Sunday 18 to Tuesday 27th November
\nNorwich Interfaith Link welcome to Norwich
\nAlistair Appleton
\nTV Presenter and Buddhist Retreat Conductor
\nwho will speak on
\nSpirituality and Sexuality
\n7.30 \u2013 Wednesday 21st\u00a0 November The Octagon Chapel Colegate, Norwich (just off Magdalen Street)
\n(n.b. no parking on site)
\nAlistair has considerable experience as a therapist through his
\nwork with Mindsprings and his leadership of their courses and
\nretreats on mindfulness meditation. Alistair is a gay man who is
\nprobably best known to many for presenting \u2018Escape to the
\nCountry\u2019 on BBC Television.
\n\u00a33.00 including refreshments
\nAll Welcome<\/p>\n
Alistair Appleton
\nHere is some further information about our speaker for Interfaith Week, 2012 (on November 22nd) from Alistair\u2019s two websites.
\nIt was in 2000, alongside his successful career in television, that Alistair Appleton began his serious involvement in meditation. Trained mainly in the Buddhist tradition, Alistair took refuge with Lama Yeshe Rinpoche, the abbot of Samye Ling Monastery in 2000 and sat several retreats at this extraordinary monastery in the Scottish borders and in the meditation hermitage on Holy Island near Arran. In the following years, however, it was the simpler, more direct teachings of the Thai Forest tradition that caught Alistair\u2019s attention. He studied at Chithurst Monastery in Sussex with the sangha around Ajahn Sumehdo and completed a retreat at the famous training monastery in Thailand, Wat Pah Nanachat. He also studied with the wonderful teacher Ajahn Amaro who is abbot at Abhayagiri Theravadan monastery in Mendocino County, California.
\nIn 2004, his Tibetan preceptor, Lama Yeshe Rinpoche requested Alistair to teach a meditation course for beginners up on Holy Island: his \u201cABC of Meditation\u201d. Since then he has led numerous courses on mindfulness, compassion training, self-soothing and the creation of joy – many of these weekend courses held in the beautiful Abbey in Oxfordshire.
\nSince 2008, Alistair has also been training in the MA in Psychotherapy at the Minster Centre in London. This is an integrative training institute which looks at combining aspects of psychodynamic and humanist therapy and wonderfully complements the work in mindfulness and compassion, Alistair has learnt through meditation.
\nAlistair\u2019s lively and non-dogmatic workshops seem to appeal to a very broad audience not usually attracted to spiritual practice and his easy manner brings the techniques of meditation alive for a practitioner living in the modern world.
\n(from mind springs website – www.mind-springs.org )
\nAnd from his personal website \u2013 http:\/\/www.alistairappleton.com\/
\nBeing gay is not always easy and I reckon a lot of that dis-ease is caused by a distorted notion of sex that most of us \u2013 gay and straight \u2013 carry around in our heads.
\nLike most modern girls and boys, I grew up thinking about sex in terms of Darwin. It seemed an unconscious truism that we have sex in order to breed, to perpetuate the species. But on mature reflection, I think this notion of sex is wrong-headed. Sex is not about making babies. Sex is about meeting people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sunday 18 to Tuesday 27th November Norwich Interfaith Link welcome to Norwich Alistair Appleton TV Presenter and Buddhist Retreat Conductor who will speak on Spirituality and Sexuality 7.30 \u2013 Wednesday 21st\u00a0 November The Octagon Chapel Colegate, Norwich (just off Magdalen Street) (n.b. no parking on site) Alistair has considerable experience as a therapist through his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/norwichpeace.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2594"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/norwichpeace.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/norwichpeace.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/norwichpeace.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/norwichpeace.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2594"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/norwichpeace.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2743,"href":"https:\/\/norwichpeace.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2594\/revisions\/2743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/norwichpeace.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/norwichpeace.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/norwichpeace.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}