Martin Stepek's Ten for Zen

Martin Stepek is one of Scotland's foremost teachers in Mindfulness and an award winning Author in the field.

Martin began practicing the simple, scientifically proven techniques of Mindfulness over 20 years ago and found that they gave him great benefits. To nurture and cultivate his skills, he began attending a weekend residential programme every month for the next five years, investigating the nature of the mind and how to nurture and cultivate it in great depth.

During this period Martin participated in three events led by the legendary Vietnamese Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh in Edinburgh, Scotland, and also attended lectures in Glasgow by the pioneering mindfulness researcher Jon Kabat-Zinn at the university of Glasgow.

In the Spring of 2004 the head of the order asked Martin if he would be interested in becoming a teacher of Buddhism and its practices. In order to become a teacher in this tradition Martin had to leave his home for a month. He spent fourteen days in a row practising mindfulness and other meditative techniques all day long except when sleeping and taking toilet and meal breaks. At the end of this period he immediately went to a retreat centre in a remote forest area where he spent the next two weeks in solitary silence. He was not allowed any books, pen, paper, music or any form of communication. At the end of this month-long experience, in April 2004 he qualified as a teacher of mindfulness.

Martin's wide-ranging studies include East Asian Poetry, and the neuroscience of happiness and peace of mind. He serves on the Choose Life group, the pan-Lanarkshire suicide prevention body.

Martin is co-founder of Ten for Zen (www.tenforzen.co.uk), a website which aims to bring Mindfulness into the lives of individuals across the UK and beyond. Outwith his commercial work, Martin strives to bring Mindfulness to as many groups, as he can, and has given his time to speak in schools, prisons and various community groups over the years.

Martin has travelled and worked across the world including France, Spain, Germany, Morocco, Portugal and Greece; Australia and New Zealand, and South America and Central America. Martin is very active across his other interests - he is an expert on family businesses, has published two volumes of poetry and has extensively researched his family's Polish background, which he has created into a book and a film. Martin recently received the prestigious Polish award, the Gold Cross of Merit.

He regularly gets invited to comment in the media and also speak, deliver readings and present seminars in both the UK and abroad and has spoken at the Edinburgh Fringe, the University of Warsaw, and the Royal Institution, London amongst many venues.