Mindfulness is a well-researched, secular and effective means of alleviating stress, anxiety and depression, and promoting well-being and flourishing. This practical course has been designed specifically with the needs of busy people in mind. Skills for supporting top performance and good mental health will be taught in eight weekly classes.
What will I learn?
You will learn to cultivate mindfulness on two levels: First and foremost are the core mindfulness meditation practices. You will be taught a series of simple daily meditations that can be done almost anywhere. Some are as short as 3 minutes, while others may take 15 minutes. Second, mindfulness encourages you to break some of the unconscious habits of thinking and behaving that stop you living your life to the full. Many judgmental and self-critical thoughts arise out of habitual ways of thinking and acting. By breaking with unhelpful daily routines you’ll progressively dissolve some of these negative thinking patterns and become more mindful and aware.
Please note that we currently only Finding Peace in a Frantic World to students and parliamentarians. If you are an individual parliamentarian and would like to join a course, please express your interest by emailing the admin team via admin@oxfordmindfulness.org
If your establishment is interested in holding mindfulness courses in partnership with the Oxford Mindfulness Centre, please get in touch here.
Note from Chris Ruane –
Hi,
My name is Chris Ruane. I was a British MP for 21 years, finishing in December 2019. In 2013, working with the Oxford Mindfulness Centre and the mindfulness initiative, we were able to introduce mindfulness into the United Kingdom Parliament. Since that time, 300 politicians, 500 members of their staff have received mindfulness training. Some of those British politicians went onto produce a mindful nation UK report, a report into the uses of mindfulness in health, education, criminal justice and the workplace. This report is available online.
Working with the mindfulness initiative over the past seven years, I have been taking mindfulness to legislatures around the world including Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, the Irish Republic, Iceland, Finland, Estonia, Denmark, Holland or the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Croatia, Portugal and even as far as Mexico. Those politicians that have experienced mindfulness have said they have gained great benefits from that. These benefits are practical life skills including developing the balance between nourishment and depletion so that we do not become exhausted, we do not burnout, we are more compassionate, the gift of compassion, self-compassion to ourselves but also to our loved ones, to our colleagues, to constituents and indeed the world. These gifts can be taught through mindfulness.
Personally, I have been able to watch my bias in real time through being fully present. When I am pointing that finger at other people quite often my hypocrisy-o-meter sends it straight back to me between the eyes saying “Chris you have done that as well”. The recognition of bias is a great skill. The difference between an immediate reaction when you are faced with an issue and a more considered response that is one of the skills that we learnt. We have learned about breaking bad habits and developing new habits. The book that we follow, the corset we followed is mindfulness based cognitive therapy developed by Mark Williams from Oxford University, he was our first teacher and the Oxford University teachers are amongst the best in the world, they have been teaching mindfulness in the political setting for the past eight years.
Some of the smaller legislatures have not got sufficient number of MPs or parliamentarians to establish lessons or to keep them going once they have been established, so again Oxford University [the OMC] have stepped in and offered to deliver these lessons via Zoom to parliaments around Europe and indeed beyond.
If you are a politician that would like to get to know more about mindfulness drop us a line on email below and if you want a Zoom with me for half an hour, quarter of an hour to discuss mindfulness then please feel free to get in contact.
Thank you very much.
Chris Ruane
Email for more info – admin@oxfordmindfulness.org
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