The Monk on a Motorbike Danny Hill

Today my guest is Ayala Gill. Ayala has been committed to a path of insight and awakening since
her early twenties. She has been practicing Iyengar yoga since 1977 -aged just
six years old- Insight Meditation and Dhamma since 1995, Insight Yoga
(including yin yoga and psychospiritual enquiry) since 2001 and the animistic
practices of the Andean-Inkan Holy Mountain tradition since 2017. She says she is
humbled and fascinated by the potential of these practices to inform and
enhance our relationship to body, heart, mind and spirit – and passionate in
her commitment to translate this potential into everyday life.

She has been teaching for 25 years, guides silent retreats
in Europe which include yoga, meditation and ceremony, and is currently writing
a book about integrating these practices into daily life. She has received
authorisation to teach Insight Meditation from Martin Aylward, with whom she continues to study dharma. Ayala lives with
her husband and their 3 children between London and Dorset, where they are
using regenerative farming methods to enhance biodiversity. 

I first met her at London insight retreat day. I was struck her
commitment to both yoga and meditation. There are a lot of yoga teachers out
there who teach a bit of meditation and meditation teacher who include yoga
to  their practice but not many who have
really combined the two. And then branched off into shamanistic practices as
well

I really enjoyed hearing her story. I hope you will too

Enjoy!

 

Today my guest is Ethan Pollock, meditation teacher and
co-founder of Mindful Living Community. Ethan has been facilitating mindfulness
groups and retreats for over a decade. In his early twenties he gave up a career as a commercially successful artist and spent five years training at Plum Village with the internationally recognized mindfulness teacher & Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. He is a qualified Mindful Self-Compassion teacher. He facilitates and teaches around the UK including at the Sharpham Trust, Schumacher College, The Royal Drawing School, and local groups in Devon

This is one of a series of interviews I am doing profiling
meditation teachers linked with Gaia House

I met Ethan on a recent retreat at the Barn which is
closely linked with Gaia House where he was giving a talk. I was struck by how well he taught and interested to hear more about his training at Plum village

I’m afraid my mic started to give up on this episode. I’ll
have a nice shiny new one for my next podcast, I promise.

Please enjoy

Today my guest is meditation teacher Kirsten Kratz.

Born and brought up in Germany Kirsten has
practiced Buddhist meditation in Asia and the West since 1993. She started
teaching in 2006 and since 2015 she has been ‘teacher in residence’ at Gaia
House meditation centre supporting those on personal retreat there. Her love
and understanding of the Dhamma has been strongly influenced by, among others, the
teachings of her friend and teaching colleague, the late Rob Burbea.

One of her particular passions is exploring how wisdom teachings can foster appropriate
responses to the challenges of our time, and Kirsten sees her involvement in
activism as an important expression of her practice.

She is co-initiator of the “Dharma Action Network for Climate Engagement” (DANCE) and supporting teacher of Freely Given Retreats.

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Today my guest is meditation teacher Gavin Milne. Gavin teaches at Gaia House retreat centre in Devon, one of the largest Buddhist meditation centres in Europe

Gavin has been practicing meditation for twenty years and gave up a career as a design engineer for the Red Bull Formula One race team to travel to Asia and the US to explore the Dhamma intensively before returning to the UK. There he became involved with Gaia House and started his teacher training in 2015 and became authorized in 20219. His teachings emphasize exploring the path of practice amidst the challenges of daily life

If you’d like to hear more of Gavin’s talks then go to dharrmaseed.org and search for his name

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Today I’m talking to Professor Marc Buehner about how we make decisions

Marc is professor of cognitive Psychology at Cardiff University in Wales where he designed a course in decision making which he teaches to final-year students.

I’ve always been pretty indecisive, so when I learned recently that you can formally study the decision-making process and how to make better ones I wanted to know more

When I looked at some of the material on the course I was struck by how logical and mathematical this process can be when to my mind much of it seems to be intuitive and emotional. And maybe that’s why I am so indecisive?

Here Marc talks about what constitutes a good or a bad decision why numbers and logic are an important part of the process of making good decisions and why people can’t get their heads around the terrible odds of playing the lottery. And plenty more besides

If you want to get a taste of what Marc Teaches then check out his youtube lecture which is for his uni students. I'll  put a link on my website www.monkonamotorbike.com where you can also find out more about Marc and some of his suggestions for further reading

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Sally Kempton Is a meditation teacher and author.

As a young successful journalist and feminist living in New York in the early 70s Sally had an awakening experience after dropping acid for the first time. This got her interested in meditation and yoga and led her to become a monastic under the guidance of the Indian yogi Swami Muktananda

For the next twenty years, she studied and practiced Hindu Vedanta and the north Indian tantric tradition of Kashmiri Shaivism, traveling and teaching with Muktananda and living in an ashram

In 2002 she disrobed and took to creating new teaching paths which she considered more suitable for the 21st century, integrating neurobiology and psychology and working with likes of integrative philosopher Ken Wilbur

Her teachings are based on Tantra, in particular deity practices involving deep and transformative visualizations, invoking and embodying the qualities of Hindu goddesses like Lakshmi and Saraswathi

This style of visualization is common to most traditions but often involves male figures. Sally transformed this by focusing on the feminine energies instead

She is the author of the books Awakening Shakti and Meditation for the Love of it and leads workshops worldwide

I met sally at one her workshops in London which I signed up for after reading her book

Awakening Shakti and she kindly agreed to a podcast interview

You can find out more about Sally, her teachings and books, and so on at her website sallykempton.com

Enjoy