And here's a briefer seventh Moroccan post looking a little at the internal "meditative methods" being used by various of us in the desert.

So at the lunch siesta today I asked our group what they had been doing in their heads while they were walking.  One person talked about simply "being with the walking and the breath".  They're a dancer and spoke of "dancing with the wind".  They said something too about "headlessness".  That took me back to the Incredible String Band and their 1960's song about Douglas Traherne Harding who lectured on "headlessness".  I remember staying the night at Douglas's home nearly 40 years ago!

This is the sixth - and a rather longer - Moroccan post.  It looks a little at mindfulness and interpersonal conflict. 

And after the siesta yesterday, we walked (again without the camels) up to the top of the highest "singing dune" (so-called because of the noise it sometimes makes in the wind).  We sat with the sun setting and then ran wildly down the steep, maybe 300 foot or so, slope of the dune.  Then back through the diminishing light to the camp.

There are two big tents - one for our five Berber guides - and the other for some of us.  We also have a couple of smaller two-man tents we can put up, if we want to ... and there's the special option too of sleeping out under the amazing stars!

Several of us have talked of seeing this trip as involving three intertwined themes - deepening our relationship with ourselves, deepening our relationship with the landscape, and deepening our relationship with each other.

This fifth Moroccan post is written two days into the desert walk with the mindfulness practice beginning to deepen.

This is the second full day in the desert.  We've been here about 48 hours.  Now is post-lunch siesta time.  Walking meditatively this morning was much easier than yesterday's walk.  I'm not wearing a watch, but I'd guess we walked initially today for between 1½ to 2 hours.  We then stopped in the shade of a tamarisk tree mound for water, nuts and raisins.  The mound was a bit small to shade our whole group - there are eight of us and five Berber guides.  I and the camels seem a bit more relaxed around each other after two days travelling together, so I simply sat in shade thrown by one of the resting camels.  It turned its neck to look at me with intelligent, inquisitive eyes and then seemed fine having me for company. 

This brief fourth Moroccan blog post describes some of the first day in the desert.

Waking this morning in the encampment ... desert dawn ... a few clouds catching the sunlight ... people slowly emerge from their tents.  Camels wandering.  Packing up gradually.  Breakfast.  Then heading out through scattered tamarisk trees.  We've agreed we'll try walking mostly in silence.  Settling.  Relaxing the body.  Being aware of the surroundings.

This is the third Moroccan blog post.  It introduces some ideas about mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT), self-criticism and problem solving.

So yesterday we drove East and South from Marrakech across the Atlas - the road, our driver said, winding up to over 6,500 feet (about 2,000 meters) before heading back down to the plain that eventually after many kilometers will become the Sahara.

This is the second of 11 blog posts about going to Morocco to walk "mindfully" in the Sahara desert.  This post covers the arrival in Marrakech.

5.00am - the calls of the muezzin increase in volume. This seems a good time to meditate. All around, here in the Marrakech medina, many others will be praying.

... and now it's over an hour later. I sat quietly listening. The cocks crew lustily as the muezzin calls ebbed away. Normally in Edinburgh I would be up at this time. It's quite a solitary, quiet time of day. Interesting just now, comforting in a way, to feel the sincere activity of many in this city at that early hour.

This is the first of 11 blog posts about going to Morocco to walk "mindfully" in the Sahara desert.  This post gives a bit of background to the trip.

6.00am - the old clock has just sounded in my cousin's house in London. We arrived yesterday evening, flew down from Edinburgh, came across London, had a great meal with my cousin, his wife, their daughter, and dear Kieran, our son, who'd cycled over from his flat further East. I woke this morning an hour or so ago and lay thinking about the trip ahead. At 8.00am, Catero, my wife, and I are due to head down to Victoria and take a train out to Gatwick airport. Hopefully we'll meet up with four friends there and catch a plane to Marrakech. We should then get together with a couple more friends at the little hotel we've booked in the Medina. Tomorrow we're due to be picked up by two 4x4's and driven over the Atlas mountains down towards the Sahara desert.

I wrote a post yesterday introducing some of the ideas and research on implementation intentions.  Today I extend this in more practical how-to-do-it directions:

what are implementation intentions?
"Goal intentions" involve aiming for some desired future outcome.  They are of the form "I intend to attain goal X".  Unfortunately we know only too well that making such intentions does not necessarily mean that we will reach our goals.  As the old saying goes "There's many a slip between cup and lip".  A major review of 422 relevant research studies found that goal intentions accounted for only an average 28% of the variance in achievement of successful outcome (Sheeran, 2002).  Subsequent research suggests that even this figure of 28% is an overestimate (Webb and Sheeran, 2006).  The conclusion is clear - forming a strong goal intention to achieve some desired outcome in no way guarantees success. 

Here are five papers on childhood, the effects childhood experience can have on adulthood, and the effects adults may then have on their own children.  The first paper by Brody et al. is the encouraging one.  It demonstrates how caring parenting can combat genetic vulnerability - "involved-supportive" mothering greatly reduced the link between vulnerable genes and subsequent youth substance abuse.  The Van Meurs et al study shows the reverse - how problem behaviours in one generation of children increases the likelihood that, when these children become parents themselves, their own children will develop similar problem behaviours.