It was exciting to meet Jon Kabat-Zinn at the Mindfulness in Society Conference, in Chester.

I am delighted to be presenting a research poster at the Centre for Mindfulness Research and Practice (CMRP) Mindfulness in Society Conference 2013.  This will be on children’s experiences of learning mindfulness to help develop their attention skills.

Today I taught a shiatsu class.  One theme was on developing awareness of the quality of the awareness with which the receiver’s energy field is sensed – and to cultivate positive qualities such as kindliness, friendliness, caring.  This mindfulness-based approach supported the students in developing that “connection” between the one receiving and the one giving the treatment. Furthermore, by encouraging both the giver and receiver to focus on present moment sensations (arising and passing away, moment by moment) there was an even clearer sense of congruence or resonance between their energy fields.  Overall the mindfulness approach supported a deepening of “connection” and potentially enhanced the positive effects of the treatment.  The between shiatsu with mindfulness is more fully described in an article by Sonia Moriceau.

Yesterday I delivered a day’s workshop, introducing mindfulness practices to a group of professionals, including educational psychologists and inclusion managers.  It was well received and I hope forward to delivering it again.

This week, on 12 December 2012, I submitted my doctoral thesis.  The research explored children’s experiences of learning mindfulness to help develop their attentional skills.  It was conducted in a mainstream primary school in London and involved designing and implementing the Mindfulness-Based Attention Training (MBAT) intervention.  During the intervention, the children drew pictures of their experiences of practicing mindfulness.  When the children were later interviewed, these pictures were used as prompts and their accounts were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenlogical Analysis (IPA).   For more information on the research click here.