5 steps to mindfulness

Here’s a link to a great introductory post by Thich Nhat Hanh about 5 steps towards being mindful.

1. Mindful breathing

2. Concentration

3. Awareness of the body

4. Releasing tension

5. Walking meditation

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New podcast by Martine Batchelor

There’s a great new podcast by Martine Batchelor out. Follow the link.

Details from the website: Martine Batchelor was a nun in a Korean Buddhist monastery for 10 years, where she followed a traditional path of practice and exploration. We speak about her journey in becoming a nun, what the rhythms of that life were like, what practices she undertook, and how she came to integrate, and deepen, the understanding she uncovered during her decade of training there.

The episode concludes with a compelling conversation about the multi-perspectival nature of human beings, and how we’re constantly practicing at a crossroads between various aspects of our lives.

This is part 1 of a two-part series.

Privilege & Oppression, Conflict & Compassion

Meg Barker and Jamie Heckert reflect upon different strategies for dealing with conflict, and what can be learnt from a dialogue between naming oppression and compassionate listening.

The political project of learning to recognise and name patterns of oppression has been, and continues to be, an important one. It has helped us to recognise that our own experiences of pain are not just personal; they are also political. And so we have become involved in social movements responding to these patterns and creating new ones. In this way, learning to name oppression can help to create a sense of connection among those who experience it.

At the same time, we notice that an idea (or ideology) of connection can substitute for the more complex experience of direct connection, of listening to another’s stories and of empathising with another’s pain. Political identity based on oppression can assume that experiences are identical: that all LGBT folk, all workers, all women, or all people of colour will have experienced the same oppression and should have the same politics. Of course, this all falls apart when we notice that everyone is characterised in different ways at different times in different contexts. No one is simply LGBT or a worker, or only a woman or a person of colour. Assumed, rather than directly experienced, connections rapidly fall apart when those who are assumed to be identical point out that they are not. Queer, working-class women and transfolk of colour experience all four of these patterns of oppression in particular ways (and, quite possibly others around ability, age, appearance, education and more). No politics of identity can incorporate so many differences.

Mindfulness: A strategy for social engagement?

In this post, Meg Barker reflects on the possibilities of mindfulness for social engagement.

People who read my blogs and other writing will know that one of the things I’m heavily into is  mindfulness. This is, broadly speaking, the practice of cultivating awareness, often through meditation where you gently focus on your breath going in and out, or on the sounds around you, or on your bodily sensations as you walk very slowly back and forth.

My excitement about mindfulness may seem a bit peculiar to those who know that the other areas which I’m passionately engaged in are all very social: issues around relationship structures, discrimination of marginalised groups in society, and power and conflict. Mindfulness seems such an internal, individual thing, how can it possibly be relevant to these matters. As somebody asked in an Open University seminar on the topic: ‘where is the social?’

Such questions were the motivation behind a weekend workshop/retreat which I attended earlier this month. Steven Stanley and I put together the weekend with a group of colleagues to address the question of social mindfulness. The weekend consisted of a combination of periods of meditation and other mindful-type practices (such as Qigong), together with presentations and discussions linking mindfulness to various social issues including sustainability, interpersonal and intergroup conflict, prejudice and discrimination, mental health and communication.

Mindfulness: It ain’t what you do it’s the way that you do it

In this post, Meg Barker considers the possibilities for mindfulness in everyday life.

I’ve been interested in mindfulness for several years now and will be writing a book about it in the next year or so, building on the chapter that I wrote for the OU counselling module.

Mindfulness is the big idea in counselling and psychology at the moment. The ‘gold standard’ of counselling – cognitive-behavioural therapy – is turning to mindfulness as its ‘third wave’. If you go to a mental health services it is likely that they will offer some kind of mindfulness training. Self help books for depression and anxiety are increasingly mindfulness focused.

One conclusion that I have come to is that there is no such thing as an inherently mindful or non-mindful activity. People (including myself at times) often have the idea that only certain activities could be mindful: like meditating, walking in the countryside, perhaps painting or other such tranquil pursuits. There is definitely a notion that certain activities are anti-mindful, including things like watching TV, commuting or social-networking. As with the idea that you are doing meditation wrong if you don’t have a completely ’empty mind’ I think this is a misconception which isn’t helpful and which often leads people to beating themselves up that they aren’t doing mindfulness properly (which really defeats the purpose!) Just as you can sit in meditation without being mindful at all, I think you can also be mindful as you are texting or surfing the internet.

Here I want to say what I think mindfulness is and why it is all about the way you approach activities, not the activity itself.