In 1855, when he was 36,Whitman wrote this stirring manifesto for life. Feels just as relevant in 2019, when he’d be 200 years old. This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote […]
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Rilke on Earth Descent
Perhaps to comfort myself in the midst of a lot of turmoil in my practice community, Dharma Ocean, (more on that in a later post) I have been taking a lovely half hour each morning to read Rainer Maria Rilke. The time seems right for me to finally lower my soma into the world of […]
Trudy Morrison Interview with Alistair in ‘Yoga Scotland’ Magazine, September 2019
This is an interview with Alistair in the September 2019 Issue of “Yoga Scotland Magazine” by Trudy Morrison. Thanks to Trudy for her permission to reproduce it here. from ashtanga to ayahuasca, the passionless quest of alistair appleton by trudy morrison I live in a small, dark cottage in the middle of nowhere. The only […]
Mindsprings TV: Head-in-the-Sand Land
Following on from my blog about the butterflies on my fig tree and the dawning realisation that the climate catastrophe is happening, I took a moment before heading up to Scotland for the annual Mindsprings Autumn retreat to ponder the dissociation that arises when we think about it. I’m sure there’s a part of you […]
My experiences with Ayahausca: Part 1
This is a blog post from 2006 that I am re-posting as part of a series on Ayahuasca, the visionary plant medicine that had such a profound effect on me in my late thirties and forties. I don’t drink Aya any more but I recently stumbled across recordings of some of the music we listened […]
Mindsprings TV: The Sea! The Sea!
The second offering from Mindsprings TV is about the sea. Here in England we are a sea-fringed nation, constantly relating to the wide water that surrounds us. That’s not the same the world over. Although I have grown up with the sea a constant feature in my world, there are spiritual traditions where the sea […]
Climate Collapse: When the butterflies have gone…
It’s September and my garden, dishevelled as it is, is looking beautiful. There are super-ripe figs hanging on the figtree, too high for me to pick, which are attracting a freakishly large number of red admiral butterflies. The sun is mild but bright. The lawn is dappled by the leaves of the thinning ash tree […]
Rilke: “Want the Change”
This is an video I made a long time ago when I was last playing around with editing software. Using the text of Rilke’s poem with the music of Rachmaninov.
Mindsprings TV: “Sit the Downs”
It’s been a long time coming, but I’ve finally combined my broadcasting skills with Mindsprings. A 70 mile long snake of British chalky downland As part of the Newhaven festival I mentioned in my last post, I also ran a repeat of my “Sit the Downs” session from last year. Twenty of us […]
Sit the Bay
One of the glorious things about being a meditation teacher is that you get asked to teach it in the most unusual places. It’s the Newhaven Arts festival at the moment in my beloved Newhaven. And the wonderful organiser Rhoda, who is the galvanic force that propels most things round here, asked me to repeat […]
