For those of you who may be interested in a longer read around mindfulness and some of the evidence base I've collated some resources for you – some video and some written texts that you may want to explore. The ironic nature of this work, however, is that it does tend to put us ‘back in our heads’ and focusing on the cognitive reasoning we as humans tend to like about being convinced that things work. Part of mindfulness is, in essence though, about the direct experiential sense you get from the practices and so it’s not necessary for you to engage with this – come to the practices and the learning happens there.

Background to the work

Mindful.org have provided a really useful brief overview of the context of mindfulness and how Jon Kabat-Zinn, the originator of Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction shaped the work. In 1979, Jon Kabat-Zinn recruited chronically ill patients not responding well to traditional treatments to participate in his newly formed eight-week stress-reduction program, which we now call Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). Since then, substantial research has mounted demonstrating how mindfulness-based interventions improve mental and physical health—comparably so to other psychological interventions.

What is mindfulness?

Jon Kabat-Zinn talking about the ways of thinking about mindfulness.

Science of mindfulness

A very brief overview of the science behind mindfulness.

The Smiling Mind

Mindfulness and how the brain works