"Men ought to know that from the human brain and from the brain only arise our pleasures, joys, laughter, and jests as well as our sorrows, pains, griefs and tears.... It is the same thing which makes us mad or delirious, inspires us with dread and fear;…..brings us sleeplessness, inopportune mistakes, aimless anxieties, absent-mindedness and acts that are contrary to habit...." Hippocrates
Spinoza, the famous sixteenth century philosopher anticipated the neurological discoveries that would come much later; Freud similarly predicted in the 1930s that psychoanalysis had by then run its course and that we would have to look for a synthesis between psychology and biology in order to treat patients effectively.
Mindfulness has its roots in ancient Hindu, Buddhist and Taoist teachings and can be described as the attempt and intention to stay deliberately connected to the ‘here and now’ as it is unfolding in the present moment, without judgement or expectation.
In a secular context, mindfulness is attracting increasing interest among psychotherapists and medical practitioners as a non-pharmacological means of dealing with a range of problems such as anxiety, depression, stress, chronic pain, anger, certain types of cancer, psoriasis, eating disorders and addictions. Recent clinical research and findings about the brain and the mind challenge us to approach therapy and medicine in new ways.
Medical and psychological research and interventions have been integrating mindfulness tools since the late 1970s and to date there are more than 900 publications supporting the validity and breadth of this healing approach.
Thus one could argue that the time is ripe to look at mindfulness interventions in more detail and from a number of different viewpoints.
The conference at UEL on 20th and 21st November, 2009 aims to introduce both specialists working in healthcare, psychological and preventative care, as well as interested individuals who wish to inform themselves of cutting edge health interventions, to the field and applications of Mindfulness.
Day One will cover a variety of presentations by leading researchers and practitioners in the fields of Neuroscience, Buddhist Psychology, Psychotherapy and others who have implemented Mindfulness into their work.
Day Two will offer a number of presentations and a series of workshops where participants will be introduced to working with Mindfulness applications.
© 2009
For a general description of these pages and an explanation of how they should work with screenreading equipment please follow this link: Link to general description
For further information on this web site's accessibility features please follow this link: Link to accessibility information
The following message does not apply to screenreader users:
You will still be able to access all the essential content of this web site, but it will not look, or function, exactly as intended.
