We’re fortunate that Martin Aylward has generously offered to lead our daily meditation sessions for Europe and the UK. To find out more about Martin, and to view his other contributions to Sangha Live, click here.
Recordings are posted 24 – 36 hours after they are first streamed.
Recorded :
Worldwide Insight talk from Jessica Morey: “Moving Towards Connection – The Opportunity of Working with Difficult Emotions to Deepen Relationship”. Guided meditation, Dharma talk and Q&A.
Recorded :
What do sitting on the meditation cushion and running have in common? How might this form of movement be included in our mindfulness practice? Brian Dean Williams, both an insight meditation teacher and an avid trail runner, explored this with us at our weekly Sunday session.
Recorded :
Freedom is a central concern of all our lives, yet has many different manifestations, some of which run completely contrary to others. This class will explores the importance of social freedoms, inner freedom, personal and collective freedoms. We explore how different perspectives on free-ness shape how we practice; and how we understand life and our…
Recorded :
We are more physically isolated during these days of Covid. Less physical contact, less access even to each others smiles beneath the masks we wear to care for each others’ health. Contact and intimacy are deeply important to humans, and in this session Sangha Live founding and guiding teacher Martin Aylward explores different forms of…
This week’s topic is “Mindfulness of the nervous system: transforming fear, struggle and separation into love and connection”. We humans are social animals and need each other to feel safe and secure, to grow and to nourish ourselves. How can we live with a sense of connection, loving-kindness, and inner family? Our meditation practice allows us to take a break between stimulus and response. When we come into contact with our loved ones, we all too easily lose the inner freedom we think we have achieved and avoid our difficulties, also called spiritual bypassing. This week we explore what supports us to react flexibly to the internal and external world, to relax and to allow closeness and real intimacy. We will look into the first foundation of mindfulness, mindfulness of the body, including harmonizing the body formations and nervous system to meet our difficulties with gentleness.
Daily meditations with Martin Aylward.
This week’s theme is Making Sense of Self.
Although the Buddha encourages us to not indulgently ponder whether the self is real or not, he did offer us a way to explore how the sense of self appears. This methodology, called the khandhas (aggregates: the heap of heaps), exposes all aspects we gather together to create and hold to our sense of self: form (body); vedanā (subtle preference); perception; saṅkhāra (mental formations – like intention, attention…); and consciousness (knowing).
This week’s theme is: Gathering in the Goodness. ‘Drop by drop the pot of goodness is filled.’ -Buddha. Gathering in community we become more than the sum of our parts. We are each supported by, and supporting others — meditating alone is far less easy. Just so, in each moment of mindfulness we gather body-heart-mind from distraction into presence and open possibilities for greater and greater well-being; not just for ourselves, but for all beings.