How to travel by train in Europe

 Since climate change is real and academics are increasingly starting to think about how to reduce their carbon impact, I have started to work on taking the train more frequently for trips within Europe. It is always an adventure but certainly not always easy. In this blog, I will describe the things I learnt so far.

Booking

• The first hurdle for train travel is booking. In contrast to flights, trains are not actually working with a unified booking system, which means that often for across-border travel you need to connect with various railway companies to book. I found that for the trips I have made, usually bahn.de has very comprehensive booking options. Another solution is to book with companies such as https://www.thetrainline.com I have not tried it, but someone I know has good experience with it. If you find that a ticket is not available with one railway company, it's often worth checking out whether it is available with another company. Some particular finds I have done in this department:
• in general, when a particular train is not available, try booking alternatives to find out what is and is not available. For example, what happens if you change the dates to further away and closer in advance? What happens when you change the booking to a different train station (for example, try one halfway the journey, because it may be you need to book the remainder with a different company)? This separate booking can allow you to find tickets. The reason this works is that different tickets of different companies typically become available at different times.  For example, for a trip to Poland I was able to book the intercity portion of the trip on https://www.bahn.com/en, and then had to wait to book the local tickets on the Polish website until only a few weeks before the journey. 
• to book an overnight train, you may need to book specifically with https://www.nightjet.com/#/home. I have now taken one of these overnight trains, booking an actual sleeping compartment, and the experience was veyr good. My compartment had a little sink, and a good toilet and shower were available in the wagon. There were separate male and female compartments, and the conductor was very nice. When you book these early, it's also quite affordable. The website also had good information about what train stations are and are not available and why. For example, when I tried to book Italy this summer, it was possible to go to Bologna, but not to some other Italian train stations due to engineering works. Once I figured this out, I booked the overnight train with  https://www.nightjet.com/#/home, the train further to the Netherlands with https://www.bahn.com/en and the trains in Italy with https://www.trenitalia.com/.
• When I tried to book a ticket to Poland, I had a lot of trouble: many of the websites I tried would show a trip, but then error out right before getting the ticket. Eventually I found that https://www.intercity.pl/en  allows you to buy intercity tickets in Poland. Although the website is only in Polish, you can use it in Google Chrome to automatically translate it. This still doesn't work for local trains in Poland, which need to be booked with https://bilkom.pl/
• One other booking hack is to make sure you leave plenty of time for important connections, especially when those involve different railway companies. This ensures that when there is a delay, you have less stress because you most likely will still be able to make it. And it also makes the journey more pleasurable, because you can visit some cities along the way and roam around a little or find a nice spot to have a good meal.

Travelling by train

• For travelling by train, I found it invaluable to download the apps of the respective train companies to my phone (for Italy I used the trenit app, which is in English, and gives detailed connection information). These apps give you information about whether the train runs on time, what platform you are arriving on or departing from, and what services are available at train stations. Importantly, when there are delays, these apps can allow you to find alternative connections (the bahn.de app is one that is particularly helpful for this. I also found this really helpful when travelling by train in India. Without an app (I used railyatra), finding the track is very hard, especially at New Delhi railway station, and with it, it's easy-peasy, and you even get real-time updates on whether the train is on schedule.
• Make sure you double- and triple-check the timing of the trains before you leave. Sometimes track works or accidents cause changes in departure times of trains. Often the railway companies warn you about this, but it may get lost and better safe than sorry. 
• Make sure to leave sufficient time when you arrive in the train station to find the relevant track. Sometimes the track organization is quite confusing, e.g., in Poland, but also some other stations such as Munich and Firenze.
• When making long train trips, it's also worth paying attention to whether there is food on board or whether you need to bring some. In the Netherlands there is pretty much never catering, but in the German ICE (high speed) trains the catering is quite nice. If there is no catering, it's worth bringing some food with you or buying it at a train station. In France you need to pay particular attention, because the catering services may be on strike. A positive exception of this is the Eurostar, where you even get served a small meal and a drink (at least in Standard Premier and up).
• Particular learning moment for Eurostar (train between Europe and the UK through the channel tunnel): they have some luggage requirements and actually scan your luggage similar to airports. I sadly lost a small knife, which I use to cut up fruits and vegetables, in this process. So if you travel Eurostar, check the luggage guidelines before you go. Other than that the train is a very pleasant experience.

• 

  ballet class on Berlin railway station

  Sometimes you need to break up your journey for a connection by bus or metro. For example, Paris has multiple train stations, and you often need to take the metro or RER to get to another station. Leave plenty of time for that because it often involves substantial walking. Bus connections are often due to track works. In my recent trip to Italy, this was quite confusing, but by asking people, I was able to work this out without a problem. It's actually a really nice way to meet people!
• When your train gets delayed and you miss a connection, this is where things get complicated. Often it's worth asking the train conductor what to do. Sometimes your train app also gives an idea. In France, I found that I needed to go to the SNCF office at the arrival station, queue up and get a ticket for the new train. In this case it was quite helpful to already have searched a new connection on the SNCF app so this could be handled very efficiently. For Germany, you technically also need to go to the Bahn.de office to get a replacement ticket, but in my most recent trip I just boarded the alternative train and explained my situation to the conductor, who proceeded to check the situation to verify my story and let me on without a problem. 

After the trip

• If you have been delayed, many companies give you some kind of reimbursment. In some cases, e.g., the French SNCF, this information is even given when you get delayed in your actual train app with a link to the form you need to use to claim compensation. 

Despite all the challenges, I just want to emphasise that travelling by train is a great experience. You actually get to move your body during the trip, meet interesting people, and I often find the train one of the best places to work (especially when I book a first-class ticket, which especially on the German railways is quite affordable when you book early). In one of the pictures you can see me doing a small ballet class on a train station in Berlin. Moreover, it's really fun to watch the landscapes change as you proceed on your train journey!

Me in my little bed on the nightjet train

Little drops fill buckets--in work, ballet and the spiritual path alike

Have you had the experience of saying that you would totally do something, if only you weren't so busy? I am totally guilty of that (including with writing this blog: I have been busy with this #lojongchallenge for quite a few years now (I don't even remember how many...). So the next slogan, slogan 50 of Lojong is perfect for that, since it says "don't be dependent on external circumstances". Of course it refers mostly to being dependent on external circumstances for working on yourself and engaging in your spiritual practice, but it applies equally to many other things in life.

Picture by Michel Le at Morlaix Ballet camp.
For me this is an example of little things (in this
case people) making up a much larger whole.

In the domain of ballet, I figured out this past year that I can do ballet even while travelling: there is no need to be dependent on external circumstances for that. When I am on a train station or in an airport, I can do a quick barre, for example in an empty gate or a quiet spot (especially Broche Ballet's technique deep dive barres are great for that, because they mostly involve standing and scanning your body, and not really making large movements). I can also do a quick prepointe workout (also from Broche Ballet) while standing or while sitting on a chair. I have also attended many an online ballet class from the hotel gym of the various places I visited this past year!

The same is true for my job. One of the most challenging things to do when you're an academic is getting into writing mode. But in reality, you don't really need much--if you can just find 15 minutes, writing is possible. For next year, I aspire getting into the 15-minutes-a-day writing mode, because so much can be written in that time.

Now most importantly, the spiritual journey of reducing self-importance. It is so easy to think you have no time for meditation and therefore no time for the spiritual path. But literally every moment is an opportunity. Even in the midst of a busy day (maybe especially in a busy day) you can pay attention to how you react, and check whether you react from self-importance or from a broader perspective that takes others into account as well. And even a few seconds waiting for a traffic light, you can practise meditation. I think nowadays this is so much more difficult because we have our entertainment of our phones with information to be processed always in our pockets. This means that making the choice to simply observing the moment is more challenging. However, the benefits of simply being present should not be underestimated--for one thing because it may allow you to be reminded of things you otherwise forgot. I had that experience many a time while I was practising the three-minute breathing space (from the MBCT intervention) at the beginning of my lecture, and this was so helpful (note: this Fall I started to begin my lectures with the three-minute breathing space, and so far I am liking it). So here we go: 2023, the year of being less dependent on external circumstances and not forgetting to turn my mind inwards as much as I can! 

A key to resilience - learning to dance with whatever life throws at you

The next slogan in the #LojongChallenge is number 48: "Practice impartiality toward everything. Deep and comprehensive mastery overall is essential." I think this is such a good reminder. Probably for me the thing that most certainly makes me unhappy is to want things to be different from what they are. I got a lot of time to practise with this in the past 6 months in which I had the great good fortune to travel again. Traveling is especially one of these circumstances where you don't get to choose your circumstances. Sometimes things are pleasant, and sometimes they are annoying. For a Western European for example, it always takes some adaptation to go to countries where time is not so strictly adhered to, so things don't necessarily start at the assigned time. One possibility is to get annoyed about it, but a more adaptive option (albeit not always easy in practice) is to just go with the flow. When I was lucky enough to attend the Mind and Life meeting with His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala earlier this year. This was an amazing meeting, but also required quite a bit of flexibility. I particularly remember one moment when we were in the car on the way back from an excursion to the Norbulingka institute outside Dharamsala and suddenly the car stopped for a traffic jam up the hill. After waiting for a bit, we decided to get off the car and actually walk up the hill leaving the taxi behind so we could make it somewhat in time for the next excursion. In the end, we were still late, but the schedule changed and all was good. For a person living in a stable country like the Netherlands, it is easy to forget that things are not always predictable, and they naturally change, even if we don't like that. A similar experience occurred later during my India trip when I was staying in a hotel in Allahabad, where the staff seemed to have their own mind about when things such as breakfast would happen. My first reaction was to get very frustrated, but that does not really change things, especially when you are only staying in a hotel for a few days so staff won't change their habits. After a few days my more adaptive response was just to plan around it and to dance with whatever life was throwing at me.

Image of dancing from Morlaix Ballet Camp by Michel Le 

I think actually impartiality is an overlooked outcome measure of contemplative practices such as mindfulness, as was already suggested in an early paper by Gaelle Desbordes. In one of the papers we wrote in my lab this past year we started to look at people's impartiality more empirically by comparing how people's thinking would change after being exposed to either a social stressor or a positive mood induction. We found that after a stressor, people were more distracted and had more negative thoughts than after a positive mood induction. In an on-going study (we are still looking for Dutch-speaking participants!) we are looking at how a mindfulness and a positive fantasizing intervention for a longer period can affect these same thought parameters. Hopefully this will eventually allow us to figure out how we can train people to dance with whatever life is throwing at them, like in the picture accompanying this blog (from the Morlaix Ballet Camp).

An amazing ballet adventure with some unexpected connections to Buddhist philosophy

 I am writing this on the way back from ballet camp: nine days of dancing with amateur adult ballet dancers from across the globe. It was such an amazing experience that I want to try to capture some of it by writing it down in a blog. The adventure started with a quite disastrous train journey from the French Alps (see my previous blog) to Morlaix, in Bretagne (France), since my train from Geneva to Paris had more than one hour delay, which caused me to miss my connection in Paris, and hence I was two hours delayed and missed the welcome party of the ballet camp. Thankfully the people in Morlaix are very nice, and my bed & breakfast host was willing to welcome me more than an hour after the check-in time ended, and the ballet camp people came to pick me up by car from the train station. It was such a warm bath after such an exhausting journey. Nevertheless, it was already very exciting to meet people from across the globe who all had been making their way to ballet camp. 

a view of beautiful Morlaix

The next day, after enjoying the delicious breakfast made by my B&B host Nicholas (which included crepes and all kinds of cakes), we were called to go to different studios in the city of Morlaix, where we did our first class, and then different people started to learn their first pieces of the ballet. This part was a bit disorienting as some people seemed to already know variations, and it was a lot of sitting around. Nevertheless, this was also a great moment to chat with the fellow dancers and get to know them. And before I knew it, I had learnt my first pieces, so in the time that others were learning I could work on practising my own variations or chat with the others. It was so interesting to hear everyone's stories! It was also beautiful to see how everyone was helping one another. In this ballet camp, we were also accompanied by two professional dancers who were dancing the lead roles, and they were so incredibly nice and welcoming. They were curious to talk to us, were clearly helping with rehearsing and dancing alongside us, as well as spending time with us. It was so heart-warming to feel this spirit of everyone being welcome, no matter their level of ballet experience.

The place where we were practising was a fascinating place: an old tobacco factory that had been turned into an arts space with lots of performances and other happenings (and a ballet school). The only challenge at this time was the floor, which was very slippery, at both of the studios where we were practising (more on this later). At the end of the first day I was so nice to come all together for a class with the organizer, Julie Dupas, who led us in a sequence of ball rolling exercises to massage our muscles, and then it was time for dinner. I mostly walked everywhere during the week, which was a great warming up at the beginning of the day, and cooling down at the end.

As the week progressed, learning got more intense, and in the 2nd and 3rd day, it became quite stressful, as I felt like I was not remembering anything. Thankfully the teachers, Alex Negron and Laura Poikolainen, were very patient with us, despite us messing up for the hundredth time. But slowly, slowly the ballet became more and more familiar. Having said that, the days were pretty intense, starting at 9:15 in the morning on most days with a ballet class, then launching straight into rehearsals, which lasted until lunch around 1 pm, after which rehearsals continued until the muscle relaxation class at 17:00. Sometimes we had a break in the middle when we had to change studios with a short walk through the lovely city of Morlaix. We avoided doing pointe work since the floors were so incredibly slippery. After a few days, we started to rehearse in the actual theatre where the show would take place, and this had an actual marley floor, which made us so happy since it was slippery. However, after only about one day, disaster started to strike as also the marley floor became slippery! It became scary to dance, so rehearsals and classes were very nerve-wrecking... (even more than they already were anyway because it was such a challenge to memorize all the steps...). Amazingly enough, I did not have major muscle ache--maybe the tough zhemfit classes I had been doing were paying off!

Then came the day of the dress rehearsal. Everyone was freaking out, but the teachers went to their last resort: spraying the stage with 7up. And yes: that worked! We had a squaky and sticky stage (of course squaky was not intended, but at least it allowed us to dance without being afraid to break our legs). It was quite nerve-wrecking to do a full performance after having rehearsed it only for a week, but somehow magically I made it through without major mistakes. At times I had to pinch myself that I was there: for the first time of my life learning an actual ballet from the classical repertoire, surrounded by dancers, wearing a tutu and pointe shoes! And then the next day, we had the actual show! I was quite nervous, but also so excited to dance this happy ballet with my new ballet friends. Although this vacation was clearly not stressfree, it feels so good having done it and created this beautiful piece of work together! (see my instagram for some pictures).

For the regular readers of my blog, you know that I am working through the Lojong challege. Lojong is a set of slogans for training the mind from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. In the Lojong challenge, I go through each of these slogans and see how they apply to my life. We are now at slogan 45: Take on the three principal causes. This means that we are encouraged to take on the three principal causes for enlightenment, which are working with a good teacher, cultivating a pliable mind, and creating life circumstances conducive to training our mind. I think that when applied to ballet, this post shows how in the past week, I definitely experienced all three conditions. However, I think the learning process of the past week was to some extent also a mind training in the sense of Lojong, because the kindness of people encouraged me to also practise kindness, and the performance process itself was a great invitation to let go of all judgment and simply be in the moment, like for my last performance. Moreover, ballet performances are also a moment where it is important to let go of your own bubble and to open up yourself to the full interdependent circumstances that create the performance together. If you are in your own bubble, it does not work, because you will then easily end up being in the way of others, or failing to react to what is going on on stage, including unplan

the whole group

ned things. So the Buddhist views of interdependence and selflessness are very helpful here. Sometimes ballet training and Buddhist mind training have quite some overlaps!

Some highlights and low-lights of 2021

With the busy life I have, I often forget to think abo

Picture by Anna van der Meijden

ut what happened in the past year. So this time I thought it would be good to spend a bit of time reflecting. For me, the year was a year in which I spent many more days at home, like most people in the world, but also in my case this meant I spent a good deal of time dancing in my living room "dance studio". I must say that this dancing in my living room has been one of the pillars of my life that kept me happy and healthy when everything around my was uncertain and changing--a ballet class always has the same structure that never changes. More profoundly, in a way I am living the dream of my 11-year-old self, who wanted to become a ballerina. Evidently I am not a ballerina, but yet at the same time I am dancing almost every day, performing every now and then, I own a tutu and many pretty dresses, and I have the good fortune to know many dancers from across the world. Life's ways are mysterious...

Screenshot from the PhD defense of Oscar Portoles

Apart from this continuous undercurrent of the year, some more specific highlights are:

• two of my PhD students--Christina Jin and Oscar Portoles--got their PhD! This was very exciting, both for me and for the students. It's been so great to see their hard work come to fruition! There is something magical about seeing people develop from being students to being independent academics who can confidently (even if very nervous) defend their work, and move on to new projects. And I have another PhD defense lined up for January!
• 
  since I could not travel to India due to the pandemic, I had bi-weekly calls with my Tibetan monk collaborators. I was so excited the moment we got to the point where they started to do their own statistical analyses on the data we collected together. It's been quite amazing to see them grow this much!
• I did my first foreign travel again since the beginning of the pandemic. I made a trip to Iceland to teach at the summer school on Embodied Critical Thinking. Not only was Iceland an amazing place to discover, but it was also very gratifying to share my dance in an academic context. 
• I subsequently made a few more work trips before Europe locked down again: to Paris, to Berlin, and to Lisbon, followed by Aix-en-Provence. There is something so profound in being together with colleagues (even if you have to wear masks), and to explore new places. This is certainly the part of pre-pandemic life I miss most! 

• 

  Watching a volcano in Iceland (picture by Dorothe Bach)

  During the conference in Aix-en-Province, I had the chance to bring my dancing life and my professional life together once again by doing an improvisational ballet performance while a cellist (who was also a neuroscientist) was also improvising, and we were both wearing EEG headsets (which did not work...). It was an incredibly exciting performance!
• I chaired the European Mind & Life Summer Research Institute, which was a wonderful event, despite the fact that it was held online. I also got elected to the Mind & Life Europe Board. Mind and Life Europe is a beautiful organization that connects all the different parts of me: academic, spiritually and artistically.
• I got to meet some of my colleagues in real life again and was back in the office for a bit, until the Netherlands locked down again in December.
• throughout all the lockdowns I kept dancing in my living room and going on weekly runs with my running buddy. I also connected with many amazing fellow dancers through the internet, which is one of the main gifts of this pandemic. Thanks so much for my wonderful support group! We also had an online ballet intensive in June, which was such a gift: being taught by international ballet teachers was so much fun (even though I could only partly participate because of my ankle injury...). And in the last few months I have been able to really gain some confidence and skill in pointe dancing due to some focused practice with the online ballet studio Broche Ballet.
• With the Young Academy of Groningen, I helped to give birth to a report on harassment and bullying at our university. A very sad report, but important stuff nevertheless. I hope it forms the basis for change towards a more socially safe university. The whole process in itself was very time-consuming but also taught me a lot about university politics.
• In my faculty, the Young Science and Engineering Network that I helped to found acquired a more established position, and is now being incorporated in the decision making processes, which I think is a wonderful thing!

• 

  Iceland!

  I lived through an ankle injury which took about 5 months to recover. I was quite challenging to not be able to dance properly, and not jump, run and do all those things I love. Yet, also this taught me a lot about how my body works (and the importance of rest, which will surely be an aspiration for the next year!). One of the things that kept me engaged during that time was the 21-day ZhemFit abs challenge. I highly recommend it for anyone, with an injury or without.

So, with this year under my belt, let me dedicate to the well-being of all sentient beings, in the spirit of Lojong slogan 41, which says "Two activities: one at the beginning, one at the end." The idea is that we start the day by reviewing our intention and motivation. Of course this is an even better idea to do right now at the end of the year. You can focus on specific goals you would like to accomplish, but also on mental qualities you would like to cultivate, such as maintaining a more altruistic motivation. The advantage is that a motivation depends only on you, not on other circumstances, unlike many other kinds of goals. And then at the end of the day (or of the year in this case), you can review how it went,. what you accomplished and how you would like to improve. You can then take this with you in the next day, and in the next year. My aspiration is taking more time to review on a weekly basis in the coming year. 

Example of a meeting with colleagues in real life, where we went for a walk together

I am curious what the next year will bring. Thank you so much for being in my life, and happy new year!

Saying goodbye to 2020

I am writing this on January 1st, 2021. Who would have thought how our lives have changed over the past year! In the beginning of 2020, I still had a whole lot of travel lined up, going back to India to work with my Tibetan monk colleagues from Sera Jey monastic university, giving a ballet performance in India, and more. And here we are: I have never been as long home as in the past year. I am giving talks, lessons and even ballet performances from my living room, attending conferences and summer schools virtually, and also organizing quite a few of them.

Picture by Anna van der Meijden (https://www.instagram.com/annamaypine/?hl=en) 

The year started with a wonderful trip to Vienna, to attend a Mind & Life Europe vision meeting, at which time the first news about a virus from China started to emerge, which was also starting to wreak havoc in Italy. Now my brother lived in Italy at the time, not far from Milan, and I had planned to visit him at the beginning of March. Until the last moment I was debating whether I should visit him, because I was afraid they would close of the area and I would get stuck. In a leap of faith, I ended up still going, and it was the weirdest journey in my life. I have never seen airports that quiet. I have never been as careful about hygiene as then, wearing gloves in public places and washing my hands properly for the first time in my life. I made it out successfully, and then entered a very stressful phase of my life, because I suddenly was shunned by people for being a virus risk. I was surprised at how much this affected me--I think maybe because it brought back painful childhood memories in which I used to be shunned by my classmaters and always be an outsider.

By the time my possibly infectioous time had finished, the country entered lockdown and life changed again. Everything suddenly was online, and because I live alone, this meant that most of the time my only contact with "real people" would be my grocery shopping and my weekly runs with Stefani Nellen (who is the best storyteller ever!). Yet, at the same time, this also brought me a lot: I realized how interconnected we all are by the internet. Because now all the ballet classes were online, I started to reconnect with dear teachers in India and the USA. This was incredibly inspiring. Also, seeing the amount of creativity in the arts sector, which immediately started to offer ballet classes online on instagram and youtube, was stunning. I have also watched live-streamed performances, which were surprisingly wonderful. I even watched while live-commenting on it through WhatsApp conversations with a friend.

I also felt very much connected to my friends and family in other countries (despite the fact that for the first time in my life borders became a thing). I never really felt alone, maybe because I was talking to my computer all day ;-) For the first time in years I started calling my parents regularly, and that renewed connection has been gratifying. On top of that, the covid situation has made my awareness of impermanence much more embodied. Never yet has life changed so quickly. One day you can be giving a ballet performance, the next day you can enter a lockdown. I am grateful for how daily reflections on impermanence in the context of my Buddhist practice have already prepared me for that a little, but still, the understanding has significantly deepened in the past year.

Another treasure given to me by 2020 is learning many new skills. I love learning things (which is why I enjoy being an academic). Pivoting teaching online means that you have to completely reorganize your teaching, which is at once exciting and time-consuming. On top of that, student supervision has become more time-consuming, because understandably each of them was struggling with a whole life placed upside-down, so I felt like a counsellor at times. Nevertheless, this was also rewarding, because I felt like I could actually do something. 

I felt tremendously grateful for my Buddhist practice, which had already prepared me for dealing with change, and encouraged me to look for meaning within, rather than outside. As my Tibetan monk colleagues said at the beginning of the pandemic: now is not the time to travel outside, now is the time to travel inside. Wise words indeed. Now of course this is easy for me to say, because I still have a job, and I am already fairly introverted, so staying at home was not too difficult. This is a nice moment to bring to mind the next slogan in the #lojongchallenge: slogan 37 says "don't make gods into demons." It is really important to ensure that your Buddhist practice does not make you more proud. So, I am not writing this to show off. Just like everyone else, I am muddling around, but i do find that reconnecting with the fundamental goodness of my buddha nature, and the buddha nature of all beings helps me to maintain meaning in the midst of the change and chaos that 2020 created.

So, I would like to end this blog by remembering that while 2020 brought many challenges and completely changed everyone's life, it also brought new opportunities: I learnt a lot, I developed a solid ballet practice at home, I connected with people across the globe in my work, Buddhist practice and ballet, and went back to the essence of life. I hope that in the new year, I will be able to continue learning, remember to take moments to remember gratitude, and continue to connect to people across the globe, online and hopefully also in-person. All my best wishes for the new year!

Little happy seeds during a crazy journey

The next slogan in Lojong is another very comprehensive one that pretty much subsumes the whole Buddhist path: "Practice the five strengths, The condensed heart instructions." What are the five strengths? They are determination, familiarization, seeds of virtue, reproach and aspiration. Determination refers to being very steadfast in your vow to practise training your mind. Sometimes we can be a bit cowardly and say: "well, I'll work with my mind tomorrow, when I am not so tired." But that does not work--then it will never happen. I notice how this excuse has started to creep in my practice recently: to feel like waiting with practising more until I am less busy. That will probably take many years so better start practising now.

The second strength is familiarization: nothing is easy until you get used to it. Now we are so used to worrying about all our hopes and fears--hoping for fame, fear of insignificance, hoping for praise, fear of blame, and so on, that that is very easy for us. And it makes us often very tense. I did not notice this, until a few days ago I started my vacation by taking a road trip from Manali to Leh. This is a pretty "bone-shaking" journey, so once we finally arrived in Leh at 22:30 after being in the car from 5 am, and having crossed passes with heights of 5300m, I noticed my jaw was completely clenched. This was probably especially due to the last few hours where I was seriously worried about whether we were even going to make it to Leh! In the last few days I have been working on consciously unclenching my jaw, and I notice the difference it makes to my meditation!

The third strength is my favorite one: "seeds of virtue." This refers to never letting go of any opportunity to do something positive, even if it is very small. Sometimes I can be very ambitious, but what I find encouraging about this strength is the focus on just keeping it small. You don't have to make it very special: even just smiling at someone can make a difference in their day. I have been following the daily compassion program from the free app from Being Bodhi, and this very much makes you familiar with that. During the crazy (but beautiful!) ride from Manali to Leh, also thinking about this and just spending some time wishing well in my mind helped me to come out at the other end.

The fourth strength is reproach: catching ourselves and acknowledging it when we do something wrong, but also not getting stuck in that. Just learning from the mistake and owning it. The fifth strength is aspiration: this is a more traditional part of the Buddhist religion, which has aspiration prayers. I personally often have trouble connecting to these prayers, but one beautiful way to consider the meaning of these prayers is that we often with our lack of wisdom do not really know what to pray for, and these prayers are help from the buddhas in what to ask for so it is really beneficial. Anyway, for now I think I will just simply stick with cultivating seeds of virtue, one little bit at a time...