​Do you ever regret the things you agreed to do?  I ask because a while ago I was asked to write a theological article.  My immediate reaction was ‘Yeah, I can do that!  Let me know more later’.  I must have felt good about something that was going on – you know, when anyone can ask you anything and you feel so buoyed that nothing is impossible.  So saying yes was the most natural thing in the world.

Well, now the time is fast approaching and I have to put pen to paper, submit it for scrutiny and wait and see. This does not feel like a good idea at all.  And then I saw on the rota of contributors that Frances Young will publish her article immediately before mine. It’s a good job that the most used phrase in the Bible is ‘Do not fear!’regrets

I have noticed in the mindfulness sessions that how we feel about something greatly affects what we think we can do.  If we feel rubbish, then the world is rubbish.  If we feel good, then the world is good. Our emotions drive how we live our lives.  Yet I have also noticed as a  ‘pioneer’ that almost every day is about doing something that I have not done before. I often have no idea about how I’m going to do it, only that an idea might be a good one so we need to get it done.  It’s a bit like Grommit in the ‘Wrong Trousers’ where he picks up the spare track and lays it frantically in the hope that he can hang on.

So I’m off to lay some tracks, to think hard, to have some fun and put mindfulness to the test!

It’s been a particularly busy period for the project and I’m glad to say that things are moving in the right direction.  Of course, when I say, ‘right’ I mean the way I think it ought to go which doesn’t mean ultimately that I’m correct, just that we are on the track I want it to be on at this time.

Last month I responded to a need that I saw developing amongst schools so I took myself onto a course and added to the skills I already have.  I am now qualified to teach mindfulness not only to 11-18 year olds but also to teach the teachers of 11-18 year olds.  Consequently I am now going into to educational establishments to teach mindfulness on behalf of Huddersfield Methodist Circuit.  Wherever I go and who ever I meet I tell them of the generosity of the Methodists in Huddersfield and releasing me to help release others from powerful and controlling thoughts via mindfulness and they are all aghast with admiration – and so am I!

So now I am running public mindfulness courses – some paid and some for free (for those who can’t afford a course); I am going into places of learning to teach the students and also the staff;  we are just about to begin our first intentional community to explore mindfulness from a Christian perspective as spiritual explorers made up from people who attended the mindfulness course.
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We have come along way in a very short space of time.  What happens from here is important as I hope that those who fund the project will be able to see just how different this is to what we are used to in churches and just how close to the Gospel mindfulness can be and bring us.

A bit late for a February Roundup but, better late than never – well, perhaps.  Anyway, life has been busy in February and even with a half term inserted in between work, it has still been a full-on month.  The current Mindfulness course with the Mindfulness Association is drawing to a close with just one more weekend to complete.  It’s been an interesting time and one where I have learnt a lot of useful stuff.  What has occurred to me is the question, ‘what sort of Mindfulness course do I want to deliver?’  My original 8 week participant’s course was a little stilted and the others have been, well, very serious.  I am looking to gather a range of styles so that I can tailor-make the course to fit the participants.  It’s time-consuming but I am working hard on it and hope to be able to come up with a versatile style.

That said, the Lepton course is well under way now.  Session three finished last night and it was, I think, a time when the topic was appreciated by everybody.  Next week is the half-way point where people can offer anonymous feedback so I should have an idea of whether I am on track with this group or if I need to change the approach.  Whatever, it seems to be OK for now.

The schools work is going well and, all being well I am hoping to deliver some Mindfulness courses to teaching staff.  The work at the FE college is also picking up momentum, so opportunities are opening for the work.

The Mindfulness course at Mirfield is about to come to an end.  After 8 weeks the MBCT course is almost done!  I will ask the participants to give me some (anonymous) feedback on Tuesday so I can gauge what needs to change but so far people are telling me that it’s been a good course that has been very useful.

I am also about to announce some dates for a course in Shepley (I will post them when I know them) but I’ve found it difficult to find a suitable venue on the days I want.  This will be the first course where I’ve had to charge and I have to say I’m not sure how I feel about that.  All of my life I have offered my services to people for nothing but now with hiring a venue, travel and printing etc. I am finding that I can’t ask the church to fund the courses.  It’s a big mental departure.  However, as was pointed out to me, if you don’t charge people don’t think it will be any good – and they won’t come.  Watch this space…

The Spiritual element to the project is going along nicely too.  The spiritual accompanier’s course is now in its fifth session.  Two weeks ago I had a great weekend at Parceval Hall – in silence!!!  As you know, I haven’t been a great fan of silence. After all, there are so many interesting people to talk to and so much to learn from others that it has always felt like an abuse to keep quiet.  But on this occasion I began to understand the beauty of silence.  Nobody spoke from 8pm on Friday night except to check in with the spiritual director; no eye contact made and no pleasant looks exchanged.  I was just able to be me – alone with my thoughts and slowly but surely getting to know who I truly am.  In the past that has been a scary prospect but on this occasion it was a genuine pleasure.

​Time to catch up on the project’s progress…

Woodys Roundup

Early January saw me venture into darkest South Wales with Bangor University for the Mindfulness Teacher Training Retreat.  There were 34 students being led by 4 lecturers.

It was an excellent eight days with much thought-provoking material presented to us all.  I learnt far more than I had expected and it has set me up well to present future courses.

There were several periods of silence across the retreat which I wasn’t looking forward to – and on one occasion we had a 24 hour silence.  Actually it had a significant impact on me.  That meant we didn’t have to look at anyone if we didn’t want to; we didn’t have to be polite over the meal table (you know, offering to pour someone a glass of water when they were just as capable as I was of lifting their arm but you have to do it to ‘show manners’ as my Mum used to say).  It was a time to just be me. From dreading it, I ended up loving it.  After 5 days of meditation my heart rate dropped from 60 beats per minute to 46!!  As you can see I was very relaxed.

During the first part of the day we were taken through different sessions of a stress reduction course followed in the afternoon by all of us leading meditations (and being assessed on them).

But the surprise of the week was the number of NHS staff who were on the course, who were there to learn how to run a Mindfulness course as a part of their work.  It seems the NHS in Wales is taking Mindfulness courses very seriously as a part of treatment for ‘service users’.

As you know, a part of what I am doing is working with the NHS to establish a new work by building links with faith organisations.  The idea is to help those with mental problems (of all sorts) by accessing spirituality.

We are at the stage now of asking faith organisations (that’s us in our churches) what sort of help they (we) need in order to begin the process.  If you’ve been thinking that you might utilise something like this idea as a part of your mission/on-going work or a new work, then this might be a good time to give it some more thought and talk to your minister.

For example, if you think your church might have an outreach by helping people who are bereaved – and yes, bereavement can be a really big mental issue), then I can make a proposal to the NHS and ask them to put on a course on how to help those who are grieving and to train a small team in listening skills.  The term mental health/mental problems/emotional well-being can be very wide and can affect us all, so we can think broadly here.

If you have contact with people who suffer from depression/anxiety or some other mental issue and think this might be an opening to reach out to people where you are, then we can put in a bid and ask for a counsellor/psychiatrist to help us understand the illness more and to know how to help.  You may already be doing this of course, in which case we this might be a chance to add to what you already do.

If you are thinking that this might be a part of a much wider outreach and want some help in developing it (like putting on a Happiness course and a group to discuss spirituality or a drop-in for people who are grieving etc etc) then please talk to your minister.  I am here and happy to talk it over and if it appropriate, I am happy to get involved.

Please let me know if this sounds like it might be of use and we can get thinking!

Tim Moore

What is it about failure that’s so destructive?  Why are we so afraid to fail?

Deep within our minds there sits a nagging old man/woman who constantly criticises us.  Our inner critic is excellent at reminding us of all the times we have failed – and they do it with pin-point accuracy and with all the definition of a 100 megapixel camera – in HD and 3D.  That old man/woman tells us we’re not good enough and is always ready to remind us of of a time when we tried something new and we failed (more than 80% of our thoughts are negative by the way).
All-in-all we don’t want to fail and we know the best way to not fail is to not try anything new or risky – simples!
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If you’ve not seen any of Brene Brown’s TED talks, then shame on you (that’s a pun not a criticism.  You’ll have to watch her now!).

She will tell you that the very best of those in innovation have failed repeatedly – and that’s why they become ‘successful’.  To bring new and exciting things you have to fail and in order to fail you have to be vulnerable. We are not good at vulnerability.
It seems that our self-esteem is often hooked in to what other people think of us: ‘If they think I’m OK, then I am.  If not, then I’m not and there must be something wrong with me’ (you’ll have to come to one of my Mindfulness courses to find out why we think like this).  But our deep-seated need is to connect to others; to be accepted and liked and most of us spend most of our time making sure we get accepted by others – no wonder it’s an exhausting world. And that’s why we think we must not/cannot fail because to not be accepted is a shameful experience which alienates us from the people we so desperately want to be with.
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Happily, the Gospels tell a different story and my paraphrase is this: God loves you so be nice to each other.  Or a bit more poetically, there is nothing greater than to sit in the palm of God’s hand and try to tell God why we shouldn’t be there only for God to hush our anxiety, smile and tell us it’s OK ‘cos seeing us there causes the angels to sing and the trinity to dance.  I am grateful to my Methodist circuit for inviting me to fail…

I just thought it might be useful to think about our mood for a moment.  Most of us have moods which come and go depending on what’s happening day to day.  People with depression or anxiety have moods which also might come and go but those moods tend to stay around a lot longer.
If a gazelle is attacked by a lion but escapes, it will literally shake off the trauma and resume life as normal.  If a human is attacked they will be forever going over the experience in order to not let it happen again.  We will rehearse where we were when the lion came; what we were doing; who we were with etc.  All of these thoughts are to make sure we don’t get caught again.  The problem is we have no mechanism to shake off the trauma.  Instead we replay the attack over and over again.  The aim is to make sure we don’t get caught out again.  It should be a positive thing.  Instead of being positive it becomes negative because we get attacked everytime we think about it.
Another problem is that our bodies and minds can’t differentiate between a disagreement/argument with someone and an encounter with a lion that wants to end our lives and eat us.  Our mood spirals down and down and down etc etc.


One way of boosting our moods is to do things that are positive and uplifting for us.  The NHS and Macmillan Cancer Support have produced a book list of mood-lifting reads so if you like reading and want a lift then one of these might be just the thing needed.  Here are some of them:

• A cat called Norton by Peter Gethers
• The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out Of The Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson
• The Island by Victoria Hislop
• The Lady in the Van by Alan Bennett
• The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessey by Rachel Joyce
• The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton
• The Other Side of the Dale by Gervaise Phinn
• The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher

If you do read any of them perhaps you can let me know what you think.

lad you could make the time to view these pages and join me on an adventure.  My name is Tim Moore and the purpose of this blog is to share my thinking – good and bad, to invite constructive comment and to see where it takes us.

If you looked at the ‘About’ page you will have a rough idea of the ideas so far, but here’s a bit more:

• Mental health is fragile and we are all prone to struggles.
• An increasing number of young people – men and women are taking their own lives
• Older men and women struggle to find meaning in life
• The Methodist Church has invited me to try something new away from ‘church’
• Spirituality is important to many people
• Mindfulness is becoming a very powerful self-help tool for everyone, not just those with a diagnosed illness
• Everyone and anyone needs to be able to access something that helps us not just survive but thrive.
• Calmness, peace, spirituality, de-stressing, the search for self and serenity are elements that thousands of people are looking for

As the blog grows you will see how the project grows and how successful or otherwise it is.  It will be a warts and all view of a pioneer project. I will add theological reflections on the work and all of the ups and downs.  So please join me for some fun and hopefully a better idea of what it means to have a meaningful life.

As you will see by the web site I am no ‘Techie’ expert but I am learning!.  I am also no expert in mental health but I am learning.  I am no expert in Mindfulness but…