With Alan Hughes

with Fay Adams

Live sessions on Zoom bi-weekly on Thursday evenings 7pm – 8.15pm:

Live sessions- Thursdays bi-weekly on the 16th January, 30th January, 13th February, 27th February, 13th March and 27th March 2025

Price £132.00 for non-members and £88.00 for MA members. MA Members please contact info@mindfulnessassociation.net for the booking link. To learn more about our membership please click here.

In the Wonder of the Everyday 1 we discovered that if we practice mindfulness in our daily moments, it can teach us how to reimagine and embrace the life we have to find wonder in the simple things. In the Wonder of the Everyday 2, we will build on this approach and take a creative look at how to find more joy and contentment without having to get somewhere else, tidy everything up, or achieve a perfect equilibrium.

‘After feeling awe, volunteers become less worried about personal concerns and goals.
Instead in study after study they describe themselves as feeling more connected to other people and the world.’
Jo Marchant, broadcaster

‘Frankly, when you see the earth from that vantage point, we look ridiculous. We look like we have our priorities completely backwards,
like we’re locked into our myopic view, and we’re missing the beauty of the much, much bigger picture’.
Ron Garren, former NASA astronaut

Do you live too much of your life pushing to get things done, tidy everything up, or achieve a perfect equilibrium?

Do you feel like you’re always reaching for something better? A better life, a better you, to feel better, get a better house/job/partner/retirement?

What if the sheer fact of our presence were enough for at least some moments of the day? What if the wonder of being alive were enough? Now is the only time we have to learn to live the way we long to live and to experience the wonder of this world.

We’re living in a culture which highly values productivity and achievement and this inevitably gets under our skin. It shows up as tension, stress an inability to rest and a feeling that something’s not right. Many of us live daily in the story of ‘there’s not enough time.’

Following the Wonder of the Everyday 1, this course offers a light-hearted yet profound way to reimagine where you are, here in this moment in the journey of your life. When we look around with fresh eyes of appreciation, life sparkles back at us and reveals its wonder and beauty.

Themes of the Wonder of the Everyday 2:

• Looking to where we can find wonder and awe.

The science of awe tells us that if we can encourage this emotion we will feel the ‘small self phenomenon’, where we literally experience ourselves as smaller but more connected to our wider surroundings. This has many wonderful effects on us.

• Exploring how we relate to time.

Many contemplative traditions allude to an eternal now, a state of flow in moment by moment being that is the foundation of wellbeing and joy. Let’s see if we can demystify this idea and bring it down to earth into the realness of our own day to day.

More of what to expect in the Wonder of the Everyday 2:

• Rediscover the lost moments that we skim over in busyness or autopilot, and mine them for the gold they hold.

• Turn your walks, even if they’re just to and from the car, into awe walks

• Deliberately organise an awe experience for yourself

• Experiment with mindful morning routines and compassionate evening routines without taking much extra time.

• Engage more mindfully with what you enjoy whether it’s a hobby, nature, art, music, exercise, spending time with friends, family, colleagues or talking to strangers and watch your mindful intentions change your way of being and relating.

• Explore what gets in the way of being present – is it busyness, needing to feel productive, loneliness, the self-critic or being hooked on technology?

• Engage with your longings and take them as a pathway to walk along towards fulfilment.

• Learn to notice the tiny acts of love that really can be found all around (despite the cliché!).

Including:

• 8 specially pre-recorded videos of around 30 minutes
• 6 ten minute long guided daily life audio practices
• 6 live online group meetings
• Tutor available for email/phone support throughout the course
• Weekly worksheets and handouts (optional)

Praise for Wonder of the Everyday 1:

‘’I would recommend this course to anyone who wants to move their practice off the mat and into every area of their life.’’

‘’A huge thank you to Fay for providing the safe and welcoming space and careful and calm guidance. The sessions were a beautiful space in which to explore the wonders of the world around us.’’

‘’Fay is an excellent teacher with good communication and lots of pearls of wisdom. She facilitates you on your journey of self-understanding.’’

This weekend can be attended in person at Samye Ling or Online

This weekend course can be attended in isolation as a retreat OR as an introduction to our Level 1: Being Present Mindfulness course. After this weekend you can continue the Level 1 training if you choose – we have both in-person and online options to choose from.

Are you struggling to cope with your stress levels or find it hard to switch off at times? Do you think some extra tools to meet this would be helpful? This weekend in the peaceful surroundings of Samye Ling will give an opportunity to unwind in supportive company. We will offer a range of simple mindfulness practices that can be surprisingly effective. Of course, the circumstances that lead to feelings of tension and stress have their own causes and may be beyond our control. But we can learn to work with our attention in a deliberate way to switch out of our internal threat system into a more contented and connected place. We can also focus on dialling up our levels of appreciation and joy in the good things in our lives, and learn to sooth ourselves into a better quality of sleep.

The weekend is suitable for anyone who is new to mindfulness, or who has tasted the benefits of mindfulness before but would like to refresh and kickstart their practice again, and you can also attend online via Zoom.

Tuesday evenings from 7pm – 8.30pm 

In all of our mindfulness courses we recommend that participants keep a journal of their “journey”. Some people do, some don’t, while many people “give it a go”, but struggle to journal consistently.

Journaling offers us an opportunity to express our thoughts and emotions without fear of being judged.  When people journal they often find that not only does it support their mindfulness practice, but it can also help with such things as mental clarity, coping with anxiety, making decisions and sometimes that it can even improve the quality of their lives. We can also look back on our old journals, and remember events that happened in the past.

This short course will be an opportunity to mindfully explore what journaling might offer us, while giving us support to create a regular journaling “practice”.  As part of this, we will explore different approaches to journaling, such as free writing, drawing/sketching, guided journaling, reflecting, keeping a gratitude journal… Basically, our journal can be whatever we want it to be.

As someone who has been keeping a daily journal for thirteen years, during these evening sessions Alan Hughes will offer guidance to help us cultivate a regular journaling habit. We will also have the opportunity to share our own successes (or otherwise) of journaling with one another along the way. The six sessions for this course run on Tuesday 7th January, Tuesday 21st January, Tuesday 4th February, Tuesday 18th February and Tuesday 4th March 2025.