Problems with your partner, spats at work and arguments with your family will create anxiety in most people. This coupled with the knowledge that an earthquake rocked a country you never knew existed and a small fish in New Zealand is close to extinction is enough to send the average person over the edge.

These extra bits of information, according to Dr Alan Wallace - world renowned mentor and ordained Buddhist monk- are relatively new aspects of modern life that we as humans are now having to deal with in order to quell the extra inner chitter chatter or ?conceptual mind.?

?Think of your mind as a wild stallion that must be tamed,? said Dr Wallace to the packed room of cross-legged Phuketians at the first of many scheduled ?Genuine Happiness Retreats?, held at the Phuket International Academy on 10-11 April.

Dr Wallace also likened the flights of fancy your mind takes as akin to walking along a desert in one direction to being wrestled into the trunk of a car and driven in the opposite direction and thrown out.

This, Dr Wallace believes, is indicative of someone suffering from an obsessive compulsive delusional disorder and although this disorder is not in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, there?s a good chance that you suffer from it. Suffer from what? I hear you say... close your eyes and concentrate and then reread the last two sentences.

Yet instead of our 21st century minds throwing up alarm bells at the constant upheaval and state of unease of our minds, we have come to accept it and even crave constant stimuli to keep our hungry minds fed.

Music is played in elevators and reading material is placed in waiting rooms just in a bid to keep our minds from being let loose and actually thinking.

Dr Wallace believes that in controlling our mind we take the first steps to cultivating inner ?genuine? happiness and rejecting primarily sensory-driven hedonistic pleasure.

During the two-day retreat Dr Wallace spoke on ways of attaining such a state, one of which was by controlling your breathing or rather through the ?mindfulness of breathing?.
Being aware of how you breathe is a tool in which you can use to relax your thoughts.

If your mind is relaxed, clear and stable then you will be more equipped to rationalise and contextualise the problems, spats and arguments.

One attendee who perhaps knows more about hedonistic pleasure than most was troubled Australian, Simon Paul Morris, who splits his time between ?party island? Ibiza and his native Sydney where he works as an events co-ordinator.

?I?ve been in Ibiza for four years; the first two I just partied and I partied hard but then luckily came to my senses.?

The onset of Simon?s moment of clarity was realised during his two-year stint in prison that he served for drug dealing. ?But I turned my life around and started exploring my spiritual side as a way of being happy.?

In search of spiritual salvation, Simon came to Thailand to learn about Buddhism and found out about the weekend retreat and Phuket International Academy while here.

During the retreat and to a greater extent during the longer 6-8 week programmes (details at bottom) aspects of Buddhism will be blended with theories of contemporary psychology, with the aim of enabling those who attend to be able to cultivate a cognitive and emotional balance. It is likely that you won?t know where Gandhi ends and Freud begins, but you will be aware of feeling calmer.

(Apr 14 - June 12)
Eight-week residential retreat focused on the practice of ?Shamatha? and the ?Four Immeasurables?
(July 18 - Aug 24)
Six-week training programme for instructors of ?Cultivating Emotional Balance?
(Sept 16 - Nov 11)
Eight-week residential retreat focused on the practice of ?Shamatha? and the ?Four Immeasurables? .
For more information contact: www.phuketinternationalacademy.com