Applied Mindfulness
Mindfulness is often offered as a remedy for stress. It can be one. But it can also be a way to grow: to see ourselves more clearly, and to live in better harmony with the people around us.
What mindfulness can give changes over a lifetime. A child learning to name a feeling needs something different from a parent short of sleep, or from someone adjusting to retirement. Every stage of life deserves its own attention. Our applied research asks what mindfulness can reliably offer at each stage, and for whom.
Every stage of life
Attention is like sunlight on still water: what we give comes back to us, often brighter and more beautiful than we expected. At each stage of life it falls on different things.
Childhood
Learning to notice what goes on inside: attention, feelings, the body.
Youth
Finding one’s footing among exams, friendships and a changing sense of self.
Adulthood
Holding work, relationships and often children together, without losing oneself.
Midlife
Taking stock: what matters, and what can be let go.
Later life
Staying present and connected as the body changes, and looking back with kindness.
Beginner’s mind
In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.
Beginner’s mind means meeting each moment as if for the first time: with curiosity, and without assuming we already know. It matters for someone who sits down to meditate for the first time, and just as much for someone who has practised for decades, because the moment we think we know, we stop seeing.
It is also how we want to do research: open to what we find, including what we did not expect.
Work with us
We welcome collaboration with schools, clinics, workplaces and community groups who want to find out what mindfulness can offer the people they work with.