Hi, I'm Kev, just found about this forum a few days ago and joined to day.

I'm from North East England and was working as a primary school teacher until I had to leave my job due being ill with to CFS/ME for the last year.

I've been involved and interested in all sorts of spiritualities since my teens, including funnily enough Zen, but re-discovered it about a year ago and a half ago when I discovered a local group. I was attending a soto zen group linked to Throssel Hole Abbey, founded by Rev Master Jiyu Kennet but my ill health combined with the time and distance has made this pretty impossible for a while.

Since re-discovering Zen as an adult I've been interested following the DSI blogs and enjoyed and got a lot from Brad Warners two books. I've being trying to sit 3x20mins a day for the last few weeks (can't manage half/full lotus) using my sieza bench which I find very stable, but I may have to restort to chair or lying as I've been having alot of pain in my legs/back/shoulders since increasing the number of sittings.

I do find that zazen helps with my headaches and general fatigue (other than my aches) as well as enjoing zazen for zazens sake.

I do hope, Jundo, that you get chance to do some Dharma talks as MP3s as I have difficulty reading much at the moment especially on the computer.

Trying to work my way through some of the back postings to avoid annoyingly asking things which have all ready been dealt with. :lol:

thanks for your time

Kev