Living with Uncertainty: exploring the Bardos
Thu, 13 Mar
|at home & on Zoom
- finding steps into the unknown - a community of practice, meeting from mid-March


Times & Location
13 Mar 2025, 18:30 GMT – 15 May 2025, 21:30 BST
at home & on Zoom
About
At times like theses we might find ourselves with a level of uncertainty about ourselves, and about the world. It would not be surprising, as everything around us seems to be shifting: structures of society, political directions of countries, and values that seemed to be long-established and firmly rooted. In this time, when solid ground seems scarce, it might be good to look at in-between states:
Who and how are we on shifting grounds?
Who is 'me' when I do not recognize myself any more? Tibetan tradition calls those in-between times, those gaps and transitions 'bardo'. Bardos describe what happens after our physical death, but the teachings are also concerned with impermanence, as we can observe it both in life and in death.
In this course we will look at moments of transition: what happens when the old (me) dies? This might be big events of something ending in our life - or it might be the moments between activities every day:
How to be with loss? How to be no-one? Who continues or gets reborn?
In this process we can fall into grasping & aversion, as we try to find firm ground again: that manifests as a definite and rigid view of who we are and who the others are. And then there are 'my kind of people' and there are 'the others'. It is a world of splitting and distancing, leading to rivalry and conflict. Pretty familiar! - Yet also, these moments of transition offer the opportunity to stay open: to recognise our own mind. We can notice, that, even if things feel fearful, here I am, experiencing fear. And yes: here I am!
Who is this 'I' that is present, even when clarity or identity are absent?
This course will offer the opportunity to move, dance, improvise, talk and meditate in a community of fellow practitioners. It will be in the spirit of curiosity and self-enquiry. As we did for the final months of last year, we can join together in community, to support each other in discovering and sustaining a new way of becoming fresh, based on the experience of a deep and vital interconnection with each other, and with what is around us.
Pema Chödrön helps us to practice within uncertainty. She says
‘Compassion practice is daring. It involves learning to relax and move gently toward what scares us. The trick to doing this is to stay with emotional distress without tightening into aversion; to let fear soften us rather than harden into resistance. (in Comfortable with Uncertainty, 71-72)
Between mid-March mid-May, we will meet as a group mostly every two weeks on Thursday, 6:30 - 8:30 UK time, and additionally have a one day-retreat (date tbc). (Please check the dates below, as there is a 1-week gap between April & May). You will also receive regular impulses from me via email: something to read or listen to, to enrich your day, or a little task to take for a walk in nature (also possible in the city!). There will be small assignments or images that you can allow to speak to you ... it will be full of surprises! - And there will be the opportunity for weekly meetings with a partner in the course, and, if you wish, at times, 1-to-1 with me.
This course is open to all, and does not need previous experience in movement or meditation. It is designed to support your practice, whatever context you might live in, and as you find most useful as an opportunity to carry your practice with you into your everyday life and work.
The fee is on a sliding scale of between £120 - 240. If you are able to contribute more, you will help someone else take part, who is unable to do so. Please contact me, if it is not possible for you to give that.
Please register here to join this community of practice. You will receive a Zoom Link to join before the first date. To find out more, please write to me here - I will be in touch.
I look forward to exploring more in your company!
Image: Lamayuru Monastery (by PlayOfNow)
Dates
2 hoursLiving with Uncertainty (click for all dates)
zoom
2 hoursLiving with Uncertainty - exploring the Bardos