogramming the mind to not react to physical sensations or anchors which otherwise would trigger certain behaviors, but I have not experienced a fundamental transformation by meditating in that way for just 10 days. Having said that I am much more mindful and centred these days, but that may well have as much to do with the amazing and enlightening journey I have been on these last five months as the 10 day Vipassana meditation.

In NLP terms the process is to me like collapsing anchors at an unconscious level. I’m just not sure that I want to turn into a monk and spend my life meditating two hours a day or more in order to collapse craving or aversion anchors. And I do not like the idea that apparently once you commit to the path of Vipassana meditation you cannot and should not look into other disciplines. Apparently this is so you can truly master the technique. I have no doubt that it works for many people. It is similar in my quest in becoming a real master in NLP, to commit to one discipline and become a master in that rather than a jack of all trades. But paradoxically NLP encourages us, even requires that we explore, model and learn from other disciplines and people. It is the pursuit of excellence, or a commitment to a process of modeling excellence that is so much more flexible and I believe powerful than Vipassana. With Vipassana meditation I can’t get immediate changes in others. With NLP I can.

Either way it was a very challenging, enlightening and profound experience and I would recommend others to go on that journey if only to explore the edges of your boundaries and comfort zone and experience an extended period of reprogramming your mind to just BE. I think the journey enlightens us to another way of being. One where we can remain equanimous or perfectly balanced no mater what is going on around us. Now tell me someone who wouldn’t want that with all that is going on in the world right now?! As usual, knowing something and living it are two very different things; I think the idea behind Vipassana is to live and experience that equanimity or balance on a consistent basis so that it becomes a deeply ingrained way of being.

So as I sit here watching the drizzle fall from the grey London skies outside, I am reminded of what a wonderfully enriching journey I have been on these last few months and how no matter what does or doesn’t work with Vipassana meditation techniques the principles and underlying psychology behind the technique is useful for all of us to keep in mind. With so much going on in today’s busy world and with so many challenges around us, it is perhaps more important than ever to remain in our flow, not craving or averse to any experience or emotion but in stead to be really present, alive and open to the Universe and all the wonders it has to offer.

“Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.” Anais Nin

And on that note, I will leave you to enjoy the sunshine that has just emerged through the grey and apparently impenetrable clouds, as it always does!

Until next time… Enjoy your meditation!

Despite the many NLP Courses I have been on, I’m almost overwhelmed with everything that’s going on at the moment.

And I say almost, because I choose not to be overwhelmed. As I notice myself feeling less than resourceful and my muscles becoming tense I inadvertently smile, as I am sure you sometimes do too when you realize the futility of getting overwhelmed or frustrated. I guess I must have created an anchor so that when I start moving into the less than resources state I instantly take a breath, relax my muscles, smile and let go. Sometimes I have to do it consciously because I am still attached to feelings of frustration when I don’t get my way!

And perhaps this is one of the most enlightening and empowering lessons I have re-learned over the last month or so since my silent retreat; that is to allow silence to come into my life whenever I feel that I don’t have it. It is at first a decision I have consciously made – that I want to feel connected and empowered, rather than un-resourceful and disempowered – and then it is a commitment to what I have heard described as every day conscious living. Victor, an immensely calm Peruvian yoga instructor I met on my Vipassana meditation had what appeared to be a flag tattooed on the inner side of his forearm. It was a deep orange, green and blue colour which was in fact a symbol or anchor for him to experience every day conscious living.

“Watch your thoughts, for they become words.Watch your words, for they become actions.Watch your actions, for they become habits.Watch your habits, for they become character.Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.” Someone famous!

I think it’s very interesting that while I’m travelling and enjoying life and the incredible adventures and freedom of being in India, Singapore, Malaysia and now Thailand I still feel the same emotions that people do right across the world in this new era of uncertainty and enlightenment. While I am free, having a ball and enjoying myself; able to do what I want, when I want with who I want I still have challenges, uncertainties and gaps between where I am and where I want to be. I believe there is a fundamental and inescapable truth in life – that problems never go away! I’ve heard it said that if we’re lucky and grow we tend to have better quality problems, but it is the realm of delusion to hope or assume that one day you will no longer have problems.

As we grow and develop our skills and abilities (for example by immersing ourselves on NLP Courses) we learn to deal with these problems in new ways, at least that is the hope! Unfortunately it is not always the case. One of the ways we can deal with our problems better is through improving our understanding of the influence that language has on us and others, so perhaps calling these experiences challenges rather than problems is a first great step. We all love a challenge!

As Milton Erickson once said “you are going to use words that will influence the psychological and organic life of an individual today…. and twenty five years from now. So you better be willing to reflect upon the words you use… seek out and understand their many associations.” And still today, having studied linguistics over the last few years and been on many NLP Courses ,I am absolutely fascinated by the depth of their impact and my ability to continue learning how to use language to better influence my own world and the worlds of those around me.

Another way that we can better deal with our challenges is by embracing the realisation that we create problems through our thinking and perceptions and we can therefore solve them through changing our thinking and perceptions. So, to every problem there is a solution if we can just let go of our old ways of being and open up to a new truth, a new way of experiencing things. In fact I’d even go as far as saying that perhaps we create problems at an unconscious level so that we can evolve to a new level of being. That would be an interesting belief to hold.  And that is the power of good NLP Courses, in facilitating change at an unconscious level.

As you may have noticed all has been very quiet on the blog front since my Vipassana silent meditation. It’s quite funny because my life has been anything but quiet over the last month or two.

Following a couple of amazing NLP Courses, I have been on an amazing adventure, travelling around Kerala in India for two weeks with my mum, followed by a week with both my best friend and mum in Malaysia. Mother has gone home to England now and I’ve just come back from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur, and I now find myself in Thailand for a month’s rest, reading, writing, relaxation, rejuvenation and reconnection. I wonder when and where you are taking time for those things that matter most to you in your life?

So much has happened in the last month it’s difficult to know where to start. From relaxing and reflecting in peace on the beach and around the pool at the Secret Beach in Allepey, to my mother arriving and the ensuing adventurous two weeks – including elephant and boat rides on the backwaters of Kerala, to the tea plantations and stunning mountain views in Munar and beyond – it has been pretty much a non-stop assault on the senses and spirit.

We encountered much wildlife on our travels and we spent a couple of days trekking to and from, and relaxing in a small hut in the jungle, which actually looked more like the African bush than Indian jungle. We rode elephants, indulged our eyesight with the beautiful tea plantations and views stretching for miles from the mountains of Munar to the wilderness of Chinnar. We visited more than one bird sanctuary and a couple of wildlife parks and our transport broke down more than once in both Malaysia and India. We experience crashing thunder and awe inspiring lightning; vibrant botanical gardens and another close encounter with a monkey! And then there were the butterfly parks, the gut wrenching food poisoning and to counter it, the stunning beaches in Kerala and Penang; we’ve even shared wardrobes and taxis with cockroaches. More recently I spent the day at Singapore zoo which was breathtaking and incredibly well designed, although I still find it hard to embrace and enjoy seeing leopards and the like cooped up like prisoners with no end to their sentence!

Throughout my time over the last month, while alone and with my friends and family, the thing that has really struck me is how relationships magnify the human experience. In my journey over the last four weeks I have both dulled and magnified my experience while with and without other people. I’ve also realised just how important, perhaps the most important thing, relationships really are in life.

I really enjoy and value my time alone. And I also realize that exploring a theme park or zoo; travelling around and exploring is for me not as emotionally engaging or fulfilling as being with someone special. So I do believe that the purpose of relationships is to magnify the human experience.

Unfortunately that can work both ways, for better or for worse! And so having developed the relationship with my mum over the last few weeks, I wonder now where you can use a perceived challenge in your relationships to magnify your experience for the better, by being the change you want to see in others or the world.

So while embracing the reflective nature of our world and the Universe, where do you want to, or perhaps more importantly need to be more flexible, need to grow, need to be the change in order to enhance your relationships so that they can be all that they can be… and truly magnify your experience and the experiences of those around you?

Until next time…

For more on NLP Courses go here

I arrive alone at the Vipassana meditation centre in the middle of nowhere, about 8km from Chengannur in Southern India. I notice an austere silence pervades the entire compound; a somber mood seems to have descended like a dark cloud suffocating a soulless landscape. And yet I realize very quickly that the 10 days in silence I am about to embark on hasn’t even started! Is this a bad sign, do I start making meaning or listening to my intuition?

I have a chat with a couple of apparently normal people – a young Israeli called Jonathan who has recently come out of the army, and his sister Rena – both full of energy and smiles; and Flo, a young German with dreads who I later discover loves his house music. Then I meet Victor the relaxed yoga Instructor from Miami. He’s as calm as a cool evening breeze, wearing a flag-like tattoo on his forearm in blue, orange and green which symbolizes Conscious… Everyday… Living; and I chat to a very tall Indian called Mohit who runs a psychedelic trance events company in London and seems to live and love life to the full. It emerges that there are about 50 people in total from all over the world who have converged to experience the delights of spending 10 days in silent meditation. They come from France, New Zealand, Scotland, Peru and Australia to name a few, and about half of all delegates are Indians, many of whom do not speak English… not that we’re going to be speaking for the next 10 days anyway!

I trundle my way to my living quarters which are based in an oblong bulding made from standard-grey breeze blocks. A corrugated iron roof raised about 3 feet above the building protects us from what, I am not sure; it is placed on thin steel girders allowing insects, the occasional breeze and the thin rays of evening sunlight to visit their indulgent delights upon us. The breeze blocks have set within them the odd grimy frosted glass window. The building is perched upon a red brick floor, no carpet to be seen anywhere. Down the far end of the building are 4 very basic dirty toilettes with shower heads coming out of the walls. In the middle are 3 mismatching sinks, two small shaving mirrors on the wall and a small bin beneath.

Back in the main room there are 7 beds on either side of the dormitory, each adorned with a mattress which at its thickest is at least 1.5 centimeters of pure luxurious cotton wool. When I lie on the ‘mattress’ it compresses to at best, I would guess about 3mm of comfy padding! This luxury is placed directly on a hard wooden frame bed about 5’11 in length and covered by a rancid smelling old mosquito net. This is my home for the next 10 days. I make my way to the toilette and find a large spider, about the size of my palm in diameter, watching me intently before scurrying behind the loo. It’s not tarantula but a much faster and leaner cousin. Still considerably larger than any spider you would see in the UK.

That night I dream of two Indian wild dogs – one on each of my hands, dragging me down the road with their teeth digging in to my flesh. And then suddenly I am held by a baboon, likewise biting me, but this time on my forearm. Neither the dogs nor the baboon drew blood but they had a firm grip which I could not break free from. I thought that there must be some significance about the dream but was not quite sure what it was when I woke. I thought after a while that perhaps the dogs each pulling on one hand in different directions might signify the struggle I was to face – being pulled in different directions.

I woke at 4am the next day to what would become a very familiar bell – our first mediation session of the ‘day’. Only unlike Pavlov’s dogs, the bell had the opposite reaction for most of us – no excitement, no drooling! Wearily I go to the meditation hall for the first time where there are about 50 people preparing to meditate in near darkness on small blue mats – girls on the right and boys together on the left of the dark dingy room. Throughout the 10 days, boys and girl were kept separate wherever possible – while eating, living and meditating.

During the first day of my 10 days in silence I was subjected to over 10 hours of meditation – sitting still, silent, just observing my breath. I sat there watching my mind wonder from thought to thought desperately trying to make sense of things, trying to latch onto something and then something else; always in need of something to think about like a drug addict searching for its next fix. Its actually quite disturbing realizing how untamed and out of control our brains really are. Fortunately I discover after the course that I was not alone in having a wild and untamed mind when left to focus soley on the breath. When we just sit and observe the very essence of life, our breath, our brains are not content with just being but instead go on a relentless search for more, and more… and more! Rather like life, I believe that two things chasrataterise humans – we are all driven by a need to be loved… and a search for more!

All we were instructed to do was nothing other than observe our breath, which sounds simple to me. But you will find that if you try to concentrate on just your breath with your eyes closed for any length of time, your attention will very quickly be drawn into the future or the past – typically to painful or pleasurable past memories or created imaginations. Our task for the first three days was simply to observe our breath and nothing else. Whenever we became aware of our mind wondering, we were to bring it back to the breath – the sensations of the air moving in and out of our nostrils, and nothing else.

Very soon I became aware of my many patterns of thinking and behaviour, but most significantly I became aware of my back muscles seizing up. I crushed two vertebrae in my spine 12 years ago in a motorcycle accident and have suffered recurring problems, primarily muscle tension, ever since. It gets worse when I do not exercise or stretch regularly. My back muscles started to spasm by the end of day 1 having sat for over 10 hours without moving much. Although we had breaks between the 10 hours it began to take its toll, more physically than mentally or emotionally. Had I known we would be sitting in meditation for so long I am not sure I would have gone on the course. In retrospect I am very glad I did not know how tough the journey would be – I doubt I would have even started. That makes me think about some of the parallels with life; setting up as business; starting a relationship or writing a book, which I have now committed to doing. If we knew how hard the journey would be in advance would we even begin it?

As day 1 came to a close and I begun to realize the full enormity of what I had let myself in for; that I had embarked on a journey of pain and spiritual discovery – Buddha’s path to enlightenment and liberation! I began to wonder if I had made the right uninformed decision to come on a Vipassana meditation. Knowing I had another 90 hours of sitting in painful silence I questioned my commitment and both my mental and physical strength to see it through. The road ahead was gong to be long, painful and slow-going.

To be Continued….