"When I was twenty I learned to meditate, and then became interested in Buddhism as a philosophy and way of life. In 1976 I was ordained into the Western Buddhist Order (now the Triratna Buddhist Order) and have spent most of my adult life practising and teaching meditation and other Buddhist methods of working on the mind.

In 1979 I moved to Manchester to help set up the Manchester Buddhist Centre. In those days the centre was not the large and impressive building that it is today. Working from a small house in the suburbs we led meditation and Buddhism classes for many years. In the fifteen years that I was there I guess that I taught thousands of people to meditate.

Ten years ago I left Manchester to live and work in a Buddhist study retreat centre in North Wales. I wanted to spend more time reflecting on life and trying to understand more deeply the philosophy behind Buddhist practices.

At the end of this period I felt a need to return to ‘the world’. I wanted to find a way in which I could contribute to society in a more direct way. Consequently, when Vidyamala contacted me to ask me to work with her on her pain management project I jumped at the chance."