David Butcher – a teacher of mindfulness
I reckon I’m an irascible fellow and I have a need to manage my moods and my temper. I may have a degree of awareness that makes me an ideal customer for David but David offered to give me a trial for free. I turned this down, I’ve know David a long time and I did not want to test him – I know he is honest – I wanted to test whether spending proper money to improve my awareness , be better to myself and others was worth it.
So we agreed a proper commercial agreement which ran into four figures to eight hour long sessions over four weeks.
This was meaningful money I hope for both sides, I hope that it will allow me to write without being influenced by “mates rates”. To finish on this commercial opening, I had taken advice from the team providing me with rehabilitation from my cerebral haemorrhages which I’m getting over.
How did it happen?
We agreed to meet at the Eight Club in the City near City Rd and we did all but one of the meetings. It was the one part of the course that I didn’t like because I felt awkward there. My advice to David is to find a place where your client feels comfortable by asking him/her.
We switched at the end to a place I felt more comfortable and it was less stressful. Stressful? Yes I did find learning a technique to be mindful stressful and I think it should be. Mindfulness is of course the end product and I would mark the course a success as I am more aware of myself, have better mechanisms to ensure I manage my moods and live in the now rather than worrying about the past or future.
I suspect there are other things I am better at, I seem to be better at coping with physical and mental pain through meditation and by organising certain times of my day (such as early in the morning and a time in late afternoon when my tiredness cuts in) I am more in control of myself and the things going on around me.
David was actually very good at taking me through meditations and helping me talk about myself, my work, my family and we talked a lot about his experience dealing with his life problems. Because David is a little older than me and a little more experienced of these problems, it was like having an elder sibling (something I realised I’ve never had in the act of writing that sentence).
I think mindfulness is very much about awareness and that is what David Butcher encourages you to explore. The meditation sessions are very helpful and doing them one on one with your teacher is the best way to maximise your time and the efficiency of getting this mindfulness into your day to day living.
We talked quite a lot and agreed that this mindfulness is not spiritual (though I am a spiritual chap and our sessions were going on a stones throw from my church). The spiritual yearning I have reaches out , meditation reaches in. I know that some religions (Buddhism in particular) operate through looking within and I am noticing how my religious experience as a Christian, is becoming less controversial and more harmonious for my listening to my own reactions rather than disputing what I hear from the pulpit (just an example of how mediation need not replace spirituality or anything else for that matter).
Would I recommend it?
Yes- but only for those who are open to the demands of the course.
- You need a degree of openness to challenges to your opinions – mindfulness is about awareness, not about being smarter.
- You need to want to do something enough to pay a top guy, top money. If you want to do this properly it has to be paid for as you would any professional counting in overheads and time of the teacher
- Finally, you will need to learn some pretty important life- lessons which are likely to be different to what you’ve been brought up with. That’s because you, like me, are probably in a bit of a mess.
This may sound like a review. I’m writing for people who may have heard David talk or done a breathing meditation and be intrigued. I hope that some readers are corporate purchasers wondering whether to employ David, it is a commercial decision and I can understand why it might be seen as a high-risk of corporate money.
But I think that as an investment, it was for me a success both of money and time (which was probably an equal commercial investment).
I am sure that not everybody will find a mindfulness course helpful, even after entering it – so I suggest that people regard this as at least an employee benefit or at best something that they at least a part of.
A room in the Eight Club where David and I did mindfulness sessions
