About Us
About RUN-ZEN
RUN-ZEN and its mindful running-based retreats, workshops and personal coaching are the creation of Stuart McLeod and Cesare Saguato. Both Stuart and Cesare are long-term mindfulness practitioners and teachers, as well as having extensive experience in competitive running and other physical fitness activities. You can find out more about us in our biographies below.
We started leading Mindfulness for Runners public workshops in 2018, initially all in-person, and soon after adapting our offer to be delivered online too.
As well as leading our own events, we’ve featured on the programmes of a number of health and well-being centres and festivals including RunFest and Orbit Fitness Festival. We have also worked with Adidas Runners, The Embodiment Conference and Let’s Get Running, and featured in Women’s Running magazine.
Our programme continues to develop and evolve, now with a particular focus on residential retreats – some focused on running and others on trail walking – all with complementary programmes of activity that may include mindfulness meditation, Tai Chi Movements for Wellbeing and mindfulness yoga.
Teachers
Stuart McLeod
Stuart took up triathlon in 2005, before specializing in duathlon (run/bike/run). He went on to represent Great Britain as an age-group athlete at several international Championships. He holds a UK Athletics Leadership in Running Fitness coach’s licence and is a founder member of MedwayTri.
He is a ‘Trained Teacher with a specialism in MBSR’ (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction) having completed the Teacher Training Pathway at Bangor University’s Centre for Mindfulness Research and Practice. He is also a Level Three teacher of Tai Chi Movements for Wellbeing (TMW) and a qualified Qigong Instructor with Long White Cloud Qigong.
Stuart has been practicing meditation in the Chan (Chinese Zen) Buddhist tradition for over two decades and holds a postgraduate certificate in Buddhist Studies. For the last 20 years he has been leading a local group of the Western Chan Fellowship including running regular day retreats.
A key focus of Stuart’s personal practice is in the application of mindfulness techniques and skills as a means to help us re-inhabit our bodies. He thinks there is no better way to do this than through mindful running, and nowadays he can usually be found happily running the trails of his North Kent home.
Cesare Saguato
Cesare is a qualified and registered (BAMBA) mindfulness (MBSR/MBCT) and compassion teacher (MBCL) and supervisor. He has completed training with the Oxford Mindfulness Centre, Sussex Mindfulness Centre (NHS), The Mindfulness Network and the Mindfulness in Schools Project. He has been delivering mindfulness tasters, workshops, courses and retreats in the public, private and third sectors since 2015. Cesare is also a qualified integrative psychotherapeutic counsellor (BACP) and a clinical supervisor.
Cesare’s personal meditation practice has been developing since 2007, mainly within the Tibetan Buddhist tradition and he continues to receive meditation instruction and guidance from internationally recognised meditation teachers and their senior students. He has been teaching meditation within that context to his local community since 2013 through Bodhicharya Kent, under the guidance of his main teacher, Ringu Tulku Rinpoche.
Cesare has had a personal interest in health, fitness and nutrition, including martial arts, weight training and running from his early teens onwards. He recognises personally and professionally the importance of skilfully integrating the mind and body for a greater sense of wholeness in experience, embodied presence and well-being in life. Through his own mind-body work in general and running in particular, he sees how the addition of an open, kind-awareness in stillness and movement, provides an opportunity for this to naturally unfold and is passionate about exploring and sharing this with others.
Sadhita (Guest Teacher)
Sadhita is a yoga teacher and trainer of teachers and one of the key founders of the Bodhiyoga School of teacher training.
A Buddhist by training, the yoga school was set up in 2012 to provide training and retreats to the public. To date, they have provided more than ten trainings and have many students all around the globe. Sadhita has trained in Ashtanga, Hatha and Iyengar systems of yoga.
Since 2012 Sadhita has been involved in training people to become mindfulness based yoga teachers and has to date more than one hundred student teachers world wide.
From the years of practice, Sadhita recommends that yoga is a perfect adjunct to mindful running and will help any practitioner go deeper into their experience.
“As an informed meditator, runner and yoga practitioner, I have seen all of these practices deepen and take on new meaning through the systematic practice of mindfulness.”