Alexander Isaksson Psychotherapy and Meditation

18/08/2021

I'm excited to see that the Practice Rooms just published an article I wrote for them on spirituality and Mindfulness-based Psychotherapy. Whilst brief it explores the essence of mindfully coming into relationship as a way to understand and embrace more of ourselves as we come into greater embodiment with our experience just as it is.

Alexander Isaksson explores Spirituality, Mindfulness-based Psychotherapy, the Buddhist Noble Truths, and the therapeutic process in his blog post 'Mindfulness and Spirituality'

https://thepracticerooms.co.uk/find-a-therapist/blog/2021/08/mindfulness-and-spirituality

02/08/2021

Alone at Last

Being alone isn't something that seems to be much valued in our contemporary world. Part of the reason, I believe, is that aloneness often gets conflated with loneliness. The experience is far from the truth as one speaks of wholeness, the other, fragmentation and despair.

In the words of David Whyte:

'It (alone) is a word that can be felt at the same time as an invitation to depth and as an immanent threat, as in all alone with its returned echo of abandonment.'

That is accurate in many ways as within the depth of our aloneness lies a radiant quietude as well as parts cast away. Often related to past hurts, anxiety, trauma and early childhood wounding, these parts often get banished into the dark cellar of our psyche.

At times, an invitation comes before us. Sometimes it knocks louder than others. It won't annihilate you to open up. In fact, when you do it asks you to merely come into relationship with your experience. And coming into ourselves in our aloneness is the first step toward individuation. As we do so, says David Whyte we need to 'admit how afraid of it we are.'

As we turn to that which is present in our experience, we let go of our stories about the past and fantasies of what's to come. Compassion naturally flows as understanding dawns when parts forsaken are met: allowing healing, integration and transformation to take place as more of ourselves become available.

'Having dispelled all darkness, he found delight in being alone' (Sn v.956)

The Buddha points to the wholeness at the centre of ourselves that being alone takes us to. Marked by an inner joy, simplicity and silence, our need to distract or lose ourselves in activities and relationships lessen. And instead of losing ourselves in another, or having our wounding act itself out in relational dynamics, we become much more sensitive as we learn to listen in at much greater depth.

From that depth of listening we can come into true relationship with ourselves, another and the world that is held in a holy, radiant stillness, brimming with quiet wonder and joy.

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Alexander Isaksson Psychotherapy and Meditation
www.alexanderisaksson.co.uk

24/05/2021

How we meet our experience and the world really matters. And yet we somehow take it as a given, thinking that we are fixed in the person we take ourselves to be.

Mindfulness is the key and expression of the openness of being. From its ground the person isn't a something fixed or even fully formed. Rather it's a constant movement as all of life moves in and through us.

The Buddha's 4 Noble Truth captures the essence of this in ways perhaps never before stated. He encouraged us to 'come and see' (Ehipassiko - Pali; Ehipaśyika - Sanskrit), to look closer at our experience to see what is true.

Coming back to the body offers a window into our confusion and hurt. Marked by somatic constrictions, trauma, unexpressed grief and the like, the body which we commonly take as 'me' most readily demonstrates the truth of how we suffer when we identify and merge with our experience.

As we take our seat and witness how our experience in its multiplicity arise within our consciousness -- and that we do not need to attach to or reject what is happening -- we may even sense a greater spaciousness through which our experience can self-liberate itself by merely allowing it to arise and cease.

At that point you may even exclaim:
E MA HO (ཨེ་མ་ཧོ): How wonderful!' (as found in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition)

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Alexander Isaksson Psychotherapy and Meditation
www.alexanderisaksson.co.uk

08/05/2021

The ground of being,

How healing happens is something of utmost curiosity. As a psychotherapist, it perhaps the one question the work centres on.

Whichever form of practice one may engage in, a return to our home ground can become our refuge.

As a Mindfulness-based psychotherapist much of the work centres around resting into our being nature and meeting the client from that place of presence or brilliant sanity as Chögyam Trungpa calls it.

The daily grind, interpersonal difficulties, gain and loss, trauma and the like leave an imprint on our selves which often come to shape our experience of the world.

Whilst we can easily get caught in the content of our experience, it is in the context of our being where release, freedom and new possibilities reside.

One possibility of Mindfulness-based Psychotherapy is the (re)discovery and attunement to our home ground as presence.

From that place of being our wounds are healed and we can once again relate to life with a newfound sense of curiosity, freedom and open-heartedness.

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Alexander Isaksson Psychotherapy and Meditation

www.alexanderisaksson.co.uk