Live Keynotes, Social Evenings & Practice Sessions

Monday – Friday Daily Practice Sessions, Monthly Keynotes and Social Evenings

The OMF is offering two free daily online mindfulness sessions (Monday to Friday each week) 1:00 – 1:30pm and 7:00 – 7:30pm (UK Time). The practice sessions are intended for anyone new to mindfulness and for those who would like to connect with others to maintain their practice.

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On the first Wednesday of the month we host a guest speaker, a mindfulness teacher and / or researcher from around the world. The monthly guest talks are free to join, and are open to all those who feel they would benefit, meaning you do not need prior mindfulness experience or practice to take part. The monthly guest talks will be available as a free podcast shortly after for anyone who missed the live session or wishes to practice again.

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On the last Friday of the month we will be offering a ‘Social Evening’ with guests from around the world joining our mindfulness community. These monthly sessions are designed to bring our community together once a month with a range of music, comedy, poetry and other online, free events.

Next Keynote Session:

We offer a keynote on the first Wednesday of the month – our next keynote is on Wednesday 05 April 2023 19:00 – 20:00 UK time. Caroline Hickman will discuss: Facing the difficult truths of the climate emergency; apocalyptic disaster or transformational moment in history?

As we become aware of the scale and speed of the threats to the biosphere, our emotional responses mirror our increased concern in both intensity and complexity, and we need to navigate binary splits of hope and optimism and ‘doom & gloom’ pessimism. Eco anxiety, grief and despair are all now recognised as understandable and rational human responses to the developing crisis. Conversations about climate change will bring us face to face with feelings of vulnerability and uncertainty but are also essential if we are to develop the emotional resilience that humanity needs to face this uncertain future. Children & young people are the most vulnerable to the climate crisis – physically, emotionally & cognitively, they also need to be at the centre of responses to the climate crisis as their future is at stake.

“We saw online that people in Iceland had a funeral for a glacier, but we will be underwater soon because of rising sea levels, and the world doesn’t seem to care about this, or about us, who will have a funeral for us?” – Child from The Maldives

As future generations, children and young people have the largest stake in finding solutions to the climate and biodiversity emergency, but so often the narrative around climate crisis communication and related psychological trauma can split between protecting children from the facts or terrifying them by telling them too much. But maybe we need to hold this tension of opposites. Can we find ways to protect children whilst validating and acknowledging their fears? As children take to the streets and the law courts to express their pain, frustration, and despair, do we, the “adults”, need to examine our defences and learn to really listen to them more honestly, to tolerate their distress, to face our guilt, grief and shame and find ways to navigate the new world that is emerging together?

Caroline Hickman is a psychotherapist and lecturer at the University of Bath researching children and young people’s emotional responses to climate change around the world for 10 years, examining eco-anxiety & distress, eco-empathy, trauma, moral injury and intergenerational stresses. She is co-lead author on a 2021 quantitative global study into children & young people’s emotions & thoughts about climate change published in The Lancet Planetary Health.

She has been developing a range of therapeutic & educational tools for ecological distress, a psychological assessment model for eco-anxiety, and delivered workshops in climate psychology, emotional resilience and mental health internationally.

http://caroline-hickman.com/index.html

Next Social Evening:

We host a Social Evening on the last Friday of the month – our next Social Evening is on 31st March 2023. We will post more details shortly.