Introduction to Mindfulness
Topic outline
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There are plenty of articles in newspapers and journals about mindfulness, and you can even by mindful colouring books. Mindfulness is an increasingly popular way to improve wellbeing, and the NHS has adopted mindfulness approaches in clinical care and in the workplace. It has received a great deal of media attention, and it is sometimes presented as a panacea, and sometimes as some false hope. So, what is all the fuss about?
Mindfulness is not really something new, except perhaps as a label. Ancient philosophies and religions all embrace some form of mindfulness, and many include some form of practice that we would today recognise as mindfulness practices. The mindfulness movement, if we can call it that, is really embracing ancient wisdoms and re-presenting them in contemporary forms, and often backing them up with scientific investigations.
The modern forms of mindfulness date back half a century or more. In the 1970’s Jon Kabat-Zinn established a “stress reduction clinic” at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He was inspired to take a number of Buddhist and Yoga practices and teach them to people who had chronic and persistent medical problems that clinicians were unable to cure. The intention was not to cure those illnesses, but to help people live more effectively with their problems. The programme developed and was remarkably successful, and a programme called Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) was created and used extensively, both within Massachusetts hospital and more widely.
Over the next two decades, alongside good anecdotal evidence, studies started to show that there were significant benefits arising from MBSR. A development of that programme called Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) was developed, and studies showed that as an intervention this was comparable with or better than drug therapy for helping people with certain depressive illnesses to avoid relapse; this is now an NHS recommended treatment.
There are quite a few definitions of mindfulness about, but it is not easy to encapsulate in a few sentences. John Kabat-Zinn originally defined mindfulness as “paying attention in a particular way; on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgementally”. That is an easy thing to express, but not easy to do. Mindfulness has become very popular and the media is bringing a lot of attention to it. This course should help you to become much more informed and maybe give you a richer experience of mindfulness.The only way to understand mindfulness in its current presentation is to try it, to experience some of the practices and see if it works for you. Mindfulness is taught "experientially". A geography lesson might teach you about Africa, but going there will teach you more and different things,. So it is with mindfulness which means that to really understand it you need to try it.
There are lots of ways of accessing mindfulness practices today. There are apps like Headspace. The web is full of recorded meditations to try. Probably the best way, however, is to find a local group or teacher.
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This TED talk by Shauna Shapiro is a good introduction to mindfulness and mindfulness meditation.
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An interesting perspective on Mindfulness - what is it like when we are not mindful?
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Engage with other course participants, ask questions, comment on the course.
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Meditation is one way of cultivating mindfulness. There are many forms of meditation, not all of them intended to cultivate mindfulness. In this section we explore mindfulness meditation.
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