so I first of all want to say thank you
to the school of life for inviting me
here this morning and for this amazing
introduction of feeling groovy from
Simon & Garfunkel it’s a way of sort of
stratifying an audience isn’t it sing
something from the 60s which was
re-released in the 80s and and then we
see who knows the buttered arse so I’ll
start with the sound of a bell and see
if you can notice when the Bell stops
these few words are enough if not these
words this breath if not this breath
this sitting here this opening to the
life we have refused again and again
so what I want to do today is to talk a
little bit about mindfulness and perhaps
to practice a little to continue the
practice that we’ve already started with
the standing breath meditation that
we’ve just been led in and the poem by
David White talking about what is
mindfulness and then what’s it for does
it work and how does it work and then
what are the practical implications of
these new understandings from science
and from the ancient wisdom so first of
all then what is mindfulness well in
mindfulness and in mindfulness
meditation we’re training mental
capacities using secular forms of
ancient spiritual exercises they’ve been
kept alive over the centuries mostly by
the Buddhists mostly in Asia but in the
1950s and 1960s those a dispersion of
people from the east who came to the
west and started to teach us in the West
what we formerly could have only learned
if we’d taken a long journey to Asia
some people are put off by the idea that
it’s Buddhist and yet as my colleague
John peacock at the Oxford mindfulness
Center says Buddhism really just means
wake up ISM and it was originally in our
terms a secular practice a way of living
a practical philosophy a map for how to
alleviate suffering which anybody was
invited to to try it deliberately set
aside the idea of dogma of beliefs in
fact the last recorded words of the
person we now know as the Buddha was
something like just go and do it
he emphasized finding out for yourself
rather than taking anybody else’s words
for it the word mindful is itself is a
translation of a Pali word the language
of India at the time of the Buddha the
word is sati and sati means awareness
originally it meant memory or at least
non forgetfulness and it came to mean
awareness in rather the same way we
would talk about talk to a child in a
Cathedral saying remember where you are
you’re not actually asking the child to
remember something except to be aware of
where they are with all the consequences
of trying of course to shut up a child
in a Cathedral which is you end up
making more noise than the child was in
the first place so awareness comes to
mean a sort of direct intuitive and
compassionate turning inwards and
turning outwards to the world a sense of
knowing what’s going on as it really is
going on a sense of turning towards
reality in the internal and in the
external world and it’s a vogue interest
in rather surprising ways in the West
right now partly because of the
discoveries of those who practice it
which have now been verified by science
and science can sometimes do a good job
for the skeptics because it helps some
people have a gateway in to say well if
it’s if it shows up in the brain then it
must be true and that’s fair enough
it does show up in the brain and will
refer to that later but it’s been shown
to do at least two things and I want to
spend some time this morning on each one
of these first of all to transform
destructive emotions and secondly to
help people reengage with the actuality
of life a sense of living life to the
full a sense of being fully alive and
not sort of hiding behind something but
being fully engaged with life so let’s
first of all look at this business of
transforming destructive emotions
most of our work as has been said is
working with people who are depressed
and as you know depression involves low
mood it involves a lack of interest in
things and this seems to go on and on
and on and more symptoms are drawn in if
you have a clinical diagnosis of
depression it’s not just the low mood
and the lack of interest in things that
used to be interested in but you feel
guilty you feel worthless you feel that
you’re not good enough you can’t
concentrate it affects your eating and
your sleeping and you may even feel so
bad you feel like ending it all and all
of these symptoms if they if they
co-occur together for weeks at a time
then probably at some stage you or your
friends or your doctor will say I think
you may be depressed and generally
speaking there are antidepressants
available and they work pretty well and
nothing of what I’m going to say is anti
medication because medication can be a
lifesaver but with the research now
showing that there are alternatives to
that that’s also very helpful for people
who don’t want to be on medication for a
long time the point and what we’re
discovering in our research and this is
research done by myself but also with
colleagues in Cambridge John Teasdale
and Zindel Siegel in Toronto based very
closely on the work of our colleague
John kabat-zinn in in America who worked
with this with chronic pain our work is
trying to understand why it is that
something that is a normal part of life
like sadness and fear why it persists
and escalates if we can begin to
understand that we begin to understand
what it is we could do about it one of
the things we know about depression for
example is that although it can strike
at any age the most common age at which
it first strikes is between 13 and 15
years old so early teenage years and
that’s different from how it was five or
six decades ago when it used to be a
problem of late middle age
and that bump in the curve has got
younger and younger decade by decade
since the 60s now the average age at
which people get depressed is in their
20s but most people for the first
experience their first episode in early
teenage years and that means that for
something that tends to recur like
depression does there’s a long life of
recurrence ahead of people and I’m going
to come back to that in due course the
question is not why sadness occurs in
life
because it’s a normal reaction to loss
why fear occurs in life as a normal
reaction to danger but why it persists
and escalates and there’s an interesting
contrast here with the animal kingdom if
you take fear for example then you see
that animals can be very afraid but then
they can recover quite quickly if you’ve
got a dog and you just told it off for
something evil that it did on your
carpet and you know that it will look
remorseful for about 10 minutes and then
next time you come in it’ll be wagging
its tail and you know it seems to have
got over its remorse and even more
striking is the fear behavior that you
see on virtually every nature
documentary that visits Africa you may
know if you’ve ever seen a nature
documentary and you can’t avoid them
with HD channels now but if it goes to
Africa there’s a compulsory scene
the compulsory scene is a lion or a
leopard chasing gazelles and you see
these little creatures just look in
alarm at suddenly the whole herd which
has been grazing suddenly stops they’ve
I don’t know that soon there’s going to
be a lion or a leopard so these poor
creatures that evolved to deal with
lions and leopards now have to learn
something new David Attenborough’s on
the way so and then of course the the
lion starts off with starts racing and
if it’s a lion’s lucky day that it gets
one of the gazelles and takes it you
know takes it off but what do you notice
about the rest of the herd within about
five or six minutes yeah absolutely they
continue to graze there’s something
really striking about that when you
think about it because if you’d been
able to measure the brains of those
little creatures while they were running
away we know that their limbic system
their emotional brain the amygdala and
all the other aspects of the brain that
generate fight and flight would have
been going crazy it not a technical term
for what happens in the brain but they
would it and then it’s extraordinary
that that panic that actually we know
what that feels like many of us if we’ve
been really afraid that that could then
disappear so quickly what’s happened is
that they’ve evolved a fear system which
actually needs to switch on when there’s
danger but it needs to switch off again
very quickly when the danger is past and
if the Lions got a gazelle then probably
is going to be three days grazing before
the lion appears again they have to eat
to live and so they go back to eating
and something which switched on in a
very dramatic way then switches off in
just a dramatic way now humans have
evolved something else as well as this
ancient fight flight mechanism we’ve
overlaid it with something else and
that’s the ability to think the ability
to remember their ability to imagine we
can actually create a virtual world and
that’s a remarkable thing and we can go
to the moon because of this
extraordinary problem-solving virtual
world we can
we age we can envision envisage things
that we’ve never actually seen before
created out of our natural intelligence
but that has a downside part of the
virtual world we can create we can
recreate or remember we collect past
traumas and we can of course imagine
future traumas imagine a six-story
building like you see in many parts of
London built in the height of a
Victorian era with a basement where all
the services are located you know the
heating and the the air well the
equivalent of air conditioning for
Victorians whatever it was the heating
and the lighting and the water
sprinklers and so on serviced by some
people who live down in the basement and
they make sure that the temperature is
controlled and the air is controlled and
and so on and now over the over the
decades different people move in and
rent the spaces upstairs
but then in 1930s and 40s you get the
advent of of talkies of movies and a
film production company moves in on the
top floor but nobody tells the basement
and they start making a film Scott of
the Antarctic and so the basement here’s
all these cold winds so it starts to get
the heat turned up and the result is
chaos because it wasn’t a real wind it
was actually just a film production
company making the wind or Lawrence of
Arabia so they start feeling the heat of
the desert and and hearing you know
those are the people sweating you hear
people sweat oh I think so if you’ve
watched lawrence of arabia’s that you
lot you hear a lot of people sweating
or even worse towering inferno so they
turn on the sprinklers that was a film
made a few years ago not quite as old as
the groovy song but so you need
something to coordinate the top floor on
the bottom floor you need something
which actually lets the basement know
that actually is a film production
company they’re creating virtual reality
and if you don’t it’s a recipe for chaos
and one of the things that we have
evolved is this ability to think and to
imagine but nobody tell the limbic
system so although we have some pretty
good mechanisms for actually controlling
as it were the new neocortex the part of
the brain that devolved last and the
under limbic system which evolved very
early though there are some amazingly
dramatic sort of balances to be struck
there when we tend to get involved in
that and start to actually think about
ourselves and think about what could go
wrong we start to create more problems
than we started with
I when I was coming here today I live in
it’s it’s a village in a bit over in a
bit of a dip so as I was coming down
towards the the High Street of this
village it’s not a very grand High
Street is about about this wide but
there were two there’s a further I think
and two of his children coming down the
little Lane on the other side and the
two children were ahead of the father
and one of them girl was cycling quite
fast and I could see there was a car
coming from the left but the father
couldn’t see so as I was walking I could
see the girl gathering pace and the car
coming from the left and just last
moment she put on some very noisy brakes
and she stopped just as her dad had told
her to and the car went past and I saw
another car and I thought my heart was
my mouth now as I was on the bus I
started to notice that there was a lot
of what if going on in my mind what if
she hadn’t stopped what if they’d been
accident what if this what if and I
started to actually create a whole
narrative based on what didn’t happen
and this is what can happen in our in
our daily life that actually we build
stories around so that our thoughts our
mental life is full of little seeds of
reality surrounded by a shell of story
and that’s the point that often our
emotions get run by this stories rather
than by the reality that’s not always
the case but that can happen so easily
indeed as some research on
post-traumatic stress disorder which is
a very disabling condition in which
people have had some trauma like a road
traffic accident or an assault many
years later still suffer from flashbacks
and anxiety and nightmares and and
trembling and and interestingly that if
you look at the content of those
flashbacks there’s one study suggests
that 50 percent of those are what didn’t
happen so that very often after an
accident people say what if I’d been
killed what would happen to my children
who would have looked out of my family
and that can be just as much torture as
the memory of the actual accident itself
what so what begins to surround it and
then of course you can then blame
yourself for still having these thoughts
oh I’m so stupid for thinking like this
and that David Clarke and anchor Earle
is working here in London have found on
PTSD that sense of putting another rim
around the story which is I’m stupid to
have such stories tending to trying to
suppress them actually just recreate
them so here we have something which
actually sometimes goes wrong with our
life sometimes very traumatic but it
turns out that nothing is so bad that
the story we create can’t make it worse
and that goes for the really horrible
things of life as well as an accident
which actually didn’t happen because the
little girl put her brakes on really
successfully and as she put the brakes
on her brother overtook her and as they
disappeared down the high street
I heard her shouting Oliver I was in
front and there’s family life so our
ability to remember and imagine
unlike the gazelles we don’t stop
running and that becomes a big problem
now that’s drama but actually of course
it can happen for even ordinary feelings
now I don’t know whether you feel tired
at the moment but if you’ve got up
rather late this morning because you had
a really nice night last night you might
feel a bit tired so just just to do this
little exercise I want you to just close
your eyes and just tune into how tired
you’re feeling right now however that is
for you you may or may not be tired but
just if there’s any tiredness there just
focus on it for a moment and then just
why am I feeling like this what does it
say about me that I’m tired and what
will happen if I can’t get over it so
just focusing on the tiredness and
perhaps even wishing that you weren’t so
tired why and then opening your eyes now
for those of you who are actually able
to ask the question why and why me how
did you feel worse hmm to the extent
that that question sort of sinks in it
often makes us feel worse and that’s a
peculiar aspect that something an
innocuous question like why or why me
or even innocuous question like you know
what’s wrong
because actually asking a question likes
what’s wrong is a perfectly legitimate
question if you’re traveling from A to B
and you’ve sort of you know you’ve
turned off the Sat Navs gone wrong and
you’re lost a bit which which road did I
turn wrong where did I go wrong where
did I go wrong it’s a perfectly
legitimate question to ask but if you’ve
just asked yourself I wish I wasn’t so
tired where did I go wrong when you put
those two sentences together then
actually one can feel even worse and
when you think about it if you wake up
in the morning often I don’t know
whether you get this but for five or ten
minutes there’s what’s called post sleep
torpor you don’t recognize that
post-sleep torpor because it’s got a
name it must be real post-it well next
time you wake up and you feel or realize
that it’s only post sleep torpor and
everybody I mean how many people in this
room suffer from post sleep talker
they were and see it’s not just me not
just you it’s it’s a it’s an ordinary
thing to say it’s that transition
between being asleep and waking up but
you know very often we can start
brooding at that point we can start
brooding oh all I thought it was
Saturday and it’s not that’s the first
thing I wish it was Saturday so okay
you’ve got a wish there right why me why
does this always happen yeah gradually
and then you start thinking all the
things you’ve got to do that day yeah
well and you soon exhaust yourself with
the anticipation as if you’ve already
done them by the time you get up you’ve
already had today’s work and you haven’t
even started yet so you see how just
even ordinary things if we’re not aware
if we don’t catch the thoughts we can
actually get dragged down and enveloped
and meshed and tangled how many other
words can I think of this and into a
huge web of thoughts and the problem is
when our mood gets entangled in a web of
thinking and we aren’t able then to be
with the mood with the sadness with the
fear we actually are trying to suppress
all the stories that we tell ourselves
if only we’ve come back to the pure mood
and be courageous enough to stay with it
a few moments more we may discover that
it might go off by its own accord so
let’s just do a three-minute breathing
space just a three-minute meditation in
which we explore this noticing what’s
so if it’s possible to uncross your legs
and put both feet on the floor if that’s
possible and allow the spine to be
straight so that you’re adjusting your
posture in a sort of gesture of waking
up letting the eyes close if that feels
comfortable to you or just lowering the
gaze and noticing this posture letting
the hands rest lightly on the lap the
spine is straight but not stiff the
shoulders are dropped and the head the
crown of the head pointing towards the
taking a breathing space so the first
step of the breathing space is simply to
open and acknowledge what’s already
the sense of knowing what the weather
what thinking is here any feelings any
emotions not trying to change anything
simply allowing things to be just as
and then letting one of this fade into
the background and step two of the
breathing space gathering our attention
and placing it on the breath wherever
you feel the breath moving in and out of
your body may be the tip of the nose it
may be the chest maybe the abdomen just
settling on one place and resting just
and you may notice that your mind
wanders away from the breath from time
to time and it’s not a mistake
if you’ve got a mind it’ll wander so
simply notice where it went and gently
escort the attention back to the
breathing and it may wander again and
that’s fine to simply notice where it
went and bring it back over and over
and then the third step of the breathing
space expanding the attention to the
body as a whole sitting here as if your
whole body was breathing now noticing
the contact with the floor with a chair
the hands on the lap noticing your
posture and see if it’s possible to
allow yourself to be exactly as you are
and allow your body to be exactly as it
okay so opening your eyes and taking in
so a sense of actually allowing things
to be as they are
mindfulness one of the myths about
meditation is that it’s about clearing
the mind and actually it’s about waking
up to the patterns of the mind rather
than clearing the mind some of my
friends who are Christians are quite
worried about meditation because they
say if you clear the mind the devil will
get in and and I can understand their
concern if you if you believe in the
devil that finding every way any which
way to get in
especially when it’s 7-foot dressed in
red the thought of clearing the mind and
having the devil come in it’s very
worrying but if there is a devil he or
she is much more likely to get in when
you’re on automatic pilot rather than
when you’re aware and awake to what’s
happening in your mind and body when
you’re aware and awake that’s probably
what the devil doesn’t like and that’s
why this sort of practice this sense of
journey into silence has been at the
heart of every religious tradition over
the centuries it’s part of the Christian
tradition it’s part of the Islamic
tradition certainly in Sufism it’s part
of every religious tradition has the
sense of a journey to the heart of
silence as a way of really coming to
know who you really are at your core
with compassion rather than with
judgment and it’s a big ask and it takes
some practice but it turns out to be
worth it so let’s now turn to the second
reason why it seems that mindfulness is
very popular why it’s invoking so much
interest and that’s this business about
re-engaging with life so this is not
about transforming destructive emotion
so much as just being alive from moment
to moment instead of being wrapped up in
preoccupation and it’s not just
depression where we need to perhaps be
concerned that we’re a bit wrapped up
most of the time you may know about the
experiment that was done on the Cornell
campus in America where some
psychologists went out and they got
actors to to pretend to go out and ask
people
on the campus the directions to one of
the buildings they say I’m lost can you
show me the way and they found somebody
would show them of the way and just as
the conversation had started and the
person starts the given directions they
arrange for people to go past carrying a
large door and these people Bard rudely
in between the interviewer and the
interviewee and while the door is
obscuring them from view each from view
they change the person who’s asking the
now how many people notice the change it
turns out about 50% don’t notice the
change they’re now talking to a
different person different clothes
different height different hair color
they’ve even done a version of that
experiment in which you put an advert
outside saying anybody any volunteers
for a psychology experiment Oatley only
take 15 minutes please come in here and
people enter the building and come to a
sort of a dais like this like a desk
like a sort of reception area and
somebody says what will it only take
fifty meter slowly to take 15 minutes
okay yeah okay I’ve got fifty minutes
I’ll do it okay fill in this form so the
guy gives him the form and so he fills
in his name thanks very much
and then person comes up a hold of him
and it’s a different person and then
they go into the room to do the
experiment and the experiment it says
did you notice anything strange about
what happened just now No
that was the experiment it turns out 75%
of people that means that 75% of you now
just keep quiet for the rest of the
lecture okay
down Kato and the sort of a sense of our
the way we normally love our life we
live our lives on inference we’ve
already talked about model building what
people didn’t realize until recently was
this building the model of the world
actually goes for our attention and what
we are tending to as much as our
memories and our future actually our
moment-by-moment attention is governed
by and our consciousness governed by
guesses about what’s likely to happen
which we just confirm and if somebody
disappears for a moment and reappears we
weren’t guessing that we weren’t pay
attention we just accept it as normal we
don’t even notice the difference and
this if that was only true on Cornell we
might you know figure well that’s just
the Americans but it’s not
I remember once I came down here from
Oxford today on the Oxford tube which is
actually a bus that’s just to fool you
it’s not the tube it’s a big red bus
that you see snarling up the traffic in
in London and the Oxford tube comes DUP
and down to London quite regularly so I
got the Aqsa tube this morning and it
reminded me of a of a of a time when I
came on the Oxford tube before to go to
the Albert Hall for one of the proms
my daughter had bought me a a ticket the
program was full of my favorite music so
we went up was from my birthday treat
and we had a meal and then sat down and
you know quite high up actually and she
want that well off at the time and and
then we sit down and and watching I
think it was Walton Sea Symphony and
we’re about ten minutes in I was really
enjoying the music having enjoyed the
meal and the music was absolutely
sublime and just being in the Albert
Hall is always a treat um and about 10
minutes in this thought crept into my
mind
well it rather depends how fast they
take the Bolton well on my LP it was
double-sided so it’s probably quite long
actually what double saw I remember now
it was a long piece and then there’s the
interval how long with you know how long
was it internally I know no there’s that
and then to that in this data note oh we
probably get out of here by back to
quarter to ten and then there’s the walk
across Hyde Park and then is it and then
I suddenly realized I wasn’t actually in
the Albert Hall I wasn’t listening to
the music at all I was I was on the bus
back home and it’s not as if you can
miss the Oxford tube at 10 o’clock at
night it still runs every 20 minutes you
can’t miss it you just have to turn up
at the bus stop and one always comes
within 20 minutes and therefore it was a
completely needless exercise but you
know my mind it’s always trained to plan
was now on the next moment and this is
one thing that there are Buddhist
teachers and across the centuries have
pointed out to us so technicon was a
very famous Vietnamese teacher he
illustrates this by talking about where
is your mind when you’re doing the
dishes and generally because dishes are
not a fantastic beautiful moment your
mind is usually on something else
perhaps what you’re going to do next and
maybe you plan when you’re done when
you’ve cleared up this lot you’ll just
have a cup of tea in a cup of coffee or
whatever before you go off to probably
not and a cup of coffee at least
probably you’re choosing one of them
which is probably what you’re doing when
it will it be tea will it be coffee you
know these momentous decisions so you
and then but where are you when you’re
drinking your tea
you’re probably actually planning the
next activity and you look at the cup
and you think I’m five minutes time and
it’s empty and you think nor did I just
drink that tea there’s nobody else
around so it must have been me and so
you go on in life just leaning forward
into the next activity rather than being
with this one because this one’s trivial
in you know and it’s sort of like you’re
postponing life until you can next get a
holiday or until you get until after
Christmas in a new year which is always
seems better than this year somehow
until January 3rd and you and you switch
on your emails again and you realize
they haven’t all gone away and the sort
of sense in which you’re leaning forward
into the next moment you know when
you’re on your way to the supermarket
you’re just thinking what I’m going to
buy and when you’re going round the
thing you’re wondering about whether the
checkouts are going to be busy and then
when you’re standing the queue you’re
wondering about why did I choose this
queue and then wondering whether you
should make a dash to the next queue and
then you’re cursing yourself when the
lady in front hasn’t doesn’t know the
price of the bread and you know the bar
chart has fallen off its other bar chart
is it’s a barcode and the bar chart is
what we show in science and then so and
then you’ll think about on the drive
home and then the cooking or whatever so
you’re leaning forward to the next
moment just like you were when you drank
that tea you weren’t with the tea and
it’s interesting that when the school of
life got in touch to say would I come
and do a sermon they sent me the brief
it said see if you can put something in
which is like a lesson for life
okay not a big ask then but I think
actually when I think about tick net
Hanlon is T I think if there’s one thing
that we need to take away it’s the sense
that we don’t want to wake up six weeks
away from our death or six months we’ve
got six months to live and look back on
our life as we looked at that gap was
that my life that I’ve just had because
I don’t know about what religious
beliefs you have but probably this is
the only life we’re going to get at
least in this body and therefore it’s
worth waking up because the thought of
actually waking up too late is actually
pretty scary and it doesn’t have to be
that way that’s the point that is
something we can do about it
and one of the motivating things and I
think why mindfulness people are
beginning to just spend a few minutes a
day in silence because it begins to tune
up the capacity to be awake to be aware
for just a few more moments in the day
and maybe that’s enough to actually
notice our children to notice the Albert
Hall to notice the buildings to look up
occasionally and see oh hello to look up
occasionally and see that there are
people up above us and there are
buildings up above us up above our
psyche line and there’s clouds and
there’s birds and this and they don’t
all have to be beautiful things we don’t
have to become hello Birds hello sky
hello trees
father intent on us if you know the
reference it’s a sort of sense of
actually just being alive noticing the
footfall on the ground is enough when
we’re walking from the car or from the
bus to where we have to go that actually
turns out to be enough so let’s just do
another short meditation and just focus
on the soles of our feet for a moment so
if you just put the cells or feet back
down on the ground and let’s see if it’s
possible to notice what it’s like to be
breathing but actually also to notice
that the soles of our feet are also part
of our body we don’t often take our
attention there see if it’s possible to
just let the eyes close or the lower the
gaze and notice what’s going on now if
you feel nothing from the soles of your
feet then that’s okay just register a
soles of the feet are quite a convenient
place to rest our attention is a long
way away from the head well five or six
feet so just noticing what’s here maybe
vibration sense of pulsing notice if
some sensations come and go move into
awareness and out of awareness changing
and then allowing that attention to
spread to the rest of the body that
quality of attention a sense of
acknowledging that we’re alive and they
so letting the eyes open and taking you
the room again and let’s now come to the
third and final reason why mindfulness
is grabbing attention and I think it
comes to the science that’s fine
findings from science which mindfulness
came to the West at about the right time
when neuroscience was beginning to get
interested in the science of
consciousness and so there’s a lot of
neuroscience going on I’m not to go into
much detail I want to start with some
clinical findings because as I said our
interest Jon Teasdale and Zindel Siegel
and mine was to see if we could find a
way of teaching these practices to
people who had been depressed many times
in the past and were known to be very
vulnerable and 75 to 77 percent of
people in our trials had been depressed
for three or more times and what we
found was eight weeks of training in
mindfulness training doing these sort of
practices both in the classes people
come to class it’s not like a therapy
group in which you talk about your
problems you don’t need to speak at all
you just need to come and learn skills
it’s a skills training class in which
people learn the skills of meditation
and eight weeks two hours a week and
then we monitor people for the critical
next 12 months in which we knew from
that from past research so that would be
a critical time if we could get people
through those 12 months it would be
wonderful and we found that 60 in the
first study 66% of people relapsed if
they were just in the control group and
had their usual care antidepressants or
whatever but only 37% of people relapsed
if they’d had this eight weeks of
training so it almost half the risk of
relapse and now studies will be done all
over the world after that first study
and have shown that that’s true whether
it in Switzerland or Toronto or Belgium
or different countries with different
teachers so hovering the risk of relapse
and now studies show that
it’s as good as antidepressants do if
you keep taking your antidepressants you
get about that sort of result so here’s
an alternative or one study shows you
can do it with antidepressants you don’t
have to give up your antidepressants you
can do it as well and still get that
same benefit so that’s I should say that
you should never come off your
antidepressants without consulting a
doctor
lots of people do but it’s worth
depending on what you’re taking it’s
always worth getting medical advice so
that’s one piece of research which is
creating a great deal of interest within
the mental health field because here’s
an alternative and in some parts of the
world where you can’t get access to
expensive medicines but where people
think it’s important because it’s from
the West this important antidepressant
pill but the trouble is that for example
in Vietnam people get their pills from
the pharmacist and they can sometimes
only afford three days supply but three
days supply of antidepressants is not
going to do anything you might get some
side effects but there’ll be no
therapeutic effect but doing this this
can be trained and it can be portable
and it doesn’t depend on external
supports the second sort of research is
research showing that it increases
well-being particularly because of this
coming into contact with the world and
beginning to live your life fully
because many of us rush around all the
time and so we just get into the habit
of rushing and we can have this sort of
an illusion of creative productivity you
know if we just show that we’re rushing
this is just shows how good we are how
busy we are how creative we are how
productive we are actually all the
research shows that just the opposite
takes place and one of the reasons for
that and colleague David Cresswell in
the United States actually measured how
much people were mindful or mindless and
mindless in his case was people who rush
around never taste the food never you
know never think where they’re going or
was forgetting things and so on and not
true many of us of course he emerged
their brains and found that the amygdala
was like stuck on the on position
that part of the brain that’s the
fight/flight so rather than rushing as
it were to get things done the brain is
operating as if you’re running away from
a tiger and that’s extraordinary because
we know that stress actually produces a
tunnel vision in which it destroys
creativity why because actually it
literally does reduce the amount of
information you take in to a tunnel
because we’ve evolved when we’re under
great stress and being chased by a
predator to only see the way from here
to the rabbit hole yeah if you see
rabbits that are getting down the rabbit
hole they don’t look right or left they
don’t play anymore they don’t eat
anymore they just go for the hole so
tunnel vision and that’s what happens in
stress in fact you can do experiments
with what’s called the Snowy pictures
paradigm and that is you show pictures
but they’re all sort of rather covered
in snow and you can’t really see what it
is and the experiment is very simple
it’s as a luggable Rolf Harris question
do you know what it is yet now that also
puts people in layers for the audience
I’m sorry about that and do you know
what is it so you try and guess what it
is and you you take longer if you’re
under stress to get it right because it
seems you’re actually just focusing on
the little bit in the middle but to get
it right you need to see the whole
picture you need to take all it all the
information but you just focus on a
small picture and it’s interesting that
they’ve shown that it that the effect
can be very subtle so you do the Snowy
pictures sort of paradigm you see how
quickly people get it do you know what
it is yet but you ask people either to
press down on the table they’re sitting
at or to put their hand under the table
and just press up now what do you think
that does pressing down or pressing up
can you think of what body movement is
involved in pressing down just think
about that for a moment
you’re pushing away absolutely and what
body movements involved in pushing up
very gentle pushing up is actually
pulling towards and actually what that
does and there’s lots of research on
this that actually if you just push away
or push pull towards the brain is put
into a
a different configuration either
approach or avoidance so for example you
should get people to look at happy or
sad words on the or pleasant or
unpleasant words on the screen and you
say as soon as you see the word tell me
whether it’s pleasant or unpleasant and
well if it’s Pleasant just pull the
joystick towards you if it’s unpleasant
push it away people do that very fast
but if you say if it’s a pleasant word
push the joystick away from you people
take a long time to do that because in
that moment pushing away is not the
instinct so pushing away pulling towards
reconfigures the brain is approach or
avoidance dance and interestingly if you
do this putting your hand under the
table or putting your hand on top of the
table and then you ask people do the
Snowy pictures people who are pressing
down don’t see the pictures as quickly
but people who are pulling towards ducey
they see the whole picture so it turns
out that when we’re under stress and
we’re rushing around we’re actually
trying to avoid something rather than
get things done although we might think
we’re trying to get things done and the
effect of that is actually we don’t see
the whole picture we think we’re being
creative but our minds are as it were
captured in a sort of tunnel vision so
this is a sort of research that’s shown
that uses the brain brain imaging we
know that we can capture that that
reconfiguration of the brain in some of
the work that Richard Davidson has done
in America some of the work we’ve done
at Oxford replicating that you can you
can see the brain configure in the
approach and avoidance position and what
mindfulness training is partly about is
waking up to the actual life that we
live it’s not trying to as it were get
somewhere based on fear it’s actually a
way of discerning what our deepest
values are and living in line with those
values and so just to finish off the
last two minutes let’s do another
meditation and then I’ll read a poem by
so once again just coming and being
aware of where we are and sitting and
noticing the sitting and breathing
noticing that we’re breathing and
noticing what’s going on in our minds
and bodies right now and seeing it’s
possible to allow them to be just as
focusing on the breathing and gathering
the attention letting it a light on the
breath just now wherever we feel the
breath moving not trying to make it
different from how we find it not trying
to control the breath simply allowing it
and then broadening the attention
expanding the attention to take in the
a sense of being complete and whole just
accepting our bodies and ourselves just
and here are some words from our s
Thomas the brightfield I have seen the
Sun break through to illuminate a small
field for a while and gone my way and
forgotten it but that was the pearl of
great price the one field that had the
treasure in it I realize now that I must
life is not hurrying on to a receding
future nor hankering after an imagined
past it is the turning aside like Moses
to the miracle of the lit bush to a
brightness that seemed as transitory as
your youth once but is the Eternity that
and so allowing the eyes to open when
Joseph Campbell once said people who say
say that all we’re looking for is that
we’re all looking for the meaning of
life is that I don’t think that’s what
we’re really seeking I think what we’re
really seeking is the experience of
being alive and the extraordinary
discovery that we can make again and
again is that the Eternity of which are
as Thomas speaks could start with the
soles of your feet thank you very much indeed
to the school of life for inviting me
here this morning and for this amazing
introduction of feeling groovy from
Simon & Garfunkel it’s a way of sort of
stratifying an audience isn’t it sing
something from the 60s which was
re-released in the 80s and and then we
see who knows the buttered arse so I’ll
start with the sound of a bell and see
if you can notice when the Bell stops
these few words are enough if not these
words this breath if not this breath
this sitting here this opening to the
life we have refused again and again
so what I want to do today is to talk a
little bit about mindfulness and perhaps
to practice a little to continue the
practice that we’ve already started with
the standing breath meditation that
we’ve just been led in and the poem by
David White talking about what is
mindfulness and then what’s it for does
it work and how does it work and then
what are the practical implications of
these new understandings from science
and from the ancient wisdom so first of
all then what is mindfulness well in
mindfulness and in mindfulness
meditation we’re training mental
capacities using secular forms of
ancient spiritual exercises they’ve been
kept alive over the centuries mostly by
the Buddhists mostly in Asia but in the
1950s and 1960s those a dispersion of
people from the east who came to the
west and started to teach us in the West
what we formerly could have only learned
if we’d taken a long journey to Asia
some people are put off by the idea that
it’s Buddhist and yet as my colleague
John peacock at the Oxford mindfulness
Center says Buddhism really just means
wake up ISM and it was originally in our
terms a secular practice a way of living
a practical philosophy a map for how to
alleviate suffering which anybody was
invited to to try it deliberately set
aside the idea of dogma of beliefs in
fact the last recorded words of the
person we now know as the Buddha was
something like just go and do it
he emphasized finding out for yourself
rather than taking anybody else’s words
for it the word mindful is itself is a
translation of a Pali word the language
of India at the time of the Buddha the
word is sati and sati means awareness
originally it meant memory or at least
non forgetfulness and it came to mean
awareness in rather the same way we
would talk about talk to a child in a
Cathedral saying remember where you are
you’re not actually asking the child to
remember something except to be aware of
where they are with all the consequences
of trying of course to shut up a child
in a Cathedral which is you end up
making more noise than the child was in
the first place so awareness comes to
mean a sort of direct intuitive and
compassionate turning inwards and
turning outwards to the world a sense of
knowing what’s going on as it really is
going on a sense of turning towards
reality in the internal and in the
external world and it’s a vogue interest
in rather surprising ways in the West
right now partly because of the
discoveries of those who practice it
which have now been verified by science
and science can sometimes do a good job
for the skeptics because it helps some
people have a gateway in to say well if
it’s if it shows up in the brain then it
must be true and that’s fair enough
it does show up in the brain and will
refer to that later but it’s been shown
to do at least two things and I want to
spend some time this morning on each one
of these first of all to transform
destructive emotions and secondly to
help people reengage with the actuality
of life a sense of living life to the
full a sense of being fully alive and
not sort of hiding behind something but
being fully engaged with life so let’s
first of all look at this business of
transforming destructive emotions
most of our work as has been said is
working with people who are depressed
and as you know depression involves low
mood it involves a lack of interest in
things and this seems to go on and on
and on and more symptoms are drawn in if
you have a clinical diagnosis of
depression it’s not just the low mood
and the lack of interest in things that
used to be interested in but you feel
guilty you feel worthless you feel that
you’re not good enough you can’t
concentrate it affects your eating and
your sleeping and you may even feel so
bad you feel like ending it all and all
of these symptoms if they if they
co-occur together for weeks at a time
then probably at some stage you or your
friends or your doctor will say I think
you may be depressed and generally
speaking there are antidepressants
available and they work pretty well and
nothing of what I’m going to say is anti
medication because medication can be a
lifesaver but with the research now
showing that there are alternatives to
that that’s also very helpful for people
who don’t want to be on medication for a
long time the point and what we’re
discovering in our research and this is
research done by myself but also with
colleagues in Cambridge John Teasdale
and Zindel Siegel in Toronto based very
closely on the work of our colleague
John kabat-zinn in in America who worked
with this with chronic pain our work is
trying to understand why it is that
something that is a normal part of life
like sadness and fear why it persists
and escalates if we can begin to
understand that we begin to understand
what it is we could do about it one of
the things we know about depression for
example is that although it can strike
at any age the most common age at which
it first strikes is between 13 and 15
years old so early teenage years and
that’s different from how it was five or
six decades ago when it used to be a
problem of late middle age
and that bump in the curve has got
younger and younger decade by decade
since the 60s now the average age at
which people get depressed is in their
20s but most people for the first
experience their first episode in early
teenage years and that means that for
something that tends to recur like
depression does there’s a long life of
recurrence ahead of people and I’m going
to come back to that in due course the
question is not why sadness occurs in
life
because it’s a normal reaction to loss
why fear occurs in life as a normal
reaction to danger but why it persists
and escalates and there’s an interesting
contrast here with the animal kingdom if
you take fear for example then you see
that animals can be very afraid but then
they can recover quite quickly if you’ve
got a dog and you just told it off for
something evil that it did on your
carpet and you know that it will look
remorseful for about 10 minutes and then
next time you come in it’ll be wagging
its tail and you know it seems to have
got over its remorse and even more
striking is the fear behavior that you
see on virtually every nature
documentary that visits Africa you may
know if you’ve ever seen a nature
documentary and you can’t avoid them
with HD channels now but if it goes to
Africa there’s a compulsory scene
the compulsory scene is a lion or a
leopard chasing gazelles and you see
these little creatures just look in
alarm at suddenly the whole herd which
has been grazing suddenly stops they’ve
I don’t know that soon there’s going to
be a lion or a leopard so these poor
creatures that evolved to deal with
lions and leopards now have to learn
something new David Attenborough’s on
the way so and then of course the the
lion starts off with starts racing and
if it’s a lion’s lucky day that it gets
one of the gazelles and takes it you
know takes it off but what do you notice
about the rest of the herd within about
five or six minutes yeah absolutely they
continue to graze there’s something
really striking about that when you
think about it because if you’d been
able to measure the brains of those
little creatures while they were running
away we know that their limbic system
their emotional brain the amygdala and
all the other aspects of the brain that
generate fight and flight would have
been going crazy it not a technical term
for what happens in the brain but they
would it and then it’s extraordinary
that that panic that actually we know
what that feels like many of us if we’ve
been really afraid that that could then
disappear so quickly what’s happened is
that they’ve evolved a fear system which
actually needs to switch on when there’s
danger but it needs to switch off again
very quickly when the danger is past and
if the Lions got a gazelle then probably
is going to be three days grazing before
the lion appears again they have to eat
to live and so they go back to eating
and something which switched on in a
very dramatic way then switches off in
just a dramatic way now humans have
evolved something else as well as this
ancient fight flight mechanism we’ve
overlaid it with something else and
that’s the ability to think the ability
to remember their ability to imagine we
can actually create a virtual world and
that’s a remarkable thing and we can go
to the moon because of this
extraordinary problem-solving virtual
world we can
we age we can envision envisage things
that we’ve never actually seen before
created out of our natural intelligence
but that has a downside part of the
virtual world we can create we can
recreate or remember we collect past
traumas and we can of course imagine
future traumas imagine a six-story
building like you see in many parts of
London built in the height of a
Victorian era with a basement where all
the services are located you know the
heating and the the air well the
equivalent of air conditioning for
Victorians whatever it was the heating
and the lighting and the water
sprinklers and so on serviced by some
people who live down in the basement and
they make sure that the temperature is
controlled and the air is controlled and
and so on and now over the over the
decades different people move in and
rent the spaces upstairs
but then in 1930s and 40s you get the
advent of of talkies of movies and a
film production company moves in on the
top floor but nobody tells the basement
and they start making a film Scott of
the Antarctic and so the basement here’s
all these cold winds so it starts to get
the heat turned up and the result is
chaos because it wasn’t a real wind it
was actually just a film production
company making the wind or Lawrence of
Arabia so they start feeling the heat of
the desert and and hearing you know
those are the people sweating you hear
people sweat oh I think so if you’ve
watched lawrence of arabia’s that you
lot you hear a lot of people sweating
or even worse towering inferno so they
turn on the sprinklers that was a film
made a few years ago not quite as old as
the groovy song but so you need
something to coordinate the top floor on
the bottom floor you need something
which actually lets the basement know
that actually is a film production
company they’re creating virtual reality
and if you don’t it’s a recipe for chaos
and one of the things that we have
evolved is this ability to think and to
imagine but nobody tell the limbic
system so although we have some pretty
good mechanisms for actually controlling
as it were the new neocortex the part of
the brain that devolved last and the
under limbic system which evolved very
early though there are some amazingly
dramatic sort of balances to be struck
there when we tend to get involved in
that and start to actually think about
ourselves and think about what could go
wrong we start to create more problems
than we started with
I when I was coming here today I live in
it’s it’s a village in a bit over in a
bit of a dip so as I was coming down
towards the the High Street of this
village it’s not a very grand High
Street is about about this wide but
there were two there’s a further I think
and two of his children coming down the
little Lane on the other side and the
two children were ahead of the father
and one of them girl was cycling quite
fast and I could see there was a car
coming from the left but the father
couldn’t see so as I was walking I could
see the girl gathering pace and the car
coming from the left and just last
moment she put on some very noisy brakes
and she stopped just as her dad had told
her to and the car went past and I saw
another car and I thought my heart was
my mouth now as I was on the bus I
started to notice that there was a lot
of what if going on in my mind what if
she hadn’t stopped what if they’d been
accident what if this what if and I
started to actually create a whole
narrative based on what didn’t happen
and this is what can happen in our in
our daily life that actually we build
stories around so that our thoughts our
mental life is full of little seeds of
reality surrounded by a shell of story
and that’s the point that often our
emotions get run by this stories rather
than by the reality that’s not always
the case but that can happen so easily
indeed as some research on
post-traumatic stress disorder which is
a very disabling condition in which
people have had some trauma like a road
traffic accident or an assault many
years later still suffer from flashbacks
and anxiety and nightmares and and
trembling and and interestingly that if
you look at the content of those
flashbacks there’s one study suggests
that 50 percent of those are what didn’t
happen so that very often after an
accident people say what if I’d been
killed what would happen to my children
who would have looked out of my family
and that can be just as much torture as
the memory of the actual accident itself
what so what begins to surround it and
then of course you can then blame
yourself for still having these thoughts
oh I’m so stupid for thinking like this
and that David Clarke and anchor Earle
is working here in London have found on
PTSD that sense of putting another rim
around the story which is I’m stupid to
have such stories tending to trying to
suppress them actually just recreate
them so here we have something which
actually sometimes goes wrong with our
life sometimes very traumatic but it
turns out that nothing is so bad that
the story we create can’t make it worse
and that goes for the really horrible
things of life as well as an accident
which actually didn’t happen because the
little girl put her brakes on really
successfully and as she put the brakes
on her brother overtook her and as they
disappeared down the high street
I heard her shouting Oliver I was in
front and there’s family life so our
ability to remember and imagine
unlike the gazelles we don’t stop
running and that becomes a big problem
now that’s drama but actually of course
it can happen for even ordinary feelings
now I don’t know whether you feel tired
at the moment but if you’ve got up
rather late this morning because you had
a really nice night last night you might
feel a bit tired so just just to do this
little exercise I want you to just close
your eyes and just tune into how tired
you’re feeling right now however that is
for you you may or may not be tired but
just if there’s any tiredness there just
focus on it for a moment and then just
why am I feeling like this what does it
say about me that I’m tired and what
will happen if I can’t get over it so
just focusing on the tiredness and
perhaps even wishing that you weren’t so
tired why and then opening your eyes now
for those of you who are actually able
to ask the question why and why me how
did you feel worse hmm to the extent
that that question sort of sinks in it
often makes us feel worse and that’s a
peculiar aspect that something an
innocuous question like why or why me
or even innocuous question like you know
what’s wrong
because actually asking a question likes
what’s wrong is a perfectly legitimate
question if you’re traveling from A to B
and you’ve sort of you know you’ve
turned off the Sat Navs gone wrong and
you’re lost a bit which which road did I
turn wrong where did I go wrong where
did I go wrong it’s a perfectly
legitimate question to ask but if you’ve
just asked yourself I wish I wasn’t so
tired where did I go wrong when you put
those two sentences together then
actually one can feel even worse and
when you think about it if you wake up
in the morning often I don’t know
whether you get this but for five or ten
minutes there’s what’s called post sleep
torpor you don’t recognize that
post-sleep torpor because it’s got a
name it must be real post-it well next
time you wake up and you feel or realize
that it’s only post sleep torpor and
everybody I mean how many people in this
room suffer from post sleep talker
they were and see it’s not just me not
just you it’s it’s a it’s an ordinary
thing to say it’s that transition
between being asleep and waking up but
you know very often we can start
brooding at that point we can start
brooding oh all I thought it was
Saturday and it’s not that’s the first
thing I wish it was Saturday so okay
you’ve got a wish there right why me why
does this always happen yeah gradually
and then you start thinking all the
things you’ve got to do that day yeah
well and you soon exhaust yourself with
the anticipation as if you’ve already
done them by the time you get up you’ve
already had today’s work and you haven’t
even started yet so you see how just
even ordinary things if we’re not aware
if we don’t catch the thoughts we can
actually get dragged down and enveloped
and meshed and tangled how many other
words can I think of this and into a
huge web of thoughts and the problem is
when our mood gets entangled in a web of
thinking and we aren’t able then to be
with the mood with the sadness with the
fear we actually are trying to suppress
all the stories that we tell ourselves
if only we’ve come back to the pure mood
and be courageous enough to stay with it
a few moments more we may discover that
it might go off by its own accord so
let’s just do a three-minute breathing
space just a three-minute meditation in
which we explore this noticing what’s
so if it’s possible to uncross your legs
and put both feet on the floor if that’s
possible and allow the spine to be
straight so that you’re adjusting your
posture in a sort of gesture of waking
up letting the eyes close if that feels
comfortable to you or just lowering the
gaze and noticing this posture letting
the hands rest lightly on the lap the
spine is straight but not stiff the
shoulders are dropped and the head the
crown of the head pointing towards the
taking a breathing space so the first
step of the breathing space is simply to
open and acknowledge what’s already
the sense of knowing what the weather
what thinking is here any feelings any
emotions not trying to change anything
simply allowing things to be just as
and then letting one of this fade into
the background and step two of the
breathing space gathering our attention
and placing it on the breath wherever
you feel the breath moving in and out of
your body may be the tip of the nose it
may be the chest maybe the abdomen just
settling on one place and resting just
and you may notice that your mind
wanders away from the breath from time
to time and it’s not a mistake
if you’ve got a mind it’ll wander so
simply notice where it went and gently
escort the attention back to the
breathing and it may wander again and
that’s fine to simply notice where it
went and bring it back over and over
and then the third step of the breathing
space expanding the attention to the
body as a whole sitting here as if your
whole body was breathing now noticing
the contact with the floor with a chair
the hands on the lap noticing your
posture and see if it’s possible to
allow yourself to be exactly as you are
and allow your body to be exactly as it
okay so opening your eyes and taking in
so a sense of actually allowing things
to be as they are
mindfulness one of the myths about
meditation is that it’s about clearing
the mind and actually it’s about waking
up to the patterns of the mind rather
than clearing the mind some of my
friends who are Christians are quite
worried about meditation because they
say if you clear the mind the devil will
get in and and I can understand their
concern if you if you believe in the
devil that finding every way any which
way to get in
especially when it’s 7-foot dressed in
red the thought of clearing the mind and
having the devil come in it’s very
worrying but if there is a devil he or
she is much more likely to get in when
you’re on automatic pilot rather than
when you’re aware and awake to what’s
happening in your mind and body when
you’re aware and awake that’s probably
what the devil doesn’t like and that’s
why this sort of practice this sense of
journey into silence has been at the
heart of every religious tradition over
the centuries it’s part of the Christian
tradition it’s part of the Islamic
tradition certainly in Sufism it’s part
of every religious tradition has the
sense of a journey to the heart of
silence as a way of really coming to
know who you really are at your core
with compassion rather than with
judgment and it’s a big ask and it takes
some practice but it turns out to be
worth it so let’s now turn to the second
reason why it seems that mindfulness is
very popular why it’s invoking so much
interest and that’s this business about
re-engaging with life so this is not
about transforming destructive emotion
so much as just being alive from moment
to moment instead of being wrapped up in
preoccupation and it’s not just
depression where we need to perhaps be
concerned that we’re a bit wrapped up
most of the time you may know about the
experiment that was done on the Cornell
campus in America where some
psychologists went out and they got
actors to to pretend to go out and ask
people
on the campus the directions to one of
the buildings they say I’m lost can you
show me the way and they found somebody
would show them of the way and just as
the conversation had started and the
person starts the given directions they
arrange for people to go past carrying a
large door and these people Bard rudely
in between the interviewer and the
interviewee and while the door is
obscuring them from view each from view
they change the person who’s asking the
now how many people notice the change it
turns out about 50% don’t notice the
change they’re now talking to a
different person different clothes
different height different hair color
they’ve even done a version of that
experiment in which you put an advert
outside saying anybody any volunteers
for a psychology experiment Oatley only
take 15 minutes please come in here and
people enter the building and come to a
sort of a dais like this like a desk
like a sort of reception area and
somebody says what will it only take
fifty meter slowly to take 15 minutes
okay yeah okay I’ve got fifty minutes
I’ll do it okay fill in this form so the
guy gives him the form and so he fills
in his name thanks very much
and then person comes up a hold of him
and it’s a different person and then
they go into the room to do the
experiment and the experiment it says
did you notice anything strange about
what happened just now No
that was the experiment it turns out 75%
of people that means that 75% of you now
just keep quiet for the rest of the
lecture okay
down Kato and the sort of a sense of our
the way we normally love our life we
live our lives on inference we’ve
already talked about model building what
people didn’t realize until recently was
this building the model of the world
actually goes for our attention and what
we are tending to as much as our
memories and our future actually our
moment-by-moment attention is governed
by and our consciousness governed by
guesses about what’s likely to happen
which we just confirm and if somebody
disappears for a moment and reappears we
weren’t guessing that we weren’t pay
attention we just accept it as normal we
don’t even notice the difference and
this if that was only true on Cornell we
might you know figure well that’s just
the Americans but it’s not
I remember once I came down here from
Oxford today on the Oxford tube which is
actually a bus that’s just to fool you
it’s not the tube it’s a big red bus
that you see snarling up the traffic in
in London and the Oxford tube comes DUP
and down to London quite regularly so I
got the Aqsa tube this morning and it
reminded me of a of a of a time when I
came on the Oxford tube before to go to
the Albert Hall for one of the proms
my daughter had bought me a a ticket the
program was full of my favorite music so
we went up was from my birthday treat
and we had a meal and then sat down and
you know quite high up actually and she
want that well off at the time and and
then we sit down and and watching I
think it was Walton Sea Symphony and
we’re about ten minutes in I was really
enjoying the music having enjoyed the
meal and the music was absolutely
sublime and just being in the Albert
Hall is always a treat um and about 10
minutes in this thought crept into my
mind
well it rather depends how fast they
take the Bolton well on my LP it was
double-sided so it’s probably quite long
actually what double saw I remember now
it was a long piece and then there’s the
interval how long with you know how long
was it internally I know no there’s that
and then to that in this data note oh we
probably get out of here by back to
quarter to ten and then there’s the walk
across Hyde Park and then is it and then
I suddenly realized I wasn’t actually in
the Albert Hall I wasn’t listening to
the music at all I was I was on the bus
back home and it’s not as if you can
miss the Oxford tube at 10 o’clock at
night it still runs every 20 minutes you
can’t miss it you just have to turn up
at the bus stop and one always comes
within 20 minutes and therefore it was a
completely needless exercise but you
know my mind it’s always trained to plan
was now on the next moment and this is
one thing that there are Buddhist
teachers and across the centuries have
pointed out to us so technicon was a
very famous Vietnamese teacher he
illustrates this by talking about where
is your mind when you’re doing the
dishes and generally because dishes are
not a fantastic beautiful moment your
mind is usually on something else
perhaps what you’re going to do next and
maybe you plan when you’re done when
you’ve cleared up this lot you’ll just
have a cup of tea in a cup of coffee or
whatever before you go off to probably
not and a cup of coffee at least
probably you’re choosing one of them
which is probably what you’re doing when
it will it be tea will it be coffee you
know these momentous decisions so you
and then but where are you when you’re
drinking your tea
you’re probably actually planning the
next activity and you look at the cup
and you think I’m five minutes time and
it’s empty and you think nor did I just
drink that tea there’s nobody else
around so it must have been me and so
you go on in life just leaning forward
into the next activity rather than being
with this one because this one’s trivial
in you know and it’s sort of like you’re
postponing life until you can next get a
holiday or until you get until after
Christmas in a new year which is always
seems better than this year somehow
until January 3rd and you and you switch
on your emails again and you realize
they haven’t all gone away and the sort
of sense in which you’re leaning forward
into the next moment you know when
you’re on your way to the supermarket
you’re just thinking what I’m going to
buy and when you’re going round the
thing you’re wondering about whether the
checkouts are going to be busy and then
when you’re standing the queue you’re
wondering about why did I choose this
queue and then wondering whether you
should make a dash to the next queue and
then you’re cursing yourself when the
lady in front hasn’t doesn’t know the
price of the bread and you know the bar
chart has fallen off its other bar chart
is it’s a barcode and the bar chart is
what we show in science and then so and
then you’ll think about on the drive
home and then the cooking or whatever so
you’re leaning forward to the next
moment just like you were when you drank
that tea you weren’t with the tea and
it’s interesting that when the school of
life got in touch to say would I come
and do a sermon they sent me the brief
it said see if you can put something in
which is like a lesson for life
okay not a big ask then but I think
actually when I think about tick net
Hanlon is T I think if there’s one thing
that we need to take away it’s the sense
that we don’t want to wake up six weeks
away from our death or six months we’ve
got six months to live and look back on
our life as we looked at that gap was
that my life that I’ve just had because
I don’t know about what religious
beliefs you have but probably this is
the only life we’re going to get at
least in this body and therefore it’s
worth waking up because the thought of
actually waking up too late is actually
pretty scary and it doesn’t have to be
that way that’s the point that is
something we can do about it
and one of the motivating things and I
think why mindfulness people are
beginning to just spend a few minutes a
day in silence because it begins to tune
up the capacity to be awake to be aware
for just a few more moments in the day
and maybe that’s enough to actually
notice our children to notice the Albert
Hall to notice the buildings to look up
occasionally and see oh hello to look up
occasionally and see that there are
people up above us and there are
buildings up above us up above our
psyche line and there’s clouds and
there’s birds and this and they don’t
all have to be beautiful things we don’t
have to become hello Birds hello sky
hello trees
father intent on us if you know the
reference it’s a sort of sense of
actually just being alive noticing the
footfall on the ground is enough when
we’re walking from the car or from the
bus to where we have to go that actually
turns out to be enough so let’s just do
another short meditation and just focus
on the soles of our feet for a moment so
if you just put the cells or feet back
down on the ground and let’s see if it’s
possible to notice what it’s like to be
breathing but actually also to notice
that the soles of our feet are also part
of our body we don’t often take our
attention there see if it’s possible to
just let the eyes close or the lower the
gaze and notice what’s going on now if
you feel nothing from the soles of your
feet then that’s okay just register a
soles of the feet are quite a convenient
place to rest our attention is a long
way away from the head well five or six
feet so just noticing what’s here maybe
vibration sense of pulsing notice if
some sensations come and go move into
awareness and out of awareness changing
and then allowing that attention to
spread to the rest of the body that
quality of attention a sense of
acknowledging that we’re alive and they
so letting the eyes open and taking you
the room again and let’s now come to the
third and final reason why mindfulness
is grabbing attention and I think it
comes to the science that’s fine
findings from science which mindfulness
came to the West at about the right time
when neuroscience was beginning to get
interested in the science of
consciousness and so there’s a lot of
neuroscience going on I’m not to go into
much detail I want to start with some
clinical findings because as I said our
interest Jon Teasdale and Zindel Siegel
and mine was to see if we could find a
way of teaching these practices to
people who had been depressed many times
in the past and were known to be very
vulnerable and 75 to 77 percent of
people in our trials had been depressed
for three or more times and what we
found was eight weeks of training in
mindfulness training doing these sort of
practices both in the classes people
come to class it’s not like a therapy
group in which you talk about your
problems you don’t need to speak at all
you just need to come and learn skills
it’s a skills training class in which
people learn the skills of meditation
and eight weeks two hours a week and
then we monitor people for the critical
next 12 months in which we knew from
that from past research so that would be
a critical time if we could get people
through those 12 months it would be
wonderful and we found that 60 in the
first study 66% of people relapsed if
they were just in the control group and
had their usual care antidepressants or
whatever but only 37% of people relapsed
if they’d had this eight weeks of
training so it almost half the risk of
relapse and now studies will be done all
over the world after that first study
and have shown that that’s true whether
it in Switzerland or Toronto or Belgium
or different countries with different
teachers so hovering the risk of relapse
and now studies show that
it’s as good as antidepressants do if
you keep taking your antidepressants you
get about that sort of result so here’s
an alternative or one study shows you
can do it with antidepressants you don’t
have to give up your antidepressants you
can do it as well and still get that
same benefit so that’s I should say that
you should never come off your
antidepressants without consulting a
doctor
lots of people do but it’s worth
depending on what you’re taking it’s
always worth getting medical advice so
that’s one piece of research which is
creating a great deal of interest within
the mental health field because here’s
an alternative and in some parts of the
world where you can’t get access to
expensive medicines but where people
think it’s important because it’s from
the West this important antidepressant
pill but the trouble is that for example
in Vietnam people get their pills from
the pharmacist and they can sometimes
only afford three days supply but three
days supply of antidepressants is not
going to do anything you might get some
side effects but there’ll be no
therapeutic effect but doing this this
can be trained and it can be portable
and it doesn’t depend on external
supports the second sort of research is
research showing that it increases
well-being particularly because of this
coming into contact with the world and
beginning to live your life fully
because many of us rush around all the
time and so we just get into the habit
of rushing and we can have this sort of
an illusion of creative productivity you
know if we just show that we’re rushing
this is just shows how good we are how
busy we are how creative we are how
productive we are actually all the
research shows that just the opposite
takes place and one of the reasons for
that and colleague David Cresswell in
the United States actually measured how
much people were mindful or mindless and
mindless in his case was people who rush
around never taste the food never you
know never think where they’re going or
was forgetting things and so on and not
true many of us of course he emerged
their brains and found that the amygdala
was like stuck on the on position
that part of the brain that’s the
fight/flight so rather than rushing as
it were to get things done the brain is
operating as if you’re running away from
a tiger and that’s extraordinary because
we know that stress actually produces a
tunnel vision in which it destroys
creativity why because actually it
literally does reduce the amount of
information you take in to a tunnel
because we’ve evolved when we’re under
great stress and being chased by a
predator to only see the way from here
to the rabbit hole yeah if you see
rabbits that are getting down the rabbit
hole they don’t look right or left they
don’t play anymore they don’t eat
anymore they just go for the hole so
tunnel vision and that’s what happens in
stress in fact you can do experiments
with what’s called the Snowy pictures
paradigm and that is you show pictures
but they’re all sort of rather covered
in snow and you can’t really see what it
is and the experiment is very simple
it’s as a luggable Rolf Harris question
do you know what it is yet now that also
puts people in layers for the audience
I’m sorry about that and do you know
what is it so you try and guess what it
is and you you take longer if you’re
under stress to get it right because it
seems you’re actually just focusing on
the little bit in the middle but to get
it right you need to see the whole
picture you need to take all it all the
information but you just focus on a
small picture and it’s interesting that
they’ve shown that it that the effect
can be very subtle so you do the Snowy
pictures sort of paradigm you see how
quickly people get it do you know what
it is yet but you ask people either to
press down on the table they’re sitting
at or to put their hand under the table
and just press up now what do you think
that does pressing down or pressing up
can you think of what body movement is
involved in pressing down just think
about that for a moment
you’re pushing away absolutely and what
body movements involved in pushing up
very gentle pushing up is actually
pulling towards and actually what that
does and there’s lots of research on
this that actually if you just push away
or push pull towards the brain is put
into a
a different configuration either
approach or avoidance so for example you
should get people to look at happy or
sad words on the or pleasant or
unpleasant words on the screen and you
say as soon as you see the word tell me
whether it’s pleasant or unpleasant and
well if it’s Pleasant just pull the
joystick towards you if it’s unpleasant
push it away people do that very fast
but if you say if it’s a pleasant word
push the joystick away from you people
take a long time to do that because in
that moment pushing away is not the
instinct so pushing away pulling towards
reconfigures the brain is approach or
avoidance dance and interestingly if you
do this putting your hand under the
table or putting your hand on top of the
table and then you ask people do the
Snowy pictures people who are pressing
down don’t see the pictures as quickly
but people who are pulling towards ducey
they see the whole picture so it turns
out that when we’re under stress and
we’re rushing around we’re actually
trying to avoid something rather than
get things done although we might think
we’re trying to get things done and the
effect of that is actually we don’t see
the whole picture we think we’re being
creative but our minds are as it were
captured in a sort of tunnel vision so
this is a sort of research that’s shown
that uses the brain brain imaging we
know that we can capture that that
reconfiguration of the brain in some of
the work that Richard Davidson has done
in America some of the work we’ve done
at Oxford replicating that you can you
can see the brain configure in the
approach and avoidance position and what
mindfulness training is partly about is
waking up to the actual life that we
live it’s not trying to as it were get
somewhere based on fear it’s actually a
way of discerning what our deepest
values are and living in line with those
values and so just to finish off the
last two minutes let’s do another
meditation and then I’ll read a poem by
so once again just coming and being
aware of where we are and sitting and
noticing the sitting and breathing
noticing that we’re breathing and
noticing what’s going on in our minds
and bodies right now and seeing it’s
possible to allow them to be just as
focusing on the breathing and gathering
the attention letting it a light on the
breath just now wherever we feel the
breath moving not trying to make it
different from how we find it not trying
to control the breath simply allowing it
and then broadening the attention
expanding the attention to take in the
a sense of being complete and whole just
accepting our bodies and ourselves just
and here are some words from our s
Thomas the brightfield I have seen the
Sun break through to illuminate a small
field for a while and gone my way and
forgotten it but that was the pearl of
great price the one field that had the
treasure in it I realize now that I must
life is not hurrying on to a receding
future nor hankering after an imagined
past it is the turning aside like Moses
to the miracle of the lit bush to a
brightness that seemed as transitory as
your youth once but is the Eternity that
and so allowing the eyes to open when
Joseph Campbell once said people who say
say that all we’re looking for is that
we’re all looking for the meaning of
life is that I don’t think that’s what
we’re really seeking I think what we’re
really seeking is the experience of
being alive and the extraordinary
discovery that we can make again and
again is that the Eternity of which are
as Thomas speaks could start with the
soles of your feet thank you very much indeed
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