News Round-Up Sunday 18th October

News Round-Up Sunday 18th October

A review of some of the communications shared on our social media channels over the past two weeks.

 

On World Mental Health Day 2020 we were proud to announce the launch of the new website https://donothing.uk. Supported by the Wellcome Trust, Jonny Wilkinson Foundation and Phantom, the new website features dedicated mindfulness resources for young people.

We also held a number of free drop-in mindfulness sessions via Zoom, led by Gill Johnson, Ruth Baer & Steve Ware, all of whom very generously gave up their time on a Saturday to lead practices with the mindfulness community. We wish to thank all three of our teachers and all of those that came together to practice together.

 

The latest evidence suggests that mindfulness training in schools has “promise and potential”. Our research team at the University of Oxford are asking some probing questions. Can learning mindfulness at school help young people to be more resilient and navigate challenges more skilfully? Read ’10 steps to introduce mindfulness to your school’ written by Liz Lord and Willem Kuyken here. 


As part of our focus on World Mental Health Day 2020, we also had the opportunity to share a new blog piece.

From IBM to the OMC. A story of partnership, teaching, redundancy and new beginnings.

In his blog post, Steve Ware writes about how redundancy offered a new beginning with the OMC and Mindfulness. Having been made redundant after many years with IBM, Steve chose to focus on the positives and how this ending was also a new beginning.


We are delighted to announce our next Keynote session has been confirmed for Wednesday the 4th of November 2020. Set to feature Christa Turksma and Mark Greenberg, it promises to be an enlightening evening and we hope you can join us. We will be recording this session and making it available as a podcast for those that are unable to attend via Zoom on the 4th.  Full details on the session and how to join are here.

We also continue to offer our free weekly mindfulness sessions on Wednesdays, and these are facilitated by our Director, Professor Willem Kuyken, 7-8pm UK Time zone. It’s important to note that these sessions are for people who have an established mindfulness practice. Each week, there will be practices, talks and an opportunity to explore different themes in small groups.

The sessions use the same joining link each week, https://zoom.us/j/508185186


Two important new publications on the empirical status of mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs). As this research comes of age, we can start to answer key questions using robust methods.

A systematic review of 44 meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials. MBIs showed superiority to passive controls (ds=0.10-0.89). MBIs were broadly similar to other evidence-based treatments. Read the full paper here.

Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction is not predictive of increased rates of harm relative to no treatment. Rather, it may protect against harm. Read the full paper here.

Both articles include excellent recommendations for further research.

 


Our new online teacher training programme takes course participants on a comprehensive teacher training journey with a cohort of peers, personal mentors and dedicated technical support over a period of 11 months, taught on Saturdays 9 am – 5 pm.

Alison Yiangou is an OMC teacher, trainer and supervisor. She has a background in Psychology and over 40 years of experience working internationally with meditation and mindful awareness in non-clinical settings. Alison has a particular interest in broadening access to MBCT – in different cultural settings and populations – and in the potential of MBCT to promote flourishing and wellbeing.

Claire Kelly is a consultant member for the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Mindfulness and contributed to the Mindful Nation Report UK report. She is a teacher of MBCT and MBSR, having trained at the University of Oxford and Bangor respectively and has taught mindfulness to adults in a range of settings, including the NHS, Multi-Academy Trusts, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, to clinical and educational psychologists, in universities (University College, Kings, London, University of East Anglia), and on public courses.

For full information and to apply to join our January 2021 cohort please click here.


 

Our new workplace programme is divided into two teaching blocks designed to develop the basic and advanced skills required to bring mindfulness to organisational settings.

The sessions comprise a mix of interactive presentations, group work, class interaction and exercises designed to make get participants thinking and make them active members in the learning process. To learn more and join the November 2020 cohort please click here.

 

Led by Dr. Fabrizio Didonna, Psy D, an internationally known Clinical Psychologist, Professor at the Institute for Lifelong Learning of the University of Barcelona, Visiting Professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Scientific Director of the One-Year Master Program in Mindfulness-Based Therapy in Italy. He is the developer of the therapeutic model, and author of the related manual, Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (MBCT for OCD) (2018, Guilford Press), the first manualized and standardized mindfulness-based treatment model for OCD (www.mbctforocd.com).

The workshop is open to trained mindfulness teachers in MBCT or MBSR who work, or wish to work, with participants with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and can be booked here. 

 

And finally…

 

The Oxford Mindfulness Centre is a registered charity (number 1122517) and relies on donations to support our current work and future projects to increase accessibility to mindfulness. All donations, big or small, one-off or recurring are welcomed and easy to process via this link.

Thank you to all who donate and make this work possible.