Skillful Mind

Skillful Mind Learn and Teach Meditation. Awaken the mind. Our vision is a qualified meditation teacher in every town and suburb in the world

We would love to see everyone learn the art of mental stillness. Only then can the world be truly at peace.

Meditation tomorrow morning.Online. Free. 9am ACST.All welcome.skillfulmind.net/zoom
19/06/2026

Meditation tomorrow morning.

Online. Free. 9am ACST.

All welcome.

skillfulmind.net/zoom

I have a photograph from a retreat about eight years ago. A group of us sitting as a group. I was a student at the time,...
19/06/2026

I have a photograph from a retreat about eight years ago. A group of us sitting as a group. I was a student at the time, not the teacher.

I look at it sometimes and think about what each of those people was dealing with. Because I know most of them now, and I know some of what those years contained — job losses, diagnoses, deaths, recoveries, the ordinary difficult arc of a life.

At the time we were just a group of people sitting quietly together. Nobody knew what was coming. We just sat.

I think about this when I run retreats now. The people in the room are all carrying something. Some of it I'll know about. Most of it I won't. And the silence we create together for those few days is, in some way, for that — for whatever each person brought in with them that they haven't been able to put down.

The practice doesn't promise to solve any of it. But it does offer a few days of not having to manage it alone.

That feels worth offering.

Meditation doesn't make you passive. This one comes up a lot.Actually, the opposite tends to happen. When you're less re...
18/06/2026

Meditation doesn't make you passive. This one comes up a lot.

Actually, the opposite tends to happen. When you're less reactive — less at the mercy of whatever thought or feeling arrives first — you often make better decisions, not fewer.

The practice builds capacity, not detachment. There's a difference.

Sunday morning meditation. Free, online, open to everyone.Runs weekly at 9am ACST. About 45 minutes to an hour. Guided s...
16/06/2026

Sunday morning meditation. Free, online, open to everyone.

Runs weekly at 9am ACST. About 45 minutes to an hour. Guided session, some silence, time to settle.

A lot of people who've come to the Leaders Program, and quite a few who've done the retreat, started here. Just a Sunday morning to see if this was something they wanted.

No pressure. No sign-up beyond Zoom link. Just: show up, sit, see what happens.

skillfulmind.net/zoom

🌴 Three places left — then Bali 2026 is full.For one week this July, a small group will step away from the noise and int...
15/06/2026

🌴 Three places left — then Bali 2026 is full.

For one week this July, a small group will step away from the noise and into something rare: stillness, space, and the kind of inner shift that simply doesn't happen on an ordinary holiday.

This is our Inner Growth Retreat at Villa Boreh, on Bali's quiet north coast — and we've been running it for over 15 years. Seven days of meditation, yoga, personal-development work, daily spa, and fresh Balinese food, in one of the most peaceful corners of the island. You arrive carrying the weight of everyday life. You leave lighter, clearer, and reconnected to what matters.

📅 27 July – 2 August 2026
📍 Villa Boreh Beach Resort & Spa, North Bali
✓ All meals, airport transfers, daily yoga & meditation, and spa included

We keep the group small on purpose — which is why there are only 3 places left. If part of you has been quietly saying "maybe this year…" — this is the moment to listen to it.

Full details 👉 skillfulmind.com.au/bali
Or send me a message — I'd love to tell you about it personally. 🙏

— Peter

There's a distinction that took me years to actually feel rather than just understand intellectually.Attention is the na...
14/06/2026

There's a distinction that took me years to actually feel rather than just understand intellectually.

Attention is the narrow beam. The focused thing. When you're concentrating on the breath, that's attention at work.

Awareness is wider. It's the field in which the breath is happening — along with sounds, body sensations, thoughts in the background. You're not attending to all of it, but you're not completely absent from it either.

Meditation training, at least in the tradition I work in, develops both. You cultivate stable, focused attention first, because without it the wider awareness becomes another form of distraction. But at some point you begin to include more of the field — to be present to what's happening without narrowing to one thing.

People who only develop focused attention sometimes find their practice gets a bit rigid — very concentrated, but not particularly spacious. And people who jump to open awareness too early often find they're just watching their mind drift and calling it meditation.

The sequencing matters.

The breath is the most common meditation anchor because it's always available, always moving, and never the same twice.B...
12/06/2026

The breath is the most common meditation anchor because it's always available, always moving, and never the same twice.

But I've had students who really struggle with it — for whom focusing on breathing makes breathing feel effortful, or brings up anxiety.

If that's you: this doesn't mean you can't meditate. It means you might need a different anchor. Sounds, body sensations, visual focus — there are options.

The practice adapts.

A thing I probably don't say enough: this whole thing nearly didn't happen.The business, the programs, the Sunday sessio...
11/06/2026

A thing I probably don't say enough: this whole thing nearly didn't happen.

The business, the programs, the Sunday sessions. Around 2005 I was pretty close to giving up on the teaching side and just keeping a regular job.

I was running groups but couldn't work out how to make it sustainable. Too much time, not enough income, students were getting something real but I wasn't sure I could keep going. So I thought about giving up.

But then deep down I wondered what it would be like at the end of life to know that I don't take a risk and follow a dream. Too many people just keep working in the same job or doing the same things because that is the easy way. I decided not to be one of those.

Twenty years later, here we are.

I'm not sure what the lesson is. Probably that life is too short to not ask the big questions - and then follow your dream even if it is risky.

The September retreat has a few places left.Three days, residential, South Australia. Longer sits, proper silence, time ...
09/06/2026

The September retreat has a few places left.

Three days, residential, South Australia. Longer sits, proper silence, time to go deeper than a weekly session allows.

People ask whether they need to be at a certain level to come. Not really. A regular sitting practice, even a modest one, and an honest intention to go deeper. That's enough.

If you've been sitting for a while and want to see what happens when you actually have space to — this is that.

Details and booking at skillfulmind.com.au

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23 Mill Terrace
Middleton, SA
5213

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