Rainforest Mind with Kaspa Thompson

Why are gifts so important? Is everything a gift? What’s the difference between a gift economy and a transaction economy? Why is it hard to stay grateful? Today’s episode was partly inspired by Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass. I also mention this talk by Ven. Shenyn: The Life of a Wondering Monk You can view...

I’m standing with my eyes closed in the middle of a busy street and listening. Why? And what can I learn from that experience? I talk about the false opposites of being and doing, and why I prefer lovable to perfect. I mention the Bang And Olafson podcast Sound of the Cities, and an early...

A few weeks ago we got a puppy! Wow – what a whirlwind the last month has been. Moments of sheer joy, and moments of fraught overwhelm. As one book Satya was reading put it, there is the honeymoon period, the WTF have I done period, and the I couldn’t live without her period…. Today...

What a great conversation. James and I spoke about the Unitarian Universalist movement, form and emptiness in Zen, boundlessness, spiritual fluidity and more. James is a Zen Buddhist teacher and part of the Empty Moon Network, he leads a group in Southern California. James’ most recent book is called Introduction to Zen Koans: Learning the...

I’m talking to my Buddhist teacher Dharmavidya David Brazier. We talk about Buddhist Psychology: what does it mean, and how does Buddhist therapy work? We talk about how encountering ‘awakened’ people can be transformative, and about enduring great suffering. We talk about what supports grounding yourself in the big picture, and how faith helps us...

How can we support healing in people, and in the planet? To help answer that question I’m talking about the importance of going outside, and what different kind of outside spaces can teach us. I talk about what wildness means and I talk about the practice of finding a spot to sit in, and sitting...

In this episode I’m in conversation with Ven. Ayya Yeshe, about her socially engaged Buddhist work. What led her to social engagement? How does helping fit with Buddhist practice? She talks about how her experiences as a Tibetan Nun helped her to empathise with oppressed groups, and her socially engaged work in India with the...

I'm talking about my experience of depression, and how it is to be a Buddhist teacher and psychotherapist and have the 'black dog' as a companion on the path

In this episode I'm talking to Jayne Johnson about life in community, and about the nomadic life. Jayne got rid of most of her stuff, sold her flat and now lives nomadically. Why leave the householder life? How do we live in community? And what is it like to leave the settled life? What are the benefits, and the costs?

In this episode I'm talking to Clark Strand and Perdita Finn. We talk about Zen, about different kinds of practice groups, touched on the twelve steps, talked about the importance of trees and I heard about the history and importance of rosary practice and making prayers to the divine mother... great stuff

Allison Priestman In this episode I’m in conversation with Allison Priestman, body psychotherapist and wild psychotherapist. We talk about spirituality coming through or from the body, receiving something from the natural world and examples of wild spirituality. I’ve looked for the C.S. Lewis quote, ‘God is wild’ and it looks like Allison was right – it is from The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, “He’s Wild you know, not like a tame lion.” I mentioned Gerald May’s book Wilderness and Nick Totton’s book Wild Therapy. Other related episodes: Rainforest Mind: Wild Therapy with Stephen Tame Rainforest Mind: Wildness Rainforest Mind: Searching for God, or something like it Allison’s website for her therapy practice is here: http://www.allisonpriestman.co.uk/ and details of the Embodied Relational Therapy and Wild Therapy training courses are here: http://erthworks.co.uk/

Harlech Beach, by Ed Webster In this episode I recount three experiences of being in sacred space, one on a rooftop in Delhi, one on a campsite in Harlech, and one during a five day chanting retreat. What was I encountering in those moments, and does it matter what it was? How do we interpret spiritual experience? Did I find God, the Buddha, or just the world?

In this episode we explore Wildness and Wild Therapy. Stephen Tame is a trainer on the Wild Therapy training course, and also on the Embodied Relational Training course that I’m currently taking. We talk about what wildness means. Is it chaos and unpredictability? Or something else? We talk about what supports wildness, and wildness in urban settings. We talk about the ideal of Wild Therapy – what kind of people is it trying to produce? You can find details of the Wild Therapy training and Embodied Related Training on erthworks.co.uk, including a Wild Therapy weekend workshop in October 2018. Nick Totton’s book is called Wild Therapy. The Charles Eisenstein essay Stephen mentions is Invitation into a Living Planet and James Lovelock has written about the Gaia hypothesis in many of books. Stephen also mentions Joanna Macy (if the world’s dying, let’s go down with some grace) the environmental social activist, and Buddhist scholar, who has written eight books. Stephen’s own website, with details of his therapy practice is: https://www.stephentame.com/

Following on from the last episode Empathy With My Enemies, I ask the question what supports empathy? How can we be more empathic. To help me answer this question I’ve roped in a special guest – psychotherapist, Buddhist priest and writer of novels and self-help books, Satya Robyn. Satya also happens to be married to me, and we co-run the temple here in Malvern. We talk about the therapy/client relationship, emapthy in friendships and how spiritual experience can support empathy. Apologies for the slightly echoey audio in the conversation. I had a one microphone set up and as we were different distances from the mic you could hardely hear Satya on the recoding

In this episode I talk about the power of dialogue across difference, using the example of two counsellors who now work together, both grieving the loss of their sons. One killed by an ISIS suicide bomber, the other whilst fighting for ISIS. I talk about processing my own feelings that came up when I took part in the Worcester March for Unity on September 1st, marching past an EDL protest taking part on the same day. And I talk about my vow to save all beings. All of them? Even the ones I don’t like. I couldn’t think of a good image to illustrate this, so today’s photo is of our brand new mandala in the temple hallway, painted and donated by the artist Mathew Casey.