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How to Meditate: Meditation 101 for Beginners
10 Science-Backed Benefits of Meditation
What is Meditation?
How to Meditate: Meditation 101 for Beginners
10 Science-Backed Benefits of Meditation
What is Meditation?
Benefits of Mindfulness: Mindful Living Can Change Your Life
Mindfulness 101: A Beginner's Guide
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In this interview Mark elegantly answers the question, 'What is Mindfulness?’. He also leads two simple introductory practices for beginners.
I'm your host Melli O'Brien.
Today we're joined by Professor Mark
Williams, as he guides us through
an introduction to mindfulness.
Mark is Emeritus Professor of clinical
psychology at Oxford University, where he
was the director of the Oxford Mindfulness
Centre until his retirement in 2013.
Mark co-developed this program
called mindfulness-based cognitive
therapy, which is designed to
prevent relapse of major depression.
And he co-authored one of my favorite
books on mindfulness, simply called,
Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to
Finding Peace in a Frantic World.
Here's my interview with
Professor Mark Williams.
So I thought we could maybe
start off by simply getting you
to describe what is mindfulness
and, and how do we practice it?
Well, mindfulness really is a word
that really simply means awareness.
Awareness of what's happening as
it's happening, both in the inside
world and the outside world.
It comes from a very ancient word, but
it's probably easiest to understand if
you think of its opposite, mindlessness.
Mindlessness, where you keep forgetting
to do things, you don't listen
properly, you're not attending properly.
The world is going by without you really
being there for it or here for it.
And mindfulness is the awareness that
emerges when you make a decision to
train your mind, to some extent, to
check in more often to how things are.
So the original word, awareness, it
actually came from a word meaning
memory, which slightly changed its
meaning to being non-forgetfulnes.
Non forgetfulness to mean that sort
of direct, intuitive knowing of what's
happening around you, both inside and out.
And that's really what
mindfulness is about.
Mm.
And one of the things that I actually
really love about this book, one of the
things that really struck me about it
is that not only does it have a really
clear explanation of mindfulness, but
you actually go into that description
of what mindlessness is as well.
What, and a really wonderful
description of why it's so
important to wake up out of that.
In other words, how it can
really get us into trouble.
So maybe we could elaborate
a little bit more on that.
What's the problem with autopilot?
Why do we say, does it seem to
get us into so much trouble?
Well, I think the problem is not
so much with autopilot itself.
So automatic pilots is a very useful
thing that the mind and body does.
If you think of learning to drive,
for example, it was probably, if
you drove in as sort of a stick
shift in a, in a car with a gear.
A stick, probably you frightened your
parents or your partner, or whoever
were teaching you to drive no end,
because you'd look down to see where
you hand needed to be and what the gear.
So you'd use all your mind
for that moment, not to steer
the car, but to change gears.
And it's just as well, you learn
to make that automatic so that,
or if you never learned, you
bought yourself an automatic car.
So that you'd actually know how
to keep your mind on other things.
So when you make things automatic,
that's a really helpful function.
The problem is, is where the automatic
pilot takes over on things that
actually it would be easier and more
adaptive if you weren't so automatic.
Right,
So if you take the driving analogy
again, it's very important to be,
have all your attention on the road
at a point where you come up to a
rotary, a round-about, an intersection.
And that's the point at which
you can't be on automatic.
And if you are, then accidents happen.
If you don't look left and right,
because you know, or you've every time
you've come up to that intersection
before in the past 10 days, there
has never been any traffic there.
So you just assume automatic
that's going to happen again.
Then of course, accidents happen.
Right.
When automatic pilot takes over, over
things and you get so absorbed in
something that automatic pilot is doing
other things for you and the difficulty
with that with, I mean, in a sense
there's two aspects to mindfulness.
One is the way in which mindfulness
training transforms destructive emotions.
And perhaps we can come onto that
later and all the research on that.
But also mindfulness is helping you
re-engage with moment to moment living.
And that re-engagement with moment of
living, the sense of approaching life
with a sense of awareness and really
being there for it, experiencing being
alive moment by moment means that
if you cede too much control to the
automatic pilot, you're just not there.
You don't taste your food, you
don't listen, you don't see.
And although it's all there available
for you, it's just not being processed.
It's not being attended to.
Yeah.
And one of the things we
didn't get to chat about this
before, when we previously met.
But one of the things that actually really
affected my life was that when, when I
was 19, I was working in a nursing home
and one of the things, you know, they
really wanted to impart their wisdom.
And one of the things that they would
often say is things like, you know,
that they felt like they didn't
really live a lot of their lives and
had regrets when they got to the end.
That was a very impactful thing for me.
And it kind of strikes me that it does
seem that we, we seem to spend a good
portion of our lives in that mode of kind
of doing one thing after another, after
another and not really being there fully.
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean Thich Nhat Hanh has this lovely
example of, you know, having a drink.
Maybe if you, you go and have a drink
before you go out for, to go shopping
or something and you realize all
the cups are, are need of washing.
So you wash the cups.
But washing the cups is just a
preparation for making the tea.
So you don't, you're not really
there for washing the cups.
So you don't notice the water
or the washing and so on.
Cause after all who would?
I mean, it seems irrelevant.
But then when you're drinking
your tea, where is your mind?
Often your mind there is on your shopping
expedition and what you need to buy.
And you look at the cup and you
think, Oh, uh, Did I just drink that?
Right.
Oh, I must've done cause
nobody else drunk it.
But you haven't been there for the tea.
Yeah.
And then when you're on the way
to shop, you're, you're thinking
about what you're going to buy.
And when you're going around the
supermarket, you're wondering about
whether there's going to be long queues.
And when you're queuing, you're
hoping that this person in front of
you is not going to ask the price
of bread, and so on and so, and so.
So you go through, there's a whole
morning lost where the tea, the
washing, the tea, the drive, the
shopping, the driving home, the cooking.
It's all been lost to you and you're
quite right that, you know, losing a
morning doesn't seem that important.
But if at the end of your life with
say six months to live, you look
back on your life like you looked at
that cup and you look back on your
life and saying, was that my life?
That was it.
It must have been because
nobody else lived it.
I was the one that lived it, but
actually I wasn't there for it.
I wasn't there for it.
Yeah.
And I know you mentioned too in the
book and I know, I'm, I'm a big fan
of Matt Killings worth's research on
this as well, and there's this, it
seems like being on autopilot makes us
vulnerable to deeper states of suffering,
of anxiety, stress, being revved up
and those kinds of things as well.
So there's that kind
of cost to it as well.
Exactly so.
So that exactly.
So that research that shows that
when your mind is wandering, you're
actually not as, as, it's not
actually a pleasant experience.
I mean, some people imagine that
daydreaming is always pleasant.
The problem is that daydreaming
is the first cousin of rumination
and brooding and worrying.
And especially if you are a
little vulnerable to worries
and concerns and depression.
Under the surface, when you're
on autopilot, you can coalesce
and negative moods can coalesce.
Irritations, hostilities,
sadnesses, hopeless worries, fears.
And you're not aware of them until
they've already built into quite a mass.
They've already affected the body.
So the body's already send, sending
signals to the mind saying, I'm tense.
So you better be tense too.
And that's already, it already
happened by the time you wake up for
it, you're already quite far down
into, for example, another depression.
So that waking up and checking in
regularly is, is an important thing.
The other thing is that we so often get
preoccupied with projects, you know.
And if we're doing a thesis or an essay,
or got a big project on, you can see
exactly why, during that project, you
put aside the things that you, you
normally enjoy in order to focus on
the project, the essay, the whatever
it is you've got to do, promising
yourself that when it's over, then
you'll do the things you promised.
But actually, while you're doing that
project, the mind is doing a pretty
good automatic job of suppressing all
your other jobs that you have to do.
So when it's over, although you promised
yourself bliss and a bit of freedom,
actually what comes crowding in is
all the other things, all the other
projects that you've put on hold.
Because you're kind of already in
that, that kind of revved up state
of yeah, just getting it done.
That's right.
Yeah, so you don't give
yourself very much nourishment.
You just go.
The end of one project is just
a signal to start another one.
And promising ourselves that next year,
in the new year, after this vacation,
after this, then we'll start enjoying the
life that we actually promised ourselves
becomes actually a bit of a delusion.
It never actually happens.
So the question is how can I
nourish myself in the next hour?
Not even in the next day.
But what can I do, some small
thing, in the next hour or two that
actually will make a difference and
give myself a break and, and give
me some practice at attending to my
life in a, in a more wholesome way?
Not just, not just giving my thinking a
break, but actually just switching on a
different mode of being and, and letting
that be exercised and letting that have,
have some play in our lives as well.
Yeah.
It's such a seductive mind
pattern that, one day when...
It's amazing how it's just.
It is.
And I, I catch myself over and over
and over just remembering that.
Well, exactly, we all do.
I mean, it's natural human nature.
And, but what we're doing as mindfulness
teachers is not saying we've,
we've sussed it, we've got over it.
It's actually a sense of recognizing,
perhaps just a little bit more
recognizing when it, when it
undermines our best intentions.
And because we live in this world
of ideas and taking a break is such
a lovely idea, taking a break for
the future, next week or whatever.
So it only, it only stays
in the realm of ideas.
It's never actualized today.
And that's what we need
a bit of practice now.
Yeah.
Wonderful.
And Mark, you know, we, we've touched on
a little bit of wanting to talk about the
research and you're one of the premier
researchers in the field of mindfulness.
So I would love to have you share with
us, what are the research backed benefits
of mindfulness that we know of so far?
I know things are still
evolving, but what do we know?
Well, things are still evolving.
And one of the mistakes.
I think, is just think that mindfulness
is a panacea for everything.
That all you have to do is
pour mindfulness on the problem
and suddenly it will dissolve.
Not only does the research have a
long way to go, but also the way
in which mindfulness has, addresses
different forms of suffering.
It's bound to be slightly
different in each case.
So that just generic mindfulness courses,
although they will probably get you
at least halfway to, because there are
universal problems that get us stuck
and mindfulness is very good at those.
And if it's going to address
specific issues, it needs to be
specifically aware of in addressing
the suffering that's that's coming.
But the research is, I mean, most of
our research myself, John Teasdale
and Zindel Segal's research, was
on the prevention of depression.
We could see in the eighties and
nineties that depression had, and it
was destined to be one of the major
burdens in not only the Western and
rich countries, but also in low-income
and middle-income countries as well.
And it's a burden increasingly,
we're aware of it, partly
because it's recurrent.
It tends to come back in many people.
But that wouldn't be a problem
if it started late in life.
But what we're now aware of over the
last 20, 30 years is that depression
actually starts quite young.
And the most common age of onset
of serious clinical depression now
is between 13 and 15 years of age.
Wow.
And that, and 50% or more of people who
are ever going to be depressed, in fact,
75% of people ever going to be depressed
have been depressed before the age of 24.
And that means they've got a whole
lifetime ahead of them, where if
depression gets into recurrent
pattern, it could blight their
lives for the whole of their lives.
And there's now long-term followup
suggesting that once it settles into
a recurrent pattern, you're going to
be depressed about four months every
year, over a 20 year, 30 year period.
Wow, that's a lot.
And that, and that's function impairment.
That's not just feeling a bit sad.
That's unable to, to work maybe,
unable to feel effective at work or
with family with leisure pursuits.
So it's not surprising it's the
biggest, one of the biggest burdens
for the World Health Organization?
Well, the problem there is, there
are pretty effective treatments for
depression for when people are depressed.
So cognitive therapy, interpersonal
therapy, antidepressants, all
seem to be quite effective.
But that those depend on, on
depression being there to be treated.
These don't tend to work as preventative
things if you're not depressed now.
So if you do cognitive therapy,
then people do get better.
And once they're better,
their relapse rates are lower.
But the question is, what is the critical
thing that cognitive therapy is teaching?
And could you teach that to people who
are not depressed, who, who we know
are vulnerable, but not depressed?
Well, it turns out that the critical
thing that cognitive therapy was doing was
to help people to stand back from their
thoughts and not take them so personally,
to have a more curious approach,
centered approach to their thoughts,
rather than a sort of an aversion, I
don't like this, I'm just going to bury
my head and suppress them, or get lost
in them and take them all personally.
And that's what cognitive
therapy was doing so effectively.
Now, maybe we could find a way of
teaching that same skill to people who
have no negative thoughts at the moment.
Mindfulness is really good for that
because you only have to sit for 10
seconds on the cushion before your mind
wanders, and you have the opportunity to
practice seeing your thoughts clearly,
feeling lost in your thoughts and actually
noticing you're lost and coming back.
And I think that that, that is, for
many people I think the, the really
critical thing that mindfulness
allows you to do to, we call it
de-centering from thinking now.
When you do that, and when we do the
research, it shows that yes, if you teach
that for eight weeks to people through, as
you say, it's something called mindfulness
based cognitive therapy, which is closely
based on Jon, Kabat-Zinn's work in MBSR,
but subtly changed and important ways
to address the problems of depression.
You find you can almost half the rates
of depression in the most vulnerable
people, the people with the most
recurrent pattern of depression.
Wow.
And the most recent research, that we've
just finished last year and published
last year, added, I think in important
ways to that in, in a couple of ways.
First of all, we were looking
at people who tend to get
suicidal when they get depressed.
And we found that after the mindfulness
course, there was an uncoupling of
depression from suicidal thoughts.
So even when people got depressed
after the mindfulness, it didn't
trigger suicidal thoughts.
Right.
It didn't kind of escalate to that.
It didn't escalate into suicidality,
which is important because we can't
ban depression from the world.
And if people have been depressed
and suicidal in the past, whenever
they get depressed again, they
tend to feel suicidal again.
So uncoupling, those
things are quite important.
That was the, that was the first thing.
And that's just coming out this
year in The Journal of Consulting
and Clinical Psychology.
But two other things.
One was that nobody up till now have
compared mindfulness for depression
with an active treatment control.
They'd been intended to compare
them, at least not an active
psychological treatment control.
So they've compared it with
antidepressants and the data
suggest that they are at least
as effective as antidepressants.
And actually when you put all the trials
together, slightly more effective.
Oh, wow.
So that data came out of The
Lancet a couple of weeks ago.
Willem Kuyken, who is the, my successor
at Oxford, showed it wasn't, his trial
wasn't big enough to show that mindfulness
was better than antidepressants.
But when you put all the trials
together, there are four trials
by now, then mindfulness based
cognitive therapy is a little better.
But no trial had looked at an
active treatment control that
was a psychological treatment.
So we couldn't, we didn't know whether
when people would come to class and
learn mindfulness and mindfulness-based
cognitive therapy, MBCT, it might be just
that they have a nice teacher, that they
meet each other and make new friends,
that they talk and learn about depression.
Maybe those non-specific effects
are what's doing the business.
Maybe it's nothing to do
with mindfulness at all.
So in this research, we had an, another
psychological treatment, which was
like MBCT without the mindfulness.
So people came to class, they had
the same teacher, they learned about
depression, they met each other, they
made good friends and everything was the
same, but they didn't learn to meditate.
Okay.
And the data suggested that yes, as
once again, MBCT was highly effective
for those most vulnerable people.
In this case, people who had long
histories with trauma in their
childhood and adolescence and abuse.
So they were the most vulnerable and
that's where MBCT was the most helpful.
And it's more than halved the rates,
that hazard of relapse, as it's called.
But interestingly, if you looked
up this, this is what we call
cognitive psycho-education,
this active, psychological
treatment, it got you halfway.
So it took the relapse
rates down about halfway.
So coming to class, meeting each
other, learning about depression
is about is, is quite good.
But if you want to full effect, if
you want to go the other, the other
half, if you want the full benefit,
you have to learn to meditate.
Hm.
It's, it's really, it's, it's amazing
what's happened over the past, I think.
What is it?
35 years since MBSR has been,
really made mindfulness, I mean,
it's an incredible thing that,
that mindfulness is as effective as
antidepressants or slightly more.
I mean, that's, that's amazing.
It's, it's, it's wonderful that,
it's wonderful that mindfulness
is going is going so mainstream.
So...
Yeah.
And the thing is, I think probably the
third part of that research is something
that might disappoint some people, but not
others, that enthusiasm for mindfulness
actually doesn't predict any benefit.
Interesting.
Just being enthusiastic about it.
So I mean, this well-known phenomenon
in psychology and psychological
research, which is that if you are
enthusiastic for your treatment,
you tend to do better at it.
Yeah.
And that's also true of
antidepressant medication.
So if you, or any medication, if you
think this is the thing that will help
you and you think it's plausible and
you'd recommend it to a friend and
you think you're going to do well on
it, then you tend to do well on it.
Okay.
And that's true for psychology
or, or a physical medicine.
So we were really concerned, maybe
that actually the important thing
wasn't people meditating, but
people just being enthusiastic
about, about MBCT or mindfulness.
I see.
Yep.
And so we actually measured, at Session
Two, we gave some standard questions.
Like how plausible do you think this is?
How enthusiastic, how would
you recommend this to a friend?
For example, do you think
this will work for you?
And the first thing that we found was the
enthusiasm for our control treatment was
just as good in fact, slightly better, not
significantly better, but slightly better.
People were enthusiastic for both,
but noticed the MBCT did better
than the, the control treatment.
So it wasn't just enthusiasm.
But then we looked at how
much people practiced.
Then just in the MBCT group, how
much do people actually practice?
And, you know, some people
practice, other people don't.
Well, we were interested in that
because we wanted to know does
practice of mindfulness, you know,
doing the formal daily practice,
does that affect the outcome?
And some people have shown that it did,
some other people shown that it didn't.
We said, well, look, even if it shows
that it does, it might just be enthusiasm.
There might be the enthusiastic
people, both get good outcomes
and they practice more.
But our results were published last
year in the Behavioral Research and
Therapy Journal were very clear.
Enthusiasm didn't affect how much
people practiced, but how much people
practiced, did affect the outcome.
So basically, every extra day you
practiced over the six days that we
asked people to practice, actually
benefit and reduce the risk of relapse.
So if you just split people by the,
by the middle and say, okay, so
people on average practice three
and a half days a week out of six.
So just take the people who practice, zero
one and two, all the people who practice
three, four, and five, and you find a six.
You find that when you split people in
the middle, people who only practiced
a little only got half the benefit that
people who have practiced as, as they
have more of more than three days a week.
And none of that was anything
to do with enthusiasm.
So basically if you're enthusiastic for
mindfulness, I'm afraid it's not enough.
Yeah.
The, the phrase that springs to
mind right now is, you know, Jon
Kabat-Zinn's quite well known for
saying, you don't have to like it.
You just have to do it.
You just, just practice and let it unfold.
Yeah.
Exactly.
So this is exactly why, I mean, you
know, we'd never, we believe Jon.
Yeah.
But we never had any evidence to
suggest, suggest he was right.
Now, we've got the evidence
to show that he's right.
Actually, if even people who weren't
enthusiastic, if they practiced, they got
the benefit, and that's a critical thing.
Yeah.
And that's important for us as teachers
to know, when we're meeting people for
the first time, that what they're doing
here is potentially transformative,
but one has to do the work.
Yeah.
And not, not just important for us as
teachers, but for everybody watching
this, that's interested in mindfulness
and, and, you know, wanting to find
out what it can do for your life.
Just go for it and find out for
yourself from the inside out.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Just give it, give it the eight weeks
that we ask you to give it and just
see what happens and make a judgment
at the end, rather than 10 minutes in,
because it's going to be quite difficult.
In fact, in our early days of
developing work for suicidal people,
of suicidal, depressed people, we
actually looked at who drops out.
Because in our first pilot work in
Oxford, A lot of people dropped out.
And, and that's, I think because
people who have suicidal depression
often are very highly ruminative.
And it's when, when thoughts, and
now we know images, they get very
clear pictures in their mind, which
are very, very toxic and horrible.
And so when this comes up, they've learned
to ruminate about them rather than focus
on them, rather than approach them.
And they've learned to suppress them.
And we found that those who are
most highly ruminative and most
highly avoidant dropped out.
And so we now spend time in that
preclass interview, the intake interview,
really saying, what are you going
to do when you feel like giving up?
Because it'll happen.
It'll happen.
You'll feel like giving up.
So see that as an opportunity,
really to say that that is where
the biggest learning might come.
So when you feel like giving up,
say, aha, this is it, here it is.
This is what I've been sort of,
this is what I was warned about.
Now, how am I going to approach this?
What's going on in my mind, in my body,
in my impulses, in my, in,you know.
So think, thoughts and
feelings, what is this about?
And this provides people, and when we
did the big trial, having made those
adjustments, instead of 30% dropping
out only 7% dropped out, which is
very low for a trial of this kind.
So I think that this is important
messages for mindfulness, for people doing
mindfulness and for mindfulness teachers.
Yeah, absolutely.
And in your experience, you've taught
so many people over the years, you
know, and you must have a sense of
common themes or common challenges or,
or obstacles as you mentioned that,
that come up for people when they're
learning to practice mindfulness.
Are there, could you speak
to that a little bit?
Are there common challenges?
And if so, what advice do you have
for anyone out there beginning their
mindfulness practice that might
come up against these challenges?
Well, I think that one of them we've
already mentioned, that is actually
putting a time aside to practice.
In our clinical work, we tend to have
long meditations done once a day.
You know, 25, 30, 35 minutes.
In the Frantic World book, we
decided to split that up into
shorter meditations twice a day.
Yeah.
And one of the reasons for doing that
is that although people in the end get
rather similar amounts of meditation
in total, it does give people, first,
one, more opportunity to discover what,
what time of day is best for them.
It might be the morning.
They may get up a little bit
earlier before the household is up.
Or it might be middle
evening or middle of the day.
And if you only do it once a day,
often you meant, it may take a long
time to discover what works for you.
Try it twice a day, or, or even more
gives you more, more of that flexibility.
But also by doing things more
than once a day, you get to
practice one of the really, really
hard things about meditation,
which is actually getting there.
Meditation is not hard once you arrive.
Right.
I mean, that's a different business.
I'll come onto that in a moment.
But actually getting from your bed to
your chair or your studio, cushion or
from the television to the bed or from,
because in the mode in bed or in front
of television, you're in a sort of doing
mode in which you're either snatching
some relaxation or you're working hard.
And whether you're snatching relaxation,
you think, Oh, I don't want to do the
meditation now because I'm relaxing,
or I don't want to do the meditation
because I've got too much on.
And those two things, the snatching
a little bit of what you call
downtime, but often it's just
slouching from the television.
So I think that.
practicing twice a day, gives you more
chance at practicing the hard thing,
which is that making that switch.
Once you're there in your special place,
where you sit on a cushion, on a stool,
and of course you don't have to have
a cushion or a, or a stool, a chair is
perfectly good for people meditating.
The first time it's useful to put
a cushion under themselves so that
their, their hips are slightly higher
than their knees and their feet can
be flat on the floor and the back
can be self-supporting, but that
can be done with an ordinary chair.
You don't have to do anything special.
But that sense of just transferring
from one mode to the other and just
sitting there is really important.
Once you get there, then you
can decide how long to stay.
Switch on the tape, switch
on the CD, download the stuff
and, and be there for it.
And then the other thing is not
to worry if your mind wanders.
A lot of people who begin meditation
for the first time, think this
is to try to clear my mind.
And actually the media often gives that
message, partly through it's photographs
of monks or beautiful women at the top of
mountains who look completely blissed out.
And you can't believe that actually what
might be going through their head is Ow,
this stone is a bit hard or I feel a bit
hungry, cause they look so blissed out.
It looks as if their mind is empty.
And often you'll see articles
in the press about learn to
meditate and clear your mind.
And actually, so when people sit
and their mind wanders all over
the place, I think I can't do this.
I can't do this.
But actually mind wandering is
indeed needed for the practice.
So that if your, if your mind didn't
wander, it would be a bit like going
to the gymnasium and finding there's
nothing, no equipment in the room.
There's nothing to practice on, you know.
If going to the gym and finding an empty
room, you'd probably want your money back.
Yeah.
So when you meditate the mind
starts to wander and that's
like the gymnasium equipment.
That's what you're going to be practicing
on because the mind wandering is going to
give you all sorts of micro challenges.
They may not be huge things
your mind is preoccupied with.
But the mind has a really good way of
just reminding you of all the things
you've forgotten to do, for example,
and making you feel like, unless you
do them now, you'll forget them again.
So those sort of challenges come
up, you get that sort of sense.
So that's where, that's, the,
the practice is noticing that,
noticing you've got a bit lost.
Waking up and escorting your mind back.
That sort of attentional muscle training,
you might say, is the, is the cornerstone
or the foundation of mindfulness, using
the body as the, as the foundation because
you can't leave home without the body.
It's always there for you.
And using the body to learn
to attend on the breath or on
the sensations in the body.
And then the mind will wander,
bring it back, mind wanders.
So the going away and coming
back is actually the practice.
And if you could sit there and there was
nothing in your mind, then you wouldn't
have the practice you need to have.
Right.
So knowing that that's completely
normal and not a sign of failure,
but it's just part of the practice.
Yeah.
It's part of the practice.
It's what gives you the practice.
Many very senior mindfulness teachers are
very aware their mind wanders all the time
and as you get more and more practiced at,
it's not that your mind doesn't wander,
it's that there's an ease of returning
a sense of self-forgiveness, a sense
of cultivating compassion for yourself.
And, and I suppose the other thing I'd
say that the challenges is that even
when you notice the mind has gone and
you bring it back, what I'd suggest that
people look very gently and carefully
at how they're bringing the mind back.
Are they sort of pulling it back
in a rather abrupt away, almost
with a frown on their face as if a
naughty child was being, you know,
pulled away from the biscuit tin?
And are you treating yourself
as if something's gone wrong?
As if you've done something naughty
and you better get, you better
get your mind, your mind back on
the breath before anybody notices.
That you're, you know, you're not there.
And so that sense, that's easy to get that
sense of sort of contraction around it.
So in order to to do the opposite,
when you notice your mind has gone,
just spend a few moments noticing where
it went, acknowledging where it went.
Perhaps even being amazed and wondering
at the mind and cherishing your mind.
You won't have your mind forever.
So cherish the fact that here's
the mind doing its thing.
Isn't that fantastic?
But that's not what you
would intend to be doing.
So now you're going to very gently
escort the mind back to the,
where you had intended it to be.
Perhaps settling yourself in the body
first, before going back to the breath.
So rather than going, my mind's gone.
Now back to the breath,
which is narrow, narrow.
Maybe go to the body first and
then gather it back to the breath.
So it's one graceful movement of
acknowledgement and bringing back
with a sort of sense of compassion
and, and, and then really you're
getting the practice you need to get.
Yeah.
I'm so glad that you brought
that up because it makes such
a huge difference in the whole
tone of, of practice, doesn't it?
It can really just be this feeling
of struggling and striving and
pulling and pushing at the mind, or
it can be, you know, like you say,
light and easeful and, and yeah.
That;s it.
I'm really glad that you,
that you brought that up.
Yeah.
Indeed we're in, when we developed
a sort of mini meditation that would
be portable for people who do MBCT,
the three-minute breathing space.
We deliberately, although we called it
the breathing space, it's actually not
going to the breath as the first step.
It has three steps.
And the first step is about
acknowledging what's going on.
Because if there would be a
danger that if you said, oh,
things are going a bit wrong.
Right?
Take a breathing space, go to the breath.
What you're doing is simply
changing what you're focusing on.
You're, you were focused on that
now you're focused on the breath.
Changing what you focused on
doesn't necessarily change
how you are focusing on it.
So this speaks to what you just, what
you just said about the nature of
the going away and the coming back.
How you treat your mind.
Do you treat your mind with
friends, with friendliness,
with, with, with a friendship.
And so the sense of the three-minute
breathing space of pausing and
acknowledging what's going on in
mind and body right now brings an
approach quality to your experience.
Before then you do step two,
which is gathering the mind.
Yeah.
And, and, and, and settling the mind.
But even then, we don't go back into
the world before we've done step
three, because that gathering is great,
but that's a fairly narrow focus.
And if, again, if you took that out
into the world, you might go back out
into the world with a narrow focus.
So we ask people at step three,
before they finish the breathing
space, to expand to the whole body.
So that that's a more open stance.
And then what they, what they take
back out into the world is a stance
of openness and spaciousness.
A sort of more a being
mode than a doing mode.
So that's why the breathing space
has these three elements, these three
steps to it deliberately to cultivate
a different attitude to the self
and the world, rather than just give
your, give your thinking mind a break.
Right.
Yeah.
And I love, I love the three-minute
breathing space, not only because it's a
really wonderful way to bring mindfulness
into any moment, really in, in, in
your day, you can do a breathing space.
But what I really like about it is that
it's really wonderful in those moments
where we do find ourselves a little bit
revved up or a little bit caught up.
It's such a wonderful way
of bringing mindfulness and
embodying the present moment.
It has such a wisdom in that.
And I was, I was wondering if, if
you would care to maybe give us an
experience of the, of the breathing space.
Would you guide us through
a little experience?
Okay.
Yeah.
So wherever people are watching this,
maybe just adjusting the posture.
Allowing the eyes to
close, if you want to.
But just lowering your gaze, if you
don't want to close your eyes, if
that feels uncomfortable for you.
And then in this change of
posture, that's already a sign of
stepping out of automatic pilot.
And then moving into step
one of the breathing space.
Acknowledging what's going on
in mind and body right now.
What thoughts are around?
Any feelings?
Any body sensations?
What do you notice?
And don't try to make anything
different about how things are.
Simply acknowledging.
Allowing things to be just
as they are for this moment.
A sense of noticing the weather
pattern in the mind and body right now.
And then allowing this to fade into
the background and moving to step two,
gathering the attention and allowing
the attention to settle on the breath.
Maybe the breath down in the abdomen.
Noticing the rising of the in-breath,
falling away on the out-breath.
Not trying to control
the breath in any way.
Allowing the breath to breathe itself.
And if the mind wanders, simply
acknowledging where it went and gently
escorting it back to the breath.
And then moving to step three of the
breathing space, expanding the attention
to the body as a whole sitting here.
Noticing all the sensations from the crown
of the head to the bottom of the feet
and right up to the surface of the skin.
Noticing any and all sensations in
this body sitting here, breathing.
A sense of coming home to the body.
And as best we can, bringing this
sense of open spaciousness to
the next few moments of our day.
And when you're ready,
moving fingers and toes.
Allowing the eyes to open
if they've been closed.
And taking in your surroundings again.
So that was the three
minute breathing space.
That's amazing that three
minutes can be very refreshing.
As you were saying?
Yes.
People sometimes call it the three-step
breathing space, because if you keep
that structure - there's an open start,
the narrow middle, and the open base.
It's like an hour glass.
Start open then gets
narrower and then open again.
And you can keep that
three point structure.
We even use step one, step two,
step three, to remind ourselves
that it's three steps to it.
So it doesn't all get mushed together.
And then of course it can be, it can be
five minutes or it can be three breaths.
So you can take all 10 minutes, whatever.
You can have your whole meditation,
however long it is in those
three sections of the sense of
acknowledging, then the sense of
gathering and then a sense of opening.
But when you're out and about, you know,
getting onto a busy tube train or going
into a classroom where you've got a
difficult situation to meet or whatever,
you can take three breaths with a sense
of acknowledging, gathering, opening.
Yeah.
Wow.
Just as a way of just
touching in, in those moments.
Yeah.
It's wonderful to have that
structure to work with.
Thank you so much for sharing that.
And one of, one of the other things in the
book that I really appreciated, you know,
when we're talking about autopilot before.
You introduced in, in the
mindfulness book, you introduced
what you call habit releasers.
And I really love those.
Just, and they're just, they're so simple,
just little things that we can do right
everyday to be more awake and embodied
and, and to switch out of autopilot mode.
So would you care to share with us
what a habit releaser is and maybe
some examples of how we could use them?
Okay.
So habit releasers are addressing
one of the issues that much of our
automaticity, our automatic pilot is
shown in the fact that we do the same
thing day in, day out in the same way.
Now, we brush our teeth with the
same hand and we put the other hand
in the same place, wherever that is.
I mean, I don't know whether you
know exactly what happens to your
left hand when you're brushing
your teeth with your right.
And where's the hand, you know.
That's right.
But so it takes very simple situations
to say, what about deliberately, just
for a day or two, doing it differently.
So for example, sitting in a different
sort of chair at the table at home.
Yeah.
Or in your in your lounge or sitting
room or the drawing room, or on the
bus or on the, on the cab, do you
always sit on the left-hand side of the
right-hand side, the back or the front?
Maybe just do something different.
See, see what you notice
about doing things different.
So they can be as small as that.
Or when you go for a walk
look up for a moment.
I mean, if it's safe to do so.
Yeah.
Just stop and look up, maybe and
look at the tops of buildings
rather than the ground.
We're so used to actually being
in a sort of a L S, Lowry sort of
position, the artist who had all
his figures bent double, almost
double looking at the ground.
What about, you know,
standing uprightly here.
But there are other things that are take
more arrangement, but to be spontaneous,
like going to the cinema, perhaps
with a friend, but not trying to find
out what's on before you get there.
So, you know, when we were teenagers
maybe, we would go out with friends and
we would just say, let's go to the cinema.
And we didn't know then, because
there wasn't any internet to
find out what was going on.
So you just turn up at the cinema.
You just have to turn
up and see what was on.
And so it's really interesting to just go.
And as soon as you almost decided to do
it, you can feel the thinking going on,
say, Oh dear, what if it's a bad film?
What if I won't enjoy it?
What a waste of time, if it's, you know.
Well, most cinemas have about
nine screens these days.
So there's one that's bound to be
something which is tolerably okay.
Even if it, even if it's Bambi.
So interestingly, my daughter and I
did this, we just, you know, when,
when the book was being written,
I said to my daughter, come on,
let's just go to the local cinema.
And we went there and yeah, there was,
there was a film starting in about 45
minutes that looked quite interesting.
One of the things we discovered is the
staff these days who are mostly the
ticket sellers are also the staff that
sell the popcorn and they don't know
what films are on or anything about them,
which is what one discovery we made.
The second thing is it was
happening in 45 minutes.
So we had to go and find a place
to have a drink or a bite to eat.
So we discovered that as well.
And then we saw this film that.
I, which was really enjoyable, but I would
have never got to see that film normally.
It would have passed me by.
So there's a sort of sense of
getting the spontaneity back.
But, but most of the things
are very small things.
I mean, another example is
learning to value the television.
Yeah.
I love that.
Now you might say that.
Good gracious.
Surely, surely we should, if we're
mindful, we should put the television
off and never watch it again.
But value the television actually
switching it on when you want to watch it
and switching it off when that program's
finished and then going to, unless there's
something else you want to watch later
in the evening, switch it on again.
Right.
So you don't have the thing just
playing in the background, just going.
So it's, you know, if you want to,
if you want to just slouch in front
of television all evening, then fine.
Make that decision and do so.
And you can channel hop all evening,
but at least you've made the decision.
Yeah, at least you've made a
conscious choice that I'm going
to sit here for three hours
and I'm going to channel flick.
And this exactly.
So that's my nourishment for
that you made a conscious choice.
But mostly we don't
make a conscious choice.
We just discovered that
that's where we are.
And under those circumstances,
it's quite nice just to turn it
off, make a new choice and then
turn it on again, if you want to.
And that's what we call valuing the
TV and what it offers rather than
just taking it all for granted.
So those are the little habit
releasers, which take things that we
do automatically and just shift them
very slightly in order to help help
us support the idea of waking up.
Yeah.
I love that because it it's, it's
very kind towards ourselves as well.
I feel that that's kind of, you know,
it can, it's so easy to get into, ah,
I'm not supposed to watch TV and I'm
not supposed to eat that kind of food.
And I'm a bad person
if I do this and this.
But just changing the way that we
relate to those things can, change just
sometimes happen by themselves or we just
relate to that thing in a different way.
Enjoy it more.
And.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
I have an, I have an eight year
old grandson who loves mixing
foods and drinks and stuff.
Yeah.
It's really nice to see him say, what
would it be like if I took that ripe pina
and put some of this orange juice and
some of this mango juice and, you know.
And we, the adults are
going, I don't know.
But there's something really
beautiful about what would it be like.
And there's only one way to find out.
There's only one way to find out.
So although I said, you know,
shifting the ideas, in fact,
it's shifting the experience.
I mean, it's not just ideas that
shift, it's the, it's the experience
of actually being kind to yourself.
And, and shifting a little bit
of, of the moment to moment
living in these tiny ways.
That's what the habit releasers are about.
I love that.
Thank you for sharing that.
And gosh, I feel like I
could talk to you all night.
And I have so many questions that I
would love to ask, but I would love,
if you feel so inclined, it would
be wonderful to have you take us
through a practice of mindfulness so
that we kind of can experientially...
I know we did the breathing space, but
maybe another, just simple mindfulness
practice, just kind of taking us through
the basics would be most wonderful.
Okay.
Yeah.
Well, let's do something like
the the eight minute meditation,
which is the one from Week One of
the book, The Frantic World book.
And this is a brief body scan, scanning
through the body, settling down
on the breath and allowing people
to really gather themselves as, as
an entree into, into mindfulness.
Okay.
So once again, if you find a place to
sit or you can lie down, if you want to.
And allowing the eyes to close
or the gaze to be lowered.
And tuning into this body
sitting or lying here.
Perhaps starting by taking the attention
right down to the soles of the feet.
Noticing what's happening when
your attention gets there.
Maybe some sense of tingling or warmth
or coldness in the soles of the feet.
Not trying to make anything
happen, but simply registering
what's already here in the feet.
What sensations change from moment to
moment and what sensations stay the same?
And if there are no sensations,
just simply registering a blank.
So there's no right or wrong way to feel.
Whatever your experience
is your experience.
And expanding this quality of attending
to both feet as a whole, not just
the soles of the feet, but the tops,
the toes, the heel, and perhaps
extending to the ankle as well.
So you're holding both feet
center stage in your awareness.
And then expanding this attention
to the lower leg, below the knee.
So your feet and lower
legs held in awareness.
What sensations are here right now?
And then the knees.
And including the thighs as well.
So focusing on both legs.
What sensation are here?
If you're sitting, you may notice the
slight pressure of hands on your lap
or on your thighs, the ground under the
feet, the thighs sitting on the chair.
And maybe imagine that your legs were
empty and as you breathe in, the breath
could fill up the legs all the way
down to the feet on the in-breath.
And then it could empty out
on the out-breath just imagine
if that, that were possible.
And what would it feel like if
your legs were empty and could fill
up with breath on the in-breath
and empty on the out-breath?
Just playing with that
experience for a few breaths.
And then taking a deeper breath.
And on the out-breath, letting go of the
legs and coming to the waist, the hips,
the pelvis, the buttocks on the chair.
What sensations are here?
And then expanding the attention
to the abdomen, the chest.
Around the back.
The lower back, the
middle and the upper back.
Now including the shoulders as well.
The hands and the arms.
So the whole of the upper body.
Held in awareness, cradled in awareness.
And extending this now to
the neck and head as well.
You may notice as you breathe in
and out, there are some sensations
in the nose, the nostrils.
So now tuning into these sensations.
So the sensations of the whole body
are in the background, but in the
foreground, sensations of breathing.
In breath.
And the out-breath.
Perhaps noticing the slight coldness
on the in-breath in the, in the nose.
A greater warmth of the breath as
it passes out on the out-breath.
Now, if you choose, you may also
like to notice what's happening
in the chest as you breathe.
So shifting attention from the
nose to the chest and seeing if
there are any sensations here with
the in-breath and the out-breath.
Maybe a slight sense of
expansion on the in-breath.
And letting go on the out-breath.
See if that's true for you.
And you may also want to extend this by
shifting attention to the abdomen and
seeing whether there are any sensations
in the abdomen, in the belly, as you
breathe in and as you breathe out.
And choosing one place where you'd
like to follow the breath or a few
more minutes now, either at the
nose, the nostrils or the chest or
down in the abdomen, in the belly.
Just settling in, in one of
these places and just noticing
the sensations that occur as you
breathe in and as you breathe out.
Every breath unique, slightly different.
See if we can be here for it.
And if the mind wanders, noticing
where it went and then very gently
bringing it back to the breath.
Escorting it back without
giving yourself a hard time.
Nothing's gone wrong.
This is the practice.
The mind goes, we notice it, we bring
it back, over and over and over again.
And so in this way, cultivating stillness
and reminding ourselves that the
stillness of which we speak is not the
stillness of the quiet mind, because
your mind may not be quiet today.
Your body may not be quiet or still.
It's rather the stillness of allowing
things to be as they are in this moment.
And using this practice moment by
moment and day by day to practice
cultivating this sense of, of
kindness to the mind and the body,
of allowing things to be as they are.
A sense of befriending the body and mind.
And now beginning to move
your fingers and toes.
And if your eyes have been closed,
allowing them to open and taking
in your surroundings again.
Thank you for that.
Thank you.
Hm.
And I just have two
final questions for you.
And the first one is simply this.
You know, I think I heard Joseph
Goldstein say recently that he
believes that mindfulness has the
capacity to change the world from
the inside out one person at a time.
And so my question to you is, from
your perspective, as somebody who
is, has practiced mindfulness and
watch that unfold in their life and,
and watch the results unfold in the
lives of many other people, what do
you think would happen if mindfulness
were to really hit critical mass?
I'm talking, you know, a
billion or 2 billion people.
What kind of a world do you
think that would create?
What kind of changes would we see?
I think if mindfulness could sustain
itself at that sort of level and to
stay at its essential qualities of
compassion and friendship, I mean, a
moment of mindfulness in the ancient
traditions, a moment of mindfulness
never came without a moment, moment of
compassion, joy, equanimity, and kindness.
They came, they come as a family.
And one can teach oneself mindfulness,
either through mindfulness
itself or through cultivating
joy or equanimity or kindness or
compassion, and the others will come.
They're all part of the same family.
And yet that moment can so easily pass.
I mean, it does pass.
It's only this moment.
And mindfulness at the moment,
even where it's really taking hold,
can easily give rise to a sort
of a faddishness like a panacea.
Mindfulness is a great new thing.
Everybody should be doing it.
And those sorts of, that sort of sense
of frenetic let's get mindfulness.
I think that will pass.
And the question then will be after the
froth has gone and the tide has gone
out, as it will, what would be left on,
what will be left on the beach and will
that be able to be slowly maintained.
So, but there are some indications
that even for those who are learning
mindfulness now doing eight week programs,
for example, that that is changing
prisons, it's changing young offenders.
We're teaching mindfulness in
Parliament in the United Kingdom now.
A Congressman has written a book
in America, The Mindful Nation.
Tim Ryan.
One of our, one of our own MPs has been
across the Dutch Parliament to tell
them about mindfulness in Parliament.
The European parliament, the,
are learning mindfulness now
are being offered mindfulness.
In British Parliament, by the time
the election happened a few weeks ago,
10% of the parliamentary Labour Party
had done a mindfulness course, 10%.
And they are very interested in
introducing mindfulness into the health
system, into the criminal justice
system, into the education system.
Not based on an idea that it's a
good idea or just the evidence,
but on their own experience of the
transformation that they've experienced.
That's the difference doing it on
the basis of your own sense that
this is really, really valuable.
And that the world has become something
that needs this sort of ancient Asian
wisdom of cultivating a different
approach to life than just aspirational,
you know, we want to, you know,
what we want what we haven't got.
So, and so a number of
things have happened.
Wellbeing has been put in the, in the
agenda in the UK government anyway.
Yeah.
And so that, that, that all government
departments have to give an account
of what they're doing on the
wellbeing agenda, which is important.
So that's one sector, the, the
governmental parliamentary sector.
So, but part of the agenda for
parliament may well be to introduce
mindfulness in schools, for example.
That's one place where you can
teach mindfulness to a whole cohort.
Yeah.
In small ways at an age where kids
really get it and really enjoy it.
And the Mindfulness in Schools program,
which we've just been given a big
grant to evaluate is going ahead.
Mark Greenberg's work in the Penn
State with Trish Broderick, Broderick,
and, uh, and Tish Jennings is also
teaching teachers how to be mindful
and then their children as well.
And the outcomes are great.
And what teachers are now saying is
why did we never realize that we told
our children to pay attention without
teaching them how to pay attention.
And it's not just, well, this is a soft
skill they need, if there's, if there's,
if there's time in the timetable, but
mindfulness and paying attention is
actually foundational to all learning.
Of course.
Yeah.
You can't learn trigonometry and
calculus if you're not attending.
So attention is fundamental.
So that's, what's happening in schools.
But the other things are,
what do we do about adults?
Well, one thing is mindfulness
is spreading as a treatment for
depression and depression is going
to affect 20% of us in our lives.
That's a billion people on the planet/
and often the people who are most
likely to be depressed in virtually
every country are the poorest,
most isolated, most alienated, most
helpless, the people that get forgotten.
One of the challenges will be
making mindfulness available, not
just for those who can afford to
pay to go to a retreat center.
But so it's actually built into the
educational social system for the
poorest to enable them to have the
resources to be able to solve problems.
Not just because they get a helping
hand, which they need anyway, but
because they have a more active problem
solving, a wiser, more insightful
approach in their own lives as well.
So depression, the depression work,
I think is potentially extremely
important that it's, it's a huge
burden and it's a burden born by,
by the poorest and the most isolated
and the forgotten in our society.
And I think the third thing is CEOs.
Mindfulness is now taught routinely
at Davos in the early morning,
in early morning sessions.
I was there a couple of years ago.
John Kabat-Zinn was there last year.
There's nothing else scheduled that time.
People turn up and, and do
mindfulness if they want to.
And Janice Marturano, who's the
head of the Institute for Mindful
Leadership in New York, teaches CEOs
and leaders, how to in her, title of
her book, Finding the Space to Lead.
And the accounts she gives of the moving
sense in which busy, busy CEOs suddenly
discover that there's a world outside
the project, the biggest project they're
working on, that it has examples of CEOs
suddenly seeing the stars in the sky.
It sounds trivial.
But it's.
It's momentous.
Now we know the world of work has
gone crazy over the last 20, 30 years.
There was a time when people
would work eight hours a day.
And if they worked longer than that,
they would get paid overtime, which
is acknowledged in their pay packet.
And then suddenly that became
old-fashioned and it became
a sort of a union thing.
And now that's old fashioned.
And, and that happened at the same,
when the unions were getting sorted
out by Facton and Reagan and the, the
politicians, unfortunately, what was
also happening was a sort of sense of
the sense of excellence means working
as many hours as you'd like to work,
modeling the whole world on a few
entrepreneurs and startups in Silicon
Valley who had the sort of brain who
maybe could work 80 hours a week,
And you mix all of that with technology
so we can be constantly connected.
Exactly so.
So it's interesting to think
now that every generation has to
rediscover that after about eight
hours, your brain goes to sleep.
Even if your bum's still on the chair
at work, your brain is not active.
And that you can be more
productive if you take rests.
Now, Henry Ford, exactly a hundred years
ago in 1915, increased the salaries of
his workers and cut their working hours
and saw an increase in productivity.
And in the decades that followed
other large firms, saw what he had
done, in Ford, and followed suit.
We now need some really influential
top companies to say, that after
about 40 hours a week, certainly 45
to acknowledge that you are no longer,
it's an illusion of productivity.
And if you take breaks, you're
actually get more productivity, more
creativity, and a better bottomline.
And until somebody really influential
says that and doesn't, and we're
not all trapped in this sense
of, if you go home at the normal
time, somehow you're a loser.
Right.
We have to this.
I mean, I felt the same, you know, and
I was running departments and so on.
You could feel the pressure to want
to be the last person to leave.
And there's always somebody
with their light on.
And, and you know, it may be so
just left the light on by the state.
Oh my gosh.
I'm not leaving until that light goes off.
It becomes a pernicious thing.
And every generation has got to
relearn, relearn that actually
your brain can't function.
And when people stopped doing factory
work and started moving into doing
desk work, people thought, Oh, well
that now they can work 80 hours.
Actually the evidence is
slightly the other way.
That whereas you can go for a factory
for eight hours without doing damage
and bringing the whole assembly line to
a, to a stop because of an error that
you made because you were too tired.
Actually, it's probably more like
six and seven hours of desk work
that your brain, because the brain
actually needs to take a rest pause.
And if it doesn't, it will
take an involuntary rest pause.
And if, you know, it will just clam
up on your, your brain will go cloudy.
Yeah.
Then we get foggy, the foggy brain phase.
Absolutely.
So by taking rests during the day, and
then having good nourishment in evening
and weekends, that's really important.
If, if not, that it has
to be built in somehow.
And if, if, if mindfulness can do that
CEO by CEO, company by company, if it
can do it to Google, and there's no point
saying, well, we now give, we now give
free donuts and meditation spaces in order
that people can work through the mat.
That's not the issue.
It's actually saying, we pay you to
work and we pay you to take breaks.
And until a company like Google has taken
that seriously, then the rest of us are
going to have a hard time changing it.
So I think there's clinical
world, there's the world of CEOs
and the parliamentary world.
And to maintain the incentive for
practicing mindfulness, even when the
froth has died down and it's no longer
a fad, that will be the acid test.
And then I think Joseph is right,
we'll change the world one by one.
But the one by one, isn't just the,
the poor person or the disadvantaged,
but the person who seeks to employ
them and the person who seeks to employ
that and the government ministers
and the council officials and so on.
Yeah.
That's I think, yeah.
And at the end of our lives, when
you and I are going to be somewhere
looked after by somebody else, maybe
a family member, maybe a assistant
care worker, will that care worker be
valued enough, paid enough and mindful
enough to look after us with compassion.
That's what we'd like.
Cause you and I, aren't going to have
a mind there to be able to argue back.
It's no good for me to say
to a, to a care worker.
You know, I used to be
a professor at Oxford.
Yes, dear.
I would be scared.
Now let's get you washed.
Yeah, yeah.
That's the point.
That's the reality of
the end of our lives.
Now these are end of life care.
Are we going to be looked after by
people who we respect now so that we can,
we, you know, so we are, we're looking
after the people that are ignored?
That's the critical thing that would be
the acid test of a compassionate society.
Yeah.
Thank you so much.
And I, I hope that we have the
pleasure of seeing some of that
potential paradigm shift happen.
It will be, it would be a beautiful
thing to, to, to see unfolding.
We'll we'll see.
It's an adventure.
It is indeed.
It's an adventure.
So yeah.
Is there anything else that you
would like to add before we close?
No, I don't think so.
I was just thinking of
all the things that.
I mean, one of the interesting things,
I think about eight week programs that
people often say, well, do I need to
go to a class or can I do it by myself?
It looks like you can do either.
Some people prefer to get things
online or to read the book.
Other people prefer to go to a class.
And I think that's good.
And at the eight week, cause you
know, you talked about sticking at it.
I think it's worth it because, partly
because there's a narrative structure
to the eight week course, you know.
People are offered different meditations
for addressing different issues.
Week by week, people look at different
aspects of how this, the mode of mind
that actually doesn't serve us very well.
Also it's science.
How do we know that it's there?
And how do we know that that
mind-state has, has volunteered
for a job it can't do?
And that needs a bit of time to work out.
So, so I think it starts with the
automatic pilot, but then there's
noticing you're living in your head
and noticing you're wanting things to
be different all the time, or noticing
you're trying to suppress some stuff.
And so there's lots of different things.
So that's why I think it's useful for
people to take these things and just
stick at them for eight weeks and see how
it, how, how it all works out for them.
And I wish them very well in,
in their, in the adventure
of discovering this practice.
Thank you so much.
And thank you all for watching.
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