The Contemplative Studies Centre is delighted to invite you to these guided practice sessions, made specially available throughout lockdown. You will have the opportunity to try guided meditation practice with expert teachers from many different faith and wisdom traditions.
Past meditation sessions
Learn more about different meditation practices, view recordings and find profiles of the teachers who have facilitated guided meditation sessions.
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Shamatha
A gentle introduction to breath‑based meditation for steadiness, clarity and ease.
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MBSR-inspired mindfulness
The foundations of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) can be found in what is now called Insight Meditation in the West. This tradition is largely a contemporary expression of the Theravadan (or Vipassana) Buddhist tradition from Asia.
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Stoicism
Stoicism is an ancient Western philosophy focused on cultivating a smooth flow of life. To navigate life and achieve inner tranquillity, Stoics engage in reflective practices including meditation (meletê) and contemplation (theoria). Stoic meditations involve premeditating adversities, to reduce anxiety, and deeply internalising core ideas, to maintain calmness and foster steadiness in the face of life's uncertainties.
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Buddhist | Zen
Zen Buddhism is famously described as a tradition of meditation practice that does not rely on words and letters. Instead, it encourages a direct and unfiltered experience of our reality. Seated meditation (zazen) is an ‘open door’, an invitation to dissolve the distance between our self and another.
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Contemporary Insight Tradition
Insight Meditation, blending traditional Buddhist practices and Western non-ritualistic approaches, aims to calm the mind and enhance clarity, fostering awareness to understand and transform habitual mental patterns, thus opening our hearts and deepening our connection to life.
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Mindfulness for chronic pain and illness
Through mindfulness of breathing, use of the body-scan meditation and metta (loving-kindness) meditation practice, we might discover how to bring the quality of awareness to our mind/body in order to live with more ease.
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Buddhist | Tibetan
In the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, meditation is about more than just improved health. Developing the ability to calm and control the mind helps the Buddhist meditator to lead a simpler life and progress towards being a kinder and happier person.
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Buddhist | Theravada
In the Theravada Buddhist forest tradition, practitioners focus on understanding their minds through direct, non-verbal experience and present-moment awareness, rather than relying solely on intellectual knowledge, to make peace with the mind's constant changes.
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Zen Koans
Zen practice comes alive, not in concepts or words, but in the body of experience, insight, and intuition. It becomes powerful only in the wild humus of our encounter as part of the world. Zen describes itself as “a mind-to-mind transmission outside of words.” Zen koans are a ‘gateless gate’ to see the mind afresh.
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Movement meditation: A creative movement approach
Through the alchemical process of embodied presence, inner life and outer expression align, allowing authentic movement to unfold. As we let go into the flow state, joy, beauty, ease and vitality can all be discovered.
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Wala Connections: Movement and dance
Wala Connections exists to deepen all people’s connection to Country and culture, inspiring self-expression and healing through movement and dance.
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Modern Vipassana meditation
The Vipassana movement is a pragmatic and practical branch of Theravada Buddhism aiming to cultivate experiential wisdom by observing the nature of mind and body, instead of reading books or acquiring intellectual knowledge.
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Trul Khor | Tibetan yoga
Clearing obstacles and cultivating inner space and clarity with Tibetan meditation and movements.
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Compassion cultivation
Inspired by Tibetan Buddhist practice, compassion meditation is a way of connecting our deepest values with our heart.
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Theravada Buddhist | Western Forest Tradition
In the Theravada Buddhist forest tradition, practitioners focus on understanding their minds through direct, non-verbal experience and present-moment awareness, rather than relying solely on intellectual knowledge, to make peace with the mind's constant changes.
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Contemporary Christian
Meditation forms part of the rich tradition of contemplative prayer in Christianity. It is a way of simple presence that opens to the depths. The monk Thomas Merton describes it as “…life itself, fully awake, fully active, fully aware that it is alive, and spiritual wonder…spontaneous awe at the sacredness of life, of being.”
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Wayapa Wuurrk
Wayapa® is an earth connection practice that is based on ancient Indigenous wisdom that focuses on taking care of the Earth as the starting point for creating Earth Mind Body Spirit well-being.