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<p>By way of some background, I have been stumbling away at this Journey since the mid 1970s. Like many of my generation I was entranced by the weekly exploits of Kwai Chang Caine and took up study of both martial arts and Buddhism — two overlapping fields that I continue to this day.</p>
<p><strong>Asian Religions</strong></p>
<p>I have always had a studious bent and so was dispatched off to university where I gained a degree in Religious Studies and was happily able to focus on Buddhism and Taoism and helped run the university Buddhist Society for a while. This was a position that enabled me to invite guest speakers and it was through this that I was able to meet the late Trevor Leggett , amongst others. It was also the place where I learned to meditate under the guidance of various visiting Buddhist monks.</p>
<p><strong>The Tai Chi journey begins</strong></p>
<p>In the early 1980s I started in learning Tai Chi with Tew Bunnag, a teacher who emphasised the meditative quality of the art and was himself a student of a prominent Vipassana meditation teacher, Dhiravamsa, who has encouraged him to develop Tai Chi in this way.</p>
<p><strong>NLP and Hypnotherapy</strong></p>
<p>Time passed and I was unhappily working as a teacher. Having been introduced to Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) by a friend, we hauled up to London and watched the magic of co founder John Grinder. By the end of 1990, we were certified practitioners in a field that no one had heard of…The fire had been lit though and I went on to qualify as a master practitioner and then went on to a year long clinical hypnotherapy course.A teacher no more! I was happily working part time as a hypnotherapist and part time as a postman — a very big step up in my own estimation! The year was, if memory serves, 1996/7. It was a time with many good points to recommend it. I was also living in a part of the world where I had easy access to Chithurst Forest Monastery and so was able to continue my education and practice in Buddhist meditation.</p>
<p><strong>Malaysia!</strong>In 1999 life changed again and I sold or gave away my worldly belongings and set off to live in Malaysia and ‘train with the masters’. It was a learning curve for a 40 year old white boy who had never been out of the</p>
<p>UK. Gradually, I came to love Malaysia, although as I married a little piece of Malaysia along the way, career eclipsed training after the first couple of years.Through my teaching work in Kuala Lumpur, I met a Chinese Pure Land Buddhist who ran a practice centre. I immediately felt a resonance with this form and continue to practice.</p>
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<blockquote><em>The photograph (a real old fashioned one) is a much younger and slimmer me about to give a Fast Tai Chi demonstration somewhere in Langkawi, Malaysia. If memory serves I forgot part of the form but everyone was too polite to notice.</em></blockquote>
<p><strong>Back to the UK</strong></p>
<p>For family reasons I returned to the UK in 2005 and eventually eventually updated and upgraded my hypnotherapy qualifications and training, and as everyone and their budgie was doing, added coaching to my resume. As part of my updating of all things NLP and Hypnosis I revisited the work of Michael Neil, and discovered that he now worked from a modality called the Three Principles / Inside Out Approach. I liked what I saw ( to a certain extent) and investigated further.</p>
<p><strong>A writer writes</strong></p>
<p>That pretty much brings us up to date. Life has unfolded and now I run this website and focus on writing rather than therapy or coaching. There is great joy in admitting to yourself what you do, and do not want to do — and then acting on that decision!I am focusing on <a href="http://www.psychologyofwellbeing.org/">my website</a> because it is a way that everyone can access my writing and hopefully take something useful from it. I have not been greatly impressed by the current vogue for becoming a ‘six figure income’ coach. I see courses that advertise income potential rather than service. There is a very old game being played here.Of course I also need money to live and in the fullness of time there will be paid resources. However, the core of the website and <a href="http://www.psychologyofwellbeing.org/blog/">blog </a>are free. If you wanted to share, that would be nice…</p>
<p><strong>What I write about</strong></p>
<p>My aim is to explore how a deeper / spiritual understanding of life gives us a more meaningful, richer and more intelligent experience of life and has practical implications for how we go about our work, relationships, successes and failures. Skating across the surface of life may well be good for business as we consume more ‘pay to play’ idiocy and purchase our opinions from vested interests, but we can <em>live in to</em> so much more. My belief is that in cultivating a lifestyle in this way, many of the problems that beset the world will be reduced. Less delusion, less mess.</p>
<p>So, ‘read all about it’! I guarantee only to tell you where I am at, which is only a snapshot of my particular journey rather than a claim of accomplishment. </p>
<p>The interesting application of what you read to your life is where the path picks up for you.</p>
<p>If you are still reading please sign up for the <a href="http://www.psychologyofwellbeing.org/free-download/">newsletter</a> which will keep you updated, and be part of the conversation by both commenting on the posts (why not start with this one?) and join the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ordinarywellbeing/?ref=bookmarks">Facebook group</a>.</p>
<p>I look forward to getting to know you!</p>
<p>Best wishes,</p>
<p>Richard </p>
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