Blogs looking at some of the science in psychology, biology and neuroscience around training the mind in mindfulness, compassion and insight, partly inspired by our work with our colleagues from University of the West of Scotland on the Masters Degree in (Teaching) Mindfulness and Compassion, and from the University of Aberdeen on the Masters Degree in Studies in Mindfulness, which are both run in partnership with the Mindfulness Association.
Also, the Mindfulness Association and the Everyone Project are supporting two PhD students in the field of Mindfulness and Diversity, Equality and Inclusion. As part of their work over the next few years they will be contributing blogs to inform and engage those who are interested in this topic.
MONDAY OCTOBER 11th @7pm Join us for an informal open evening session for our MSc Teaching Mindfulness & Compassion Course with the University of the West of Scotland. The course is recruiting now, for a January start. If you’d like to join us then you can go to this page : HERE : for more…
At our recent membership weekend I ran a taster session with my friend and dietitian Michaela (Ki) James about the new Mindfulness Based Healthy Living Course that we have recently developed. One element of the course is Mindful eating and so I thought that I would review the research on Mindful eating and Mindfulness and…
I have been asked to write my blog this week on the topic of how meditation works. To begin with it is important to bear in mind that this whole field of research is in its early stages, much of the research methodology has weaknesses, and there is much more work to do before we…
I am currently working with my friend Michaela (Ki) James, an experienced NHS dietitian, on a new Mindfulness Based Healthy Living (MBHL) course to help us to change unhealthy habit patterns. For this course we will be drawing on teachings from our Level 3: Seeing Deeply or insight meditation training on how to work with…
This weekend I was away with a friend and we had an interesting discussion about the amount of free will that we are able to exercise in our day to day lives. My feeling is that we think we exercise far more free will than we actually do and that the main advantage of training…
Join Us at 7-8pm TONIGHT to find out more about our London Based Part time Master’s course, which will train you to teach Mindfulness and Compassion 8-week courses. This is a Psychology Degree with the University of the West of Scotland based at the London Campus, starting in February 2022. Use this link to register…
I was teaching a compassion retreat last week with Choden for the cohort of students on our new Masters degree program. This program is in teaching mindfulness and compassion and we partner with the University of the West of Scotland to deliver it. During the retreat we were asked about the evidence base for compassionate…
In neuroscience the default mode network (DMN) is a network of widespread brain regions showing functional connectivity. It is active when we are not task focussed, such as when the mind is wandering. It is active when we are thinking about others, ourselves, remembering the past or planning for the future. It has been shown…
In my blog last week I introduced research into loving kindness meditation by exploring some systematic reviews and meta-analyses of the body of research evaluating loving kindness meditation interventions. Please refer to that blog as an introduction to this blog. In particular, it describes what loving kindness meditation is, how it differs from compassion meditation…