Soft Eyes is a term for a different way of seeing the world.

Usually we 'look at' the world, often taking a hard look at the world and people outside of us. We 'reach out' with our attention and over-engage with whoever we're looking at. Often there is some kind of judgement involved.

Wendy was recently talking at the wisdom 2.0 conference. This was a gathering of young technology entrepreneurs,  who also have an interest in the what the wisdom traditions, such as meditation, might be able to offer them.  

Wendy's talk was watched by about 300 people in the auditorium and 30,000 out on the web!

She said her subtitle for the talk was Conscious Embodiment - how to sit, stand and walk.

Due to availability of our normal participants, the practice group dates have changed.

The next london practice group will be Descember 8th 7-9pm at the London Centre for Spirituality, Georges Yard, EC1

Hope to see you there!

I've not posted in a while.Life has been rather overbusy. I'm struck that although I don't think I've coped as well as I would have liked to with the overwealm I have coped a lot better than a similar situation a few years back. So the training makes a difference.

One of the things that Wendy Palmer sometimes quotes is the phrase often attributed to Bruce Lee:

I was at Aikido tonight and chatting to someone who was at the Doshu's course in Cardiff over the weekend. Unfortunately I wasn't able to be there.

One comment he made kind of surprised me. He said that he learnt nothing new over the weekend. I'm guessing that he meant new techniques but it caused me to reflect that I learn something new almost every time I step onto an aikido mat.

 
Two highly recommended books

Linchpin - Seth Godin - Uses the metaphor of Artist vs Factory worker - an artist is a unique person, using their talents visibly and people will ask for them by name. Factory workers are replacable cogs, paid the lowest economic wage.

I've been reminded recently of one of the primary ways of measuring 'success' on this journey of understanding.

Wendy Palmer, in both Conscious Embodiment exercises and aikido gradings, is looking for how well people recover after they have been knocked off centre. So, someone can do a marvellous technique at first, but when pushed off centre doesn't recover.

I've just got back from an aikdo seminar at Bristol. I've been struck again at the depth of understanding that I get from the practice.

Wendy is coming back to teach here the UK in April. This time I'm delighted to be sponsoring her workshops. Wendy is an absolutely outstanding teacher and is really not to be missed.

When I started training that both CE and aikido I wanted to get to that centred state and just stay there. I rather quickly found that I couldn't. I thought that this was because there was something wrong with me and if I just trained a bit harder, practiced for longer then I'd get there.

O Sensei, the founder of Aikido, is reputed to have said:
     "It's not that I never lose my centre, it's just that I recover it so fast no one ever notices"