Christina Feldman continues to discuss the challenges facing the field of mindfulness for the future, and the lessons that can be learnt from the establishment of meditative traditions in Western culture over the last 45 years, in the final part of this blog post series.

Christina Feldman discusses the challenges facing the field of mindfulness for the future, including the questions of ethics and money, in part three of the series.

Christina Feldman examines contemporary mindfulness from its beginnings in the 1970s and the advances made over the last forty years in the field in part two of the series.

Christina Feldman, Insight Meditation Society guiding teacher and co-founder of Gaia House, provides an historical perspective on the mainstreaming of Buddhism in the West in the last forty years in part one of this four-part blog post series. It provides an extraordinary historical and contemporary analysis of the field.

We were visited by Tony Bates, the founding director of Headstrong in Ireland as part of our Oxford Mindfulness Centre Seminar Series. Anna Sonley gives an insight into this talk by Tony, in which he gave a searingly honest account of his year of living mindfully, in which he practiced mindfulness every day for year,, wrote about it in a popular weekly column in The Irish Times and then on the last day of the year was faced with a life threatening health condition.

Ruth Baer, academic visitor at the Oxford Mindfulness Centre from the University of Kentucky, reflects on the Buddhist and psychological perspectives on compassion, ideas originally discussed in an Oxford Mindfulness Centre masterclass with Willem Kuyken and Christina Feldman. Willem and Christina define compassion as the capacity to meet pain with kindness, empathy, equanimity, and patience, and Ruth asks whether through the continued study and practice of mindfulness we can cultivate deep compassion.

We were visited by Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, Royal Society Research Fellow and Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, as part of the Oxford Mindfulness Centre Seminar Series in late 2015. Laura Taylor discusses Sarah-Jayne’s presentation of her research into the adolescent brain, highlighting the differences in adolescent neurocognitive development compared with that of children and young adults.

Willem Kuyken asks whether we have passed a tipping point in the narrative around mental health, and considers what the future will hold as we see greater awareness, normalisation and compassion towards mental health issues. Willem asks whether our schools, NHS, workplaces and criminal justice system can be changed so that they promote and support mental health.

The Mindful Nation UK All-Party Parliamentary Group report launched on 20 October 2015. Journalist and Author Ed Halliwell reflects on this landmark day for the mindfulness field, offering an insight into the launch event in Westminster.

Willem Kuyken and Halley Cohen reflect on the story of Di Cowan, a client in an MBCT class that was part of an MBCT research trial. Di used what he learned to manage his depression, but went on to demonstrate incredible resilience, strength, and compassion in dealing with his health issues using MBCT techniques.