UK Edition
“It’s bloody stressful in here” said a Downing Street source two weeks ago. He said it at the height of the storm over the PMs finances post-Panama, and with the furore over the Government spending £9.5m on leaflets about why we should remain in the EU.
I hear the same cry over and again at workplaces everywhere, which are full of stressed and uptight people. Teachers and pupils in schools are frazzled because heads are demanding the best GCSEs in the summer. Journalists are uptight because editors are firing off in all directions because of worries about loss of advertising revenue and sales. The story goes on and on.
A solution is at hand, as discussed in the pages of this paper this week. One of the biggest reports into the impact of “mindfulness”, by Oxford University no less, has found that the calmness of mind that it brings can be more effective in combating depression and anxiety than the traditional remedy of pills. The regular practice of “mindfulness” could be described as learning to accept positive and negative thoughts and feelings. The regular practitioner learns progressively how to detach from unhappy and anxious thoughts and feelings, and to embrace what is in the present moment.
Forty years ago, when I started to practice mindfulness (or meditation), it was regarded as weird and cultish, something that strange people in sandals with beards, who lived in west Wales or the Scottish Highlands used to do, but definitely not something that serious-minded and successful people went anywhere near. Yet now it is all the rage, and one can scarcely pick up a newspaper without hearing about someone advocating its virtues.
More than 100 Parliamentarians have learned how to meditate, and many leading international companies are offering courses for their staff. Increasingly, professional sports players, musicians and other performers practise it as a way of calming their minds and focusing their performance. It is becoming increasingly common in medicine too. My university, Buckingham, is holding, this July, the first mindfulness in medicine conference. The need is great. For every successive year medical students study, their mental health declines. Yet these are the very people who will be looking after the nation’s bodies and minds.
Mindfulness is a remarkable tool to enhance living, and to help us work in a calmer and smarter way. It allows us to savour our relations, to notice and enjoy the simple pleasures of life, and to cope better with negative thoughts and people. It allows us to connect more and deeply with other people and with their environments. It costs nothing – apart from any fees for learner courses – and it causes no damage to the body or mind. It can be practised on one’s own, requires no equipment and is entirely natural. Indeed, it is, I believe the height of sanity because it helps us to connect with the truth of what is happening in our minds and bodies and in the outside world.
Rather than read about its virtues in this article, why not practise it now? It will only take two minutes. Sit or stand comfortably, close your eyes and take five deep breaths, watching the breath coming in and then exhaling through the nostrils. Doing this will calm the mind, and your heartbeat will begin to fall. Notice without judgement that is very important – any thoughts and feelings that let them go and come back to the sounds that are around you – now. Keep the attention with those sounds, because they are happening now and are real. Painful thoughts and feelings are mental events which will rise and fall, and we can learn to give them less energy and attention, the more we practise.
Following mindfulness in this way enhances our lives and puts us back in control of them, living the lives that we want for ourselves. We become happier people better to be around and others will notice the difference. Organisations that practise the calming effects of mindfulness function better, and will take better decision whether at our local fish and chip shop or in Parliament and Number Ten.
Mindfulness works - which is why I'm implementing it at my university