Peacemaker Circles UK

From Zang: I was invited today by the Leicester Unitarian Gathering, one of the two Unitarian communities in Leicester, to facililtate a workshop in the spirit of our Great Heart Circle gatherings. Most of the participants had been to a workshop the day before on the Dances of Universal Peace, and have an interest in Sufism- so the theme I brought along was "Zen Meditation and the Sufi practice of 'Adab' ". We did some guided meditation together, including loving-kindness practice, and held a short checking-in talking circle. Then I introduced the four training principles we used to use in the Manchester weekly group, which are an attempt to bring the Turkish Sufi spirit of "adab"- beautiful behaviour/manners, to our regular training. These are 1) Come to the training house without expectations 2) Come in a spirit of generosity 2) Respect the intimate relationship between you and everyone/everything in the training house , and finally 4) Welcome an...

On Saturday from 11am-6.30pm we held the Manchester Zen Peacemaker Circle meeting in Howard's house. Tom, Kim, Howard, Suleyman and Zang were present. We began as usual with a little silence and a checking-in circle, and then we had a 90 min workshop on Chi Gong and Pranayama led by Kim. Because it was such a beautiful sunny day we held this in a nearby park, and we were joined by Simon Gupta who often came to our meetings last year. Kim led us through a series of relaxing and invigorating movements, and then taught simple breathing exercises. We came back to Howard's for a shared lunch, and then began the afternoon studying Chapter 2 of 'A Deeper Beauty' by Paramananda. The chapter was about the value of our bodies, how we don't appreciate them enough or their value in spiritual practice, talking especially about our hands as an example. Tom led us in the guided meditation from the end of the chapter, reflecting on how much we do with our hands each day. We ...