This talk also includes Helen Stephenson. Meditation and yoga are natural partners in the spiritual life. This talk introduces a retreat that draws on the Buddh's teachings of mindfulness and awakening, and the yoga teachings of Patanjali, combining the practices of Hatha Yoga and Insight Meditation. The yoga on this retreat is offered as a spiritual path rather than simply an exercise system.

A reflection on how to work with the challenges we all encounter in meditation. Craving, aversion, sleepiness, restlessness, and sceptical doubt are challenging but temporary visitors which obscure our deeper truth. By recognising them as such and learning to work skillfully with them we can free ourselves from their grip, revealing the natural purity and radiance of our heart and mind.

Tensions in the body are physical manifestations of mind and thought patterns. As we smile into the body it becomes our friend. The body is the gateway to the mystery of life, and in it we can experience the silence that is in us and around us.

All conditioned things turn out to be unreliable and subject to change. Recognising and accepting the truth of impermanence and the insecurity of our fluid existence allows us to let go of holding and resistance, and release our limited sense of self into the flow of life.

Meditation practice invites us to see that we are an inseparable part of the vast web of life, despite the appearance of our separate individuality. This realisation opens our heart to a sense of deep inner connection, and enables us to live in harmony and at peace with the way things are.