Mindfulness during daily activities: is it helpful to vary the proportions of the five facets?
11th October 2011
"If your mind isn't clouded by unnecessary things, this is the best season of your life." Wu-men This is one of a series of blog posts triggered by attending a MBSR training - see for example the recent "Learning mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR): second evening of the course". A key …
Learning MBSR: what's likely to be the most effective way to teach the bodyscan (general orientation)?
8th October 2011
I wrote a blog post a couple of days ago on "MBSR: how important is 'homework' and responses to the bodyscan". I mentioned there that I'd been through the bodyscan eight times in the previous few days guided by live or recorded directions from five different teachers (this included one …
Learning mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR): second evening of the course
7th October 2011
Yesterday evening was the second session of this eight week (plus a full day) Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course that I am attending. I wrote a week ago about the initial group meeting. There are nine of us plus the trainer on the course, but one of us was unable …
Learning mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR): how important is "homework" and responses to the bodyscan
6th October 2011
So this is a week into a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course. I've practised the "Body Scan" meditation eight times in the last eight days. Initially there was the practice session that we did at the first MBSR class that I talked a bit about in last week's blog post …
Recent research: articles from September journals
5th October 2011
I read a lot of research. When I find an article of particular interest I download it to my bibliographic database - EndNote - which currently contains over 16,700 abstracts. Every few weeks I scan through all the articles I've found interesting in the previous month (in the general areas …
Co-running a day on mindfulness & hypnosis
3rd October 2011
A dozen Powerpoint slides I put together for this seminar are downloadable by clicking here. A couple of days ago, a friend and I ran a day seminar on "Mindfulness & hypnosis" for the Scottish Branch of the British Society of Medical & Dental Hypnosis (BSMDH). The learning objectives we'd …
Learning mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR): first evening of the course
30th September 2011
I wrote a blog post a few days ago entitled "Mindfulness: teaching & learning". I talked about my decision to participate in a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course, saying "Why participate in a MBSR course? Basically because I think it would be rather interesting! There's a real groundswell of energy …
What is mindfulness?
28th September 2011
I wrote a couple of days ago - in the blog post "Mindfulness: teaching & learning" - about a day workshop I'm due to co-run this Saturday on "Mindfulness & hypnosis". One of the learning objective for this workshop is "To understand what ‘mindfulness' involves". I find it helpful to …
Mindfulness: teaching & learning
26th September 2011
It's a funny week for me. On Thursday I'm due to start an 8 week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course as a participant, and on Saturday I'm scheduled to co-run a one day workshop on Mindfulness & Hypnosis. I've been involved in mindfulness practice for a long time. I joined …
New UNICEF report underlines how low wellbeing is in UK children
17th September 2011
The UK branch of UNICEF very recently stated "In 2007, UNICEF's child well-being report put the issue of child well-being firmly on the UK's political agenda. When compared with 20 other OECD countries, including substantially poorer ones, the UK was at the bottom of the league table of child well-being. …