Workshops & Talks

I have been giving talks and workshops at events, festivals, schools and organisations for the past ten years, on a range of topics from mental health to politics, from Buddhist philosophy to gender and relationships. I have also supported Jewels Wingfield in holding Threshold Alchemy weekends, as well as four-day Grief and Renewal gatherings.

The following are examples of talks and workshops I have offered at the wonderful Buddhafield festival and elsewhere. If you would like me to offer one of these - or something similar - at an event or organisation you are part of, just get in touch.

1: Tending the Flames of Desire (Talk)

Desire brings beauty, evolution, creation and procreation. It is a fire that keeps us alive, bringing warmth and light and transformation and communion - and of course it can also run rampage and burn down the whole forest. This talk offers a way of looking at desire that seeks neither to extinguish the flame nor set off wildfires, but instead to truly respect and tend to the flames, so that this sacred life force can offer its limitless gifts in ways that bring both deeper safety and more powerful, transformative beauty.

2: In Love with the Mystery (Workshop)

One of the great sadnesses of our times is how deeply we have been taught as a culture to feel we already know the answer, or should know the answer, or even that such a thing as a single intelligible answer might exist. How small we try to make this boundless world! What gorgeous mysteries we miss! This workshop offers a tiny push in the opposite direction, with a talk followed by exercises, always playful and potentially profound, to remind our dear misguided heads of what our hearts and bodies never fully forgot: that we never left the mystery, and that to be in the mystery is to be in love.

3: Surrender and Action Reconciled (Talk)

The beautiful, beating heart of many faith paths and wisdom traditions is surrender - a dropping down of defences and dropping into the flow that is as empowering as it is peaceful. And yet so often we can feel torn between wanting to give in to the flow and to make changes in the world: just look where this flow is taking us - how can I surrender to *this*? This talk and workshop suggests that it is possible to transcend this unhelpful either/or. By understanding surrender as an active, endless process, which includes surrendering to that mysterious inner conviction, we can watch our actions grow in both power and integrity.