Lift

Check in and get ‘propped’ up!

The first quarter of the year has been and gone, and if you’re anything like me, all those good intentions that you may have had at the beginning of the year have somehow sadly got washed away in the floods or burnt up in the bushfires.

However, this year it’s been different for me.   I found a great new app that is helping me keep on track, and I’d like to share it with you.

It is called ‘Lift’ and it’s a free app available for iPhones and IPads. An android version is due out soon.

Lift is a simple way to achieve any goal, track your progress, and get the support of your friends.

First you select a good habit that you want to establish.   You can write your own, or you can choose from hundreds of suggestions in the app itself.

And then off you go – it’s as simple as that.

Each day you ‘check-in’ on how you are going and the Lift keeps track of your check-ins with neat little graphs if that sort of thing appeals.   Even if you don’t do your new activity that day, it’s still important to check-in as you get recognition for the number of days you check-in in a row.    Checking-in means that what you are working on is kept front of mind.   You can also get Lift to message you at a time of day that you choose to remind you about your new behaviour.

When Checking-in you just tick the box, and if you want you can add comments on how it is for you that day around this new behaviour.   These comments can be shared with friends and a coach, and also with the wider ‘Lift’ community as a whole.

To begin with I thought who’s really going to be that interested in me keeping my coffee consumption down to one cup a day?    But it’s surprised me how many people ‘propped’ me (supported me), especially as my continuous check-ins rose up, and also how many people started offering words of encouragement and acknowledgement of milestones achieved.

These unexpected waves of support lifted my resolve and made it much easier to keep to the regime I had set myself and to check-in each day.   And no one poo-poohs you if you bravely admit to having more than one cup yesterday – everyone’s struggling to master their own particular goals and know how difficult it is to get it right all the time…   So instead of calling you a loser, they provide words of caring compassion and encouragement.

As a result, I now spend a minute or so each day going through other people’s postings, offering support and sending encouraging messages to those struggling to do better.

I’ve now got 5 things I’m working on and you can add new ones or change them whenever you want.    It’s great – nearly as good as having your own personal coach, and so much cheaper!     Definitely worth checking it out if there is something you want to really get on top of.

So how tidy is your desk?    When did you last exercise regularly?  Time to get on top of your emails? Or get working on that that project that you started last year and which is now stalled?

Good luck.

StJohn

StJohn Miall

StJohn Miall

StJohn Miall is the co-founder of Keep Evolving, an organisation the facilitates Leadership and Personal Development Programs that has it’s focus on the development of Wisdom, authentic Power and Compassion.  His focus is on the design and delivery of programs to both the corporate sector and the general public with particular focus on deeper, developmental work, supporting the ongoing building of emotional intelligence, spiritual intelligence, coaching, leadership and personal development.

StJohn is an expert guide in the gentle practice of Meditation and its use by those wishing to explore their own inner landscape.

With over 25 years of training experience, StJohn has a wealth of experience to call on both in the design and delivery of transformational programs. He is known for his easy style and ability to make the complex simple and easy to grasp.

Along with his wife Alexia, he facilitates ’Meditate for Life’ and eight week program run in Sydney to learn all about meditation and how to establish a regular meditation practice.   StJohn and Alexia also Facilitate the ‘Take a Stand for Life’residential program held at Bundanoon which is specifically for people looking to further develop their skills for a meaningful and fulfilling life.  

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Holding and the display of love’s perfection

I love you = I allow you.

I recently came across this piece of wonderful, caring and compassionate writing and found it inspiring and a beautiful reminder to be kinder to ourselves and show ourselves a little more appreciation and loving kindness…   I hope you like it.

StJohn.

There is a deep need in all of us to be seen, to be confirmed, and to be validated by another. When our subjective experience is empathically held, contained, and fully allowed, we come to a natural place of rest. What is love, really, other than fully allowing the other to be who they are, and to presence and embrace their unique subjectivity? I love you = I allow you. The late Donald Winnicott, a brilliant psychoanalyst from Britain, used the term “holding environment” to express this notion. Through making actual contact with another– through receiving, affirming, and metabolizing their experience; and through offering an attuned space in which their experience can unfold– we become vehicles of love in action.

While not talked about as much, we can also hold ourselves in such an environment, where we allow ourselves to be what we are, where we offer ourselves full permission for our experience to reveal itself according to a unique blueprint which was crafted in the stars. In so doing, we allow any and all self-experience to be lovingly metabolized, and then used as grace-energy for love, kindness, and compassion. On some intuitive level, we all know that the degree to which we allow and love ourselves is the degree to which we can allow and love others, even those aspects of self and other which we find disturbing, unspiritual, and otherwise less-than-ideal.

For so many I speak with, there is an undercurrent of subtle aggression, self-hatred, unexamined shame, lack of acceptance, longed-for forgiveness, and absence of self-kindness toward self-experience. Let us all take a pause, and from a place of love visualize a holding environment for ourselves, where we grant ourselves permission to make intimate and direct contact with our vulnerabilities, with our unguarded and unprotected hearts, with our unprocessed challenges from the past, and with our less-than-awakened thoughts/ feelings/ and behaviors. We can take just one moment and appreciate the complexity and counter-instinctual nature of the waking up process and allow a deeply profound love and kindness to fill us, cell by cell. Let us be willing to no longer abandon ourselves, exiting into our stories and unkind judgments, and inquire with love into the habitual belief that there is something fundamentally wrong with us. Then, in an instant, we behold the flow of grace which pours through the eyes of everyone we meet, including that unknown precious one that we see when we look in the mirror. And then all that could possibly remain is an unshakeable faith in love’s perfection.

This blog has been republished from Matt Licata’s blog at http://alovinghealingspace.blogspot.com.au

StJohn & Alexua Miall will be c0-facilitating the up-coming ‘Take a Stand for Life’ program at Quest in Bundanoon starting on March 4^th.    For more details about the program, click here.

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Falling in Love with your life!

Do you remember what it was like to fall in love?

Do you remember what it was like to fall in love?

It’s one of the best times in a person’s life.

• You can’t wait until the next time you are with your loved one
• You can spend hours on the phone talking about almost anything
• You experience a new vitality and you have heaps of energy
• You find your new loved one endlessly fascinating – how they do things differently from you, their history, their aspirations, and their quirky habits are all sources of wonderment
• Inhibitions melt away
• Life becomes, engaging, fun and a great adventure
• Your normal preponderance to judge, criticize and complain see to have evaporated into thin air and there is a new sense of tolerance and acceptance that previously had not existed at all
• Life is full of optimism and new possibilities
• You are open to things that previously we would have pulled away from
• In short, life is good and you are happy

So how come life is so good when you’re falling in love, and less so the rest of the time?   What is it that makes the difference?

The key is in your heart, or to put it more precisely, the key is that you are willing to engage in life with your heart open.

Petrea and the other Quest facilitators talk about our Second Nature (“that’s just who I am.” ) and our First Nature – our authentic self, who we really are.    Our Second Nature, the collection of beliefs, assumptions and attitudes we have developed over time as to who we are and how the world is, tends to based in our head.  Whereas the Authentic Self, our First Nature, is based in the Heart.

The Heart is a fascinating organ – so much more than a pump.   It is where who we really are resides… home of our courage, our passion for life, our love, caring and compassion… indeed all those things that we suddenly can access so richly when our hearts open when we fall in love.

Unfortunately, as we go through life it’s quite normal for our Heart to get wounded along the way, and if we are not careful we will close down access to our heart in self-protection – a wise thing to do when we are around people who may take advantage of an open heart.    However, it’s all too easy to keep that door to our hearts locked shut in self-preservation and the cost is missing out on a life full of heart-felt adventures, warmth and connection.

The great challenge therefore as we continue our lives back into our First Self is to learn how to rest back into our hearts, develop a strong and resilient relationship with our heart, so it can still protect itself when it needs to, but so it can also openly embrace life fully when the threats are not present.

That’s what the purpose of The Compassionate Heart program is all about -  learning how to reconnect back to the Heart, how to drop back into it’s warm embrace and to rediscover that when we do judgement drops away, right/wrong dynamics drop away, acceptance re-asserts itself and all of a sudden we have fallen in love with Life again.

The Compassionate Heart Workshop is a Workshop for those wanting more Heart in their lives.   It is facilitated by StJohn and Alexia Miall being held in Sydney starting on Friday 18^th May.   For more information and registrations, go to Hyperlink to Quest Compassionate Heart Webpage.

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Carpe Diem – Seize the Day

Take a Stand for your life

Every so often, (and especially after we have encountered some life-changing experiences, whether they be illness, job-change, relationship disruptions and the like) it becomes valuable to take some time out to assess what it is that’s important and where you are headed with your life.

Having done that the next thing is to take a stand for those new directions.

Literally to take a stand for life. Your Life. Because if you don’t, no one else is going to, and you run the risk of just being another cork bobbing around on the great ocean of life.

To take such a stand for something involves being willing to take the next step on your own evolutionary journey – this precious journey that is life-long, full of surprises and unexpected events that challenge us to be more creative, more autonomous, more authentic, caring and wise.

It requires navigating and interweaving both the ‘inside work’ and our involvement with the world at large.

Almost by definition it’s the stand that you may have been putting off, avoiding, dancing around or outright denying, and yet, deep in your heart, you know it’s a step that must be taken if you are going to achieve what it is you have set out to do for yourself and your loved ones.

Taking a Stand is most powerful when taken after a period of reflection on three things: your journey so far, what’s important right now, and what will take you towards your goals and thus fulfill your sense of purpose.

It also requires that we develop new skills to overcome the hurdles that may have tripped us up in the past, or to speak some truths or set some boundaries that may have been too difficult to do up until now.

It requires courage and is not always easy… it’s often like trying to get out of the box you feel trapped in when the instructions for getting out are written on the outside of the box!

And yet, with the right reflection, taking time to slow down enough to contact the deeper places of clarity and simplicity inside, clarity does come, and with it, the commitment to step forward. To do this in the company of others who are willing to do what you are doing and in an environment that is both accepting and supportive of your process is a rare opportunity.

Such an opportunity exists on the ‘Take a Stand for Life Program’ being run by Quest for Life starting on March 12th.

You can expect at least two things from attending the Take a Stand Program:
• a powerful step forward along your evolutionary journey, and
• taking away with you a rich bag full of insights, understandings and skills that will support you on that journey right through your precious life.

For details of the March Take a Stand for Life program click here or call us on 1300 941 488.

But don’t delay, the Universe rewards those that are willing to take action. Carpe diem!

And if you’re one of those lovely people who have taken ‘Take a Stand for Life’ in the past and want to share your experiences of the course, please feel free to add your two bob’s worth below.

Thank you.

All the best StJohn
Facilitator of the Take a Stand for Life program.

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Take a Stand for Life – 12-16 March 2012

Together we create a deep and sacred space in which to grow and learn

As the next Take a Stand for Life program approaches, I am reminded of last year’s program on which I was privileged to participate and support as the counsellor.

As counsellor, I shared many sacred and beautiful moments with people who came to my room to privately share precious parts of their lives.  People were able to reach down into the depths of their souls with safety and peace and I am certain this was only made possible by the beautiful Take a Stand program we were all experiencing together outside of the counselling room.

I love every program that I attend at Quest for Life. Every program is special and every person who attends, just like you, is completely divine and gorgeous.

Take a Stand was a new program to me last year and I was not sure what to expect. Well… I can confidently attest that it was great! I was blown away by the gentle yet powerful effect of this program on the people who attended, including me, and I absolutely loved participating. My week away was  very valuable and a lifelong learning experience.

Together we created a deep and sacred space in which to grow and learn and this was superbly guided by St John (we call him Singe) and Alexia.

It wasn’t just the content, which was superb, it was the community of people who felt safe with our wise and loving facilitators and because of this safety, could open to new understandings about themselves and greater self-acceptance.

There was a deep and moving honouring of each other and each other’s stories.

If you have attended a program at Quest before and would like to extend that learning with a new experience, then I invite you to join with me and come along this year. I will be counselling again and look forward to another incredible program as people take a stand for their lives. This program is a rich and thought provoking treat and I cherished every minute of being there… Hope to see you there this year!

Love to all

Margie

Please contact Suzanne on 1300 941 488 for more information

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6 Common questions about the ‘Meditate for Life’ Program

“Meditation brings wisdom; lack of mediation leaves ignorance. Know well what leads you forward and what holds you back, and choose the path that leads to wisdom.” Buddha

People have been asking us what actually happens on the ‘Meditate for Life’ program?    So, in response, here are the answers to the most common questions:

Who’s it for?

It’s for anyone who is interested in learning to meditate or who has learned in the past and would like to kick-start their practice again.

How long does it go for?

8 weeks on a Monday evening, starting at 7.00pm and finishing at 9.30pm

What happens each evening?

Each evening we cover some theory, and also practice what we are learning.   Some evenings we have two meditations as a group, and some only one, depending on the material we cover.    Here’s a breakdown of what we cover each session:

Session 1:  What is Meditation? Learning a basic Breath Meditation

Session 2:  Review Practice, What’s actually happening when we meditate?  Review of research into the benefits of Meditation

Session 3:  Discussion on progress & Q&A.    Counting Meditation designed to aid focus and concentration

Session 4:  Identifying effects of Meditation in everyday life.   Mindfulness.    Walking Meditation

Session 5:  Meditation & the Brain 1:  Meditation and Brainwave patterns.   Using the mind to change the brain to change the mind!   Gratitude Meditation

Session 6:  Meditation and the Brain 2:   Understanding anxiety and using Meditation to develop calm and equanimity

Session 7:  Meditation as a tool for managing pain.   Chanting Meditation

Session 8:  Review of program.   The role of Meditation in the Evolution of Personal Consciousness.  Loving Kindness Meditation

By running over 8 weeks we have time to really establish a Meditation practice, and there’s plenty of time to check in each week as to how the practice is going and if there are any specific questions about the practice that are concerning people.

What sort of effects does the program have for people?

At the start of the program and again at the end of the program, we survey the participants across a range of indicators.    The results of the survey can be seen in the video on our website (you can register there too!) - next course starts 27th June, 2011

Have you got any questions about Meditation? – just type them below – we’d love to answer them.

StJohn and Alexia Miall (Meditate for Life Facilitators)

StJohn Miall

StJohn Miall

StJohn Miall is the co-founder of Keep Evolving, an organisation the facilitates Leadership and Personal Development Programs that has it’s focus on the development of Wisdom, authentic Power and Compassion.  His focus is on the design and delivery of programs to both the corporate sector and the general public with particular focus on deeper, developmental work, supporting the ongoing building of emotional intelligence, spiritual intelligence, coaching, leadership and personal development.

StJohn is an expert guide in the gentle practice of Meditation and its use by those wishing to explore their own inner landscape.

With over 25 years of training experience, StJohn has a wealth of experience to call on both in the design and delivery of transformational programs. He is known for his easy style and ability to make the complex simple and easy to grasp.

Along with his wife Alexia, he facilitates ’Meditate for Life’ and eight week program run in Sydney to learn all about meditation and how to establish a regular meditation practice.   StJohn and Alexia also Facilitate the ‘Take a Stand for Life’residential program held at Bundanoon which is specifically for people looking to further develop their skills for a meaningful and fulfilling life.   You can find out more about StJohn’s activities when he’s not at Quest, by visiting the Keep Evolving website.

Alexia Miall

Alexia Miall

Alexia’s career began in banking and then moved via advertising to a major career change in 1980 to Adult and Transformational Education.  She has been privileged to share this incredible journey with 1000’s of like minded souls through her extensive experience as a facilitator, trainer, life coach, therapist, and mentor.  She managed her own training company in Victoria during the 1990’s, and during this time was the Course Leader for a training program from which the Banksia Environmental Foundation formed.

Alexia has acquired further education in Adult Education in Training; Somatic Psychotherapy; Life Coaching; Conflict Resolution; plus Accreditation in many behavioural and culture change models. She is an Associate of EcoSTEPS, a niche Sustainability consultancy, which supports her love of the natural environment.

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Creating Oneself

Move the 'C' and Reacting becomes Creating

This writing, from the Positive Thoughts  blog, describes well what it means to move from a Reactive perspective to a Creative one… something that not many adults achieve.

This shift, from Reactive to Creative is central to the Take a Stand for Life Program at Quest for Life which is starting on September 19, 2011. We are currently taking expressions of interest for this program and it will be confirmed once minimum numbers are met. In this program we explore what it means to move from reactive to creative, but more importantly; we explore and practice the skills on how to do it.

When children learn that giving is more rewarding than taking; when they learn that they can’t control everything, but they are masters of their own souls; when they learn to accept people whose difference they fear, and that pleasure is found in the power in helping others; when they learn that the value of one’s life is best measured not by possession acquired, but by wisdom shared, hope inspired, tears wiped, and hearts touched; when they learn that happiness and lasting contentment are not to be found in what a person has, but in what he or she is; when they learn to withhold judgment of people, knowing that everyone is blessed with good and bad qualities; when they learn that every person has been given the gift of a unique self and the purpose of life is to share the very best of that gift with the world. . . . When children learn these ideals, they will no longer be children–they will be blessings to those who know them, and worthy models for all the world’s children.

David L. Weatherford

To exist is to change, to change is to mature,
to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.

Henri Berson

StJohn Miall

StJohn Miall

StJohn Miall is the co-founder of Keep Evolving, an organisation the facilitates Leadership and Personal Development Programs that has it’s focus on the development of Wisdom, authentic Power and Compassion.  His focus is on the design and delivery of programs to both the corporate sector and the general public with particular focus on deeper, developmental work, supporting the ongoing building of emotional intelligence, spiritual intelligence, coaching, leadership and personal development.

StJohn is an expert guide in the gentle practice of Meditation and its use by those wishing to explore their own inner landscape.

With over 25 years of training experience, StJohn has a wealth of experience to call on both in the design and delivery of transformational programs. He is known for his easy style and ability to make the complex simple and easy to grasp.

Along with his wife Alexia, he facilitates ’Meditate for Life’ and eight week program run in Sydney to learn all about meditation and how to establish a regular meditation practice.   StJohn and Alexia also Facilitate the ‘Take a Stand for Life’residential program held at Bundanoon which is specifically for people looking to further develop their skills for a meaningful and fulfilling life.   You can find out more about StJohn’s activities when he’s not at Quest, by visiting the Keep Evolving website.

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Exploring Our 8 Senses

No longer the basic 5 senses

When I ask people “how many senses do you have?”  the normal response is 5: Touch, Taste, Smell, Sight and Hearing.

True. But these 5 are only part of the story.

These 5 are our external senses.  External in that they help us sense what is going on out there in the world.

However, what about inside of us?  A 6th sense could well be the sense of our internal state; our bones, muscles, organs, flow of energy internally and a host of other feelings and sensations that go on inside any human body.

But wait, there’s more!  As any meditator will tell you, there is also the whole Mental realm that can also be experienced by us.   We could call this our 7th Sense… the world of thoughts, memories, beliefs, attitudes, dreams, fantasies, planning etc.  Different from our 6th Sense (internal Sensations and Feelings) and yet this 7th Sense (Mental Activity), if we stop to experience it for a while, is a whole universe in its own right!

And there’s still more… an 8th sense, which we will call our Connection Sense; how we connect and understand what is happening in our relationships with others – other people, other living things, other social networks, other societies.

So the next time someone asks you, how many senses do you have? You can now say 8!

You assignment this week, should you choose to accept it, is to spend about 10 minutes or so and focus in on each of these 4 main areas of perception.

1. So on day one you might choose you Physical Senses.  For 10 minutes, discover all you can see, hear, touch, taste and smell.  Do this with your eyes open, slowly wandering around a room that has interesting things to touch, smell, hear, see and even taste.  Out in Nature is also another good place to do this one.  Hone your senses; indulge them, give them your fullest attention and find out what a treasure trove of sensory delight your kitchen really is!

2. On another day sit quietly and explore your inner sensations.  Scan you body with no other purpose than to experience what is happening inside.  All the sensations, from the outside of your skin, your muscles, your organs right down to the very marrow of your bones.  Feel your heart beating, your lungs breathing and your gut digesting.  No judgement, just awareness!

3. On a third day, go explore your Mental Kingdom…. indulge your thoughts, fantasies, memories and other mental processes.   Unlike most meditations, keep bringing you attention back to your thoughts rather than your breathing or other usual object of attention.  Let yourself be fascinated by what your Monkey Mind can get itself up to when you give it free rein.

4. Finally, take 10 minutes to sit somewhere where there are lots of other people… a shopping centre maybe, or a station, or a park.  The purpose is to become more aware of your connection, or lack of connection, to other people.  The old lady pushing her trolley, the busy young upwardly mobiles, the mother with her children.  Notice what connection or empathy you might feel with or for these people.   You can even extend this to other living beings, such as animals or even plants.

This is primarily an exercise in deepening our capacity for awareness, or mindfulness, in four main domains of perception.  But it can also bring great insight and understandings.

Love to hear how it is for you.

All the best

StJohn Miall

StJohn Miall

StJohn Miall is the co-founder of Keep Evolving, an organisation the facilitates Leadership and Personal Development Programs that has it’s focus on the development of Wisdom, authentic Power and Compassion.  His focus is on the design and delivery of programs to both the corporate sector and the general public with particular focus on deeper, developmental work, supporting the ongoing building of emotional intelligence, spiritual intelligence, coaching, leadership and personal development.

StJohn is an expert guide in the gentle practice of Meditation and its use by those wishing to explore their own inner landscape.

With over 25 years of training experience, StJohn has a wealth of experience to call on both in the design and delivery of transformational programs. He is known for his easy style and ability to make the complex simple and easy to grasp.

Along with his wife Alexia, he facilitates ’Meditate for Life’ and eight week program run in Sydney to learn all about meditation and how to establish a regular meditation practice.   StJohn and Alexia also Facilitate the ‘Take a Stand for Life’ residential program held at Bundanoon which is specifically for people looking to further develop their skills for a meaningful and fulfilling life.   You can find out more about StJohn’s activities when he’s not at Quest, by visiting the Keep Evolving website.

This blog was first published in ‘Evolution or Bust!’  http://evolutionorbust.blogspot.com  a blog for those wanting to continue their personal growth and development week by week following a set of assignments designed to expand your consciousness and personal development, hosted by StJohn Miall and Jo Flynn.

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LOL! Does Technology make for Shallow Thinking?

Does technology make for shallow thinking?

When I was younger, LOL! meant “Lots of Love.”

Now it means “Laugh out Loud.”

The change happened sometime during that period where I was frantically trying to catch up with the X’ers and Y’s, who were leading the charge into this high tech social media age we now live in.

Why it happened, I have no idea. Surely X’ers and Y’s still like to send love to each other, however I find the thought that they might rather laugh at each other rather than love each other slightly disturbing. That’s not all I have found disturbing recently.

In an article recently published in the Sydney Morning Herald, it would appear that a growing body of scientific evidence suggests that the net, (with its constant distractions and interruptions) is turning us into scattered and superficial thinkers.

Nicholas Carr, author of the recently published book The Shallows: How the Internet Is Changing the Way We Think, Read and Remember was inspired to write the book after he realised that he was losing his own capacity for concentration and contemplation. This is something I’ve noticed myself. Apparently, when we’re constantly distracted and interrupted, as we tend to be when looking at the screens of our computers and mobile phones, our brains can’t forge the strong and expansive neural connections that give distinctiveness and depth to our thinking. Our thoughts become disjointed, our memories weak. The Roman philosopher Seneca may have put it best 2000 years ago: ”To be everywhere is to be nowhere.”

This has been further researched in a number of studies on students who use their computers during lectures and have a much lower retention rate than those who don’t, and also in multi-taskers, who seem to be absolutely hopeless! German researchers found that web browsers usually spend less than 10 seconds looking at a page. Even people doing academic research online tend to ”bounce” rapidly between different documents, rarely reading more than a page or two, according to a University College London study. Such mental juggling takes a big toll. In a recent experiment at Stanford University, researchers gave various cognitive tests to 49 people who do a lot of media multitasking and 52 people who multitask much less frequently. The heavy multitaskers performed poorly on all the tests. They were more easily distracted, had less control over their attention, and were much less able to distinguish important information from trivia.

So what to make of all of this?

I think is important to keep up with the latest technologies… there’s just too much of great value to be gained from a discerning use of the net. However, we need to do this in a way that doesn’t lose touch with our capacity for deeper, more contemplative and reflective introspection carried out without the pressure to find the answer quickly.

20 minutes of Meditation each day will meet this need wonderfully.

In the meantime, we need to carefully monitor the use of the new technology on ourselves, but just as importantly… Live, Love, and Laugh out Loud each day.
So LOL to you all.

I’d love to hear what you think about all this. Please leave your comments below.

StJohn Miall

StJohn Miall

StJohn Miall is the co-founder of Keep Evolving, an organisation the facilitates Leadership and Personal Development Programs that has it’s focus on the development of Wisdom, authentic Power and Compassion.  His focus is on the design and delivery of programs to both the corporate sector and the general public with particular focus on deeper, developmental work, supporting the ongoing building of emotional intelligence, spiritual intelligence, coaching, leadership and personal development.

StJohn is an expert guide in the gentle practice of Meditation and its use by those wishing to explore their own inner landscape.

With over 25 years of training experience, StJohn has a wealth of experience to call on both in the design and delivery of transformational programs. He is known for his easy style and ability to make the complex simple and easy to grasp.

Along with his wife Alexia, he facilitates ’Meditate for Life’ and eight week program run in Sydney to learn all about meditation and how to establish a regular meditation practice.   StJohn and Alexia also Facilitate the ‘Take a Stand for Life’ residential program held at Bundanoon which is specifically for people looking to further develop their skills for a meaningful and fulfilling life.   You can find out more about StJohn’s activities when he’s not at Quest, by visiting the Keep Evolving website.

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Meditate on a Flower

Flowers are exquisitely beautiful and a potent source of inspiration Meditating on a flower can elevate your spirits and soothe your soul.   Now that we are in springtime, there are many beautiful flowers in bloom.

A single rose, an iris, a lily a bottlebrush – all bring to mind a fantastic, almost shocking beauty.    They focus our attention and both energise and calm our stressed-out bodies and minds.   Besides being overwhelmingly beautiful, they are rich with meaning and symbolism.   For Christians, the daffodil symbolises the resurrection of Christ, and violets, the virgin Mary.   The profit Mohammed saw violets as symbols of his teachings.   They are also connected to Persephone and the hereafter – She was strolling through a field of violets when Hades kidnapped her.   And of course, the Lotus flower represents many aspects of the spiritual journey for Buddhism and other eastern religions.

Clearly flowers have a powerful influence on us humans, and for good reason.    Their fragile beauty captivates our imagination and their very presence uplifts and heals.   If you haven’t paid too much attention to flowers, get to know them as objects of meditation.

Meditating with flowers is particularly valuable when you are struggling with an illness or with the loss of a loved one.

The Practice

Pick a flower from your garden or purchase one from a shop.    Place your single flower in a vase on a table in front of you, just below eye level.

Sit in a chair or a cushion.   Take a few deep breaths and set aside any worries or distractions for the next little while.

Focus on the flower in front of you.

Choose to let your thoughts simply wander by like the clouds in the sky without giving them any attention.

Now focus in on the flower’s unique beauty.    Breathe in its scent and visualise the perfume filling your body and healing any illness or health problems or worries you may be experiencing.   If you are grieving a loved one, let the grief be there and let the flower’s essence soothe your broken heart.

End your meditation when your emotions are calm and your breathing is deep and normal.

Adapted from ‘The Meditation Bible – a definitive guide to meditations for every purpose’ by Madonna Gauding.   Goldsfield Press. 2005

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StJohn and Alexia Miall will be leading ‘Meditate for Life’ a Meditation course held in Crows Nest in Sydney on Monday evenings for 8 weeks starting Nov 1st, on which you will learn a number of different Meditation techniques and tools, as well as learning about the role meditation can play in managing stress, finding your inner peace, managing pain, improving relationships, building self confidence and improving brain functioning.

For more information and to register click here. When you visit our website you can also watch a short video on the benefits past prticipants received from doing the course. We look forward to seeing you soon.

StJohn and Alexia Miall

 

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