Stewardship of the Mindfulness Ecosystem

 

Out of MBSR and related mindfulness courses there has been huge growth in the use of mindfulness practices, often backed by strong scientific evidence. MBSR and its relatives are nevertheless part of a much wider mindfulness ecosystem that goes back millennia and spans a number of spiritual traditions, psychological approaches, and meditation practices. Despite growing awareness of mindfulness practice and its value, demand for formal MBSR (and related) courses has declined. This presentation will invite a holistic perspective on the mindfulness ecosystem today, including spiritual traditions, and explore some barriers to growth. There will be some suggestions around pedagogy, some suggestions about how a wider representation of views might be brought in to aid the spread of mindfulness practice, and how we might learn from the longstanding spiritual traditions regarding teaching and ongoing lifelong support for mindfulness practitioners.

 

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Ken Lunn is a trustee of the Mindfulness in Schools Project, had 7 years in a leadership role in the Mindfulness Network, was chair of Jamyang Buddhist Centre in Leeds for 6 years, the conference director for the International Conference on Mindfulness 2024, has an MA in Mindfulness Based Approaches from Bangor University, and teaches mindfulness in West Yorkshire. 

 

Ken retired from a senior role in the NHS in 2014 where he was responsible for a wide range of clinical information standards that underpin many aspects of electronic medical records. He represented the NHS in various international standards organisations, and took a strong interest in open source software and standards. He has a PhD in Computer Science from Keele University (1982) and has long been an advocate of systems thinking for many years, looking at the whole system and how that can bring a wider perspective to areas where there can be some difficult to explain or intractable problems.