The  criticisms that can be legitimately levelled at Mindfulness Based Approaches boil down to a single issue: the entire mindfulness movement is based around eight-week courses. Teachers of secular mindfulness, along with others such as Buddhists, need to face this limitation squarely and help people sustain their practice after the courseÂ
I have been teaching eight-week mindfulness courses for seven years and I have grown to love the activity and been deeply inspired by their transformative effect on people’s lives.However, amid all the excitement of ‘the mindfulness boom’, I think all of us who are involved in this movement need to look honestly  the limits of what we offer and consider how we can address them.
Many points are made discussions about the MBSR and MBCT courses, both critical and in their defence. But I have come to think that the criticisms that can legitimately be levelled at MBAs boil down to a single issue: the entire mindfulness movement is based around courses that include just eight sessions and a practice day for whatever you wish to convey.
Eight weeks is long enough to learn meditation in enough depth and detail to continue it and even to have a powerful glimpse of a different way of living. But every serious meditator knows that it’s hard to maintain a practice without contact with others who are doing the same, especially those who are more experienced. Some teachers offer follow on courses and ways for  graduates to keep in touch. I do this myself and applaud others’ efforts to do the same. But many teachers don’t, and in general what we offer is quite unstructured.
The eight week format constrains what mindfulness courses can include. Critics, especially Buddhists, sometimes complain that the courses do not include an ethical framework: they are taught as part of pre-deployment conditioning by the US Marines for example. Others believe that some form of compassion-based practice is essential in meditation is to be balanced. In fact, these elements are implicit in the MBSR course, but there is no time to make them fully explicit. Over eight weeks the course does certain things very well, and if you shoe-horn in extra practices (some variants that I have taught do include loving kindness meditation, for example), then things start to feel very squeezed. The problem isn’t what you cover in eight weeks: it is that there are only eight weeks.
From what I have seen and experienced for myself, I think the fundamental reasons for the eight-week format are economic. MBSR started as a healthcare intervention and MBCT was developed as a course to help people avoid relapsing into depression. A course is recognised form of workplace training and eight weeks is a manageable commitment for people seeking a way to work with stress or another condition.
In other words, a mindfulness course is a product that fits with people’s expectations of what this sort of product will look like and in which they are willing to invest. Mindfulness teachers like me can then earn a living by offering that product – typically a ‘brand’ such as MBSR or MBCT – to organisations and the public. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that; but I am alert to the limitations it brings and try to seek ways to mitigate them. More subtly, it frames participants expectations. They are in the familiar and safe role of a consumers.
The eight-week format also skews the research into the effectiveness of mindfulness, the majority of which focuses on the effects of participating in a single programme. We know relatively little about how many people continue to meditate or use mindfulness practices in the years after the course or how effective they continue to be; and I have seen no research into what helps people to continue with the practice.
Several things follow from this for those directly involved in the mindfulness movement.
- We need much more research into the long-term effects of mindfulness training and what helps people to maintain the practice.
- Mindfulness trainers who take on this point will probably seek to help people sustain their practice, for example by offering follow-on courses and other events. This is an area where mindfulness trainers can co-operate, offering activities to the pool of people who have graduated from all the mindfulness courses that are taught in a particular city.
- We should be discussing what additional teaching will support and deepen mindfulness practice over the long term.
- Buddhists have a role to play here, offering precisely the holistic, long-term settings for practice that mindfulness course graduates need. However, they must learn how to relate to this group. Mindfulness course graduates aren’t necessarily seeking Buddhism and they will come with particular needs, especially relating to whatever took them on the course in the first place. All this requires sensitivity from Buddhists; and the same is true for those with any other spiritual or religious background who offer support to mindfulness course graduates.
- A particular instance of what Buddhists already offer is retreats. However, the retreat centres I know have not adapted their offerings to meet this new group. I am wary of sending vulnerable people with just eight weeks experience of meditation on the intensive silent meditation retreats offered by places like the retreat centres associated with the Insight Meditation Movement. Rather than assuming that a retreat must take a particular form, we should be asking, what do people in this group actually need and how can we best offer it?
More broadly, I think we need to think in terms of establishing a culture that values and supports meditation and mindfulness. That’s essential if mindfulness practice is to fulfil its potential to transform individuals and society.
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Excellent article Vishvapani – agreed, very important issue and you make some excellent points. My (partial) solution is to send out emails to increase engagement. I send out an email every day of the course, and then weekly. People certainly appreciate them – I recently offered a few weeks of increased frequency, and over 40% of my graduates took up the offer.
I really agree with your points about Buddhists being more aware of and open to this group, both in city centres and retreat centres. And I like your idea of pooling follow-up very much,
Good points, and from a position of understanding both contexts of practice. Thanks for posting this!
Thank you for this. You put into words many of the issues I myself have been grappling with as a Buddhist asked to do short -term, fairly diluted versions of Mindfulness-Based practices with my clients in my work as an Art Therapist.
Thanks for this Vishvapani. I actually think there is more going on to deal with these issues than you suggest. The UK network of mindfulness teacher trainer organisations arranges practice days around the UK that are for anyone from any mindfulness modality. Admittedly these are infrequent, but its a start. Goodwill across modalities is a central issue so we are able to share resources and learning and make sure that any opportunities we create are open to as many people who have been through 8 week courses as possible.
Regarding the Buddhists/retreat centre issues: I feel I have successfully been crossing this divide for about ten years with a retreat I run at taraloka that is called ‘One moment at a time’ that is, in many respects, a Buddhist Breathworks retreat. Taraloka have been very open indeed to this and it is now one of their most popular retreats. Many people who come through Breathworks courses also go on to become involved with Triratna and we even have a group of women in Manchester who are preparing for ordination. Sometimes there is suspicion from within the Buddhist world, but my sense is this is gradually lessening and it has not been my personal experience working at the Manchester Buddhist Centre, nor Taraloka. We also run follow on days and groups at Breathworks and one of the most important events we run is an annual ‘grads’ residential retreat for anyone who has been through an 8 week programme from any of our centres and locations. Ed even came over from Canada one year having learning mindfulness from us in NZ! I would like to see more of this sort of thing happening. Not that difficult to arrange and incredibly inspiring and rewarding.
On the secular front: I suppose I have a kind of ‘cast the net wide’ approach – many people may fall by the wayside but you never know what seeds you are sowing. We have been teaching staff our stress course at the Dept of Health and have got very good results from simple pre-post evaluations. The project lead there now wants to get in-house practice groups going with mentors who we train up. This seems a good development to me in terms of achieving sustainability and support.
Thanks for these comments. As I say, Vidyamala, I applaud the efforts of those who are offering more that the first eight weeks, and I think we share the same perspective on the need for this. Perhaps Breathworks can offer some models to the broader world of mindfulness training.
My point is that such models are badly needed and I don’t think the broader mindfulness world has grasped this so far. The same goes for retreats. What you do and what Taraloka does in general is, in my view, the way forward. I’d like to see many more retreat centres looking to these examples and understanding the issues that are involved.
Vish, at the risk of endangering my secular cred, all I can say is, “Amen, brother!” I have the great blessing of living in Madison Wisconsin, where the UW Health Mindfulness Program has taken this challenge on directly. They offer twice-monthly drop in sessions for anyone who has completed an 8-week course anywhere, as well as special “graduate” classes and daylong and multi-day residential retreats. The drops ins are free (donations requested) and the other stuff is very reasonably priced. Katherine Bonus and her team of teachers are wonderful, very down-to-earth and compassionate folks.
Your appeal to Buddhists is especially well taken. Rather than complain about “McMindfulness” or “Buddhism lite,” why not help create non-sectarian communities where people can come to share their practice? Let’s put the judgmentalism aside and act from compassion to help people sustain and deepen their dharma practice.
I am posting this comment on behalf of Robert Ellis. For some reason the site is refusing to allow him to post himself. If anyone else is having the same problem, please let me know.
You can see more about Robert’s work at http://www.middlewaysociety.org
This article highlights the gap between meditation in Buddhist and therapeutic contexts – a gap that very much needs plugging. Apart from the practical issues you highlight with a lack of continuity for people who have done meditation as therapy, there is also a more basic problem of a lack of provision who those who don’t fit either category – i.e. who recognise that meditation needs to be part of a wider context of practice, but don’t want that practice to be tied to metaphysical commitments.
I’m glad that efforts are being made both from the Buddhist and therapeutic sides to plug the gap, but I’m not sure that these will be sufficient, because the more basic problem is the assumptions that each start with and the false divide between them. This is an issue I have been thinking about recently in relation to the Middle Way Society, and how we could offer an alternative between the Buddhist and therapeutic options. There is, I think, a distinctive Middle Way approach to meditation that neither appeals to the authority of the Buddhist tradition nor limits itself to decontextualized therapeutic intervention. Effective meditation in relation to, for example, posture, loyalty to specific ‘practices’, and goal/process orientation also requires constant use of the Middle Way as a principle of judgement. There are still practical issues to consider before Middle Way meditation classes run by the society become a reality (whether to run ‘courses’ or something more open-ended is one of these), but I wonder how far this model could also serve people coming from either the Buddhist or the therapeutic/’secular’ side and concerned about the limitations of each.
Best wishes,
Robert
I heard JKZ speak in Glasgow last year. Someone asked him why the course was 8 weeks long and he shrugged and replied that 8 weeks was the length of the university seminar! I wonder if the real problem with the 8-week MBSR is the endowment of an undue reverence on what was simply devised as a pragmatic solution?
We teach the 8-week MBSR, but we also offer shorter courses, brief introductory sessions, day retreats and monthly practice sessions. Our evidence strongly suggests that people gain benefit from a range of different offerings; and that the extent to which they benefit does not co-relate to the length of the offering.
I suspect that the natural human quality of mindfulness is not something that is easily contained in the narrow confines of any packaging that we may design.
I wonder if this thread is still active? Recently I took the course locally. It finished last week. I had been working with the book, Full Catastrophe Living on my own at home. I was having great success when I saw a flyer for the class at my local library. I excitingly went to the orientation and signed up thinking the person running the course would give me great insights. She said she took the teachers course in Mass., was a meditator for 14 years and a social worker with a private psychotherapy practice. I attended the classes with great enthusiasm and did the work at home as I already had been doing it on my own. It was the fourth class that I realized the instructor was woefully lacking. I could go on for hours describing how poorly she knew the material or how unmindful she was. It was really insane. And frankly she increased my stress and anger a 100 fold by doing things like misplacing my credit card info to just appearing to be too tired to instruct class after class. In fact when I told her how upset I was about her misplacing my credit card info she told me she works 60 hours a week. I guess she was implying she was tired. I have CFS and didn’t sign up to take a course with a tired person. I assure you this is just the tip of the iceberg that was this instructor. I know I’m not supposed to be judgmental and angry but I am disabled and feel like I was scammed. When I sent her another email after the 7th class when she refused to instruct while people talked about feeding their pet turtle and sensing the male and female energy in the room, you know crazy stories that have nothing to do with mindful meditation experience, I had to sit through it in excruciating pain thinking, will she ever stop this and talk about meditation? She wrote back she was sorry that I needed to share my disappointment, and that was it. She never asked anyone for feedback and clearly thinks she’s above us all. This instructor had no presence, no compassion and no knowledge or skill.I want to ask for a refund, but my anger is so strong I don’t see the point. I feel like its better to just forget her, the opposite of mindfulness and also I feel complicit in her scam and fearful that she will take advantage of other people living on disability.She will just ignore me like my previous messages. So I think a clear problem with the 8 week course is there are too many or at least for me one too many people who are fraudulent in their claim of being MBSR instructors. I wonder what anyone thinks?
Ethical standards are implicit in Buddhism but, really, delivering any kind of training demands the teacher/trainer to give value for money and apply themselves fully. For my first couple of years in (Science) teaching I worked around 65 hours per week (contact plus non contact) it was extremely hard but that didn’t remove the obligation to provide a quality service. A mindfulness teacher must always be mindful of the financial cost to the people on the course; they are often in dire need of this wonderful practice.
I teach Mindfulness and see people on an individual basis and share a number of the reservations that have been voiced about how secular mindfulness is proceeding but also have a great deal of respect for the good practice that is being developed and a feeling of excitement about how quickly it is taking root, all over the place, something I never expected to see in my life time.My main hope is that the demand of the market doesnt water down the quality of what is being provided. I have been meditating formally for 26 years although I actually began on my own initiative at 10 years old. I didnt know then that’s what I was doing but the need to be alone and quiet and ‘look at my true nature’ arose spontaneously in me at that age as an overwhelming need. I now have a daily practice of between 4-5 hrs of ‘formal’ meditation practice as well as training myself in kitchen sink mindfulness or continuous awareness the rest of the time. I make a silent solitary retreat for 5 days out of every 25 days. I am doing this without affilation to any group or organisation. I believe of any ‘discipline,’ with the art of teaching mindfulness mindfully, there is no substitute for actual hours served. For ayone looking for a course, 8 weeks or otherwise, I would say don’t be shy about asking the teacher what their own actual practice consists of and how long they’ve been at it. External qualifications such as Msc’s and the like are fairly meaningless in comparison to this. Many of the mindfulness teachers around now haven’t been engaged in their own practice for more than 4 or 5 years and I would say its not nearly enough. One of the advantages of learning in a Buddhist context is that there will be a whole spectrum of people with different levels of experience and insight, particular strengths and slants and this is immensley helpful.In most cases there is no onus on becoming a Buddhist. ALSO THERE IS PARTICULAR SKILL IN GROUP FACILITATION AND EXPERIENTIAL learning which again cannot be learnt overnight. I trained as a group leader with Leeds Development Education centre back in the 80’s with some of the most innovative facilitators of experiential learning around at that time and I think its really important to know how to create a group culture of friendliness and respect and also be able to access the group wisdom of people who may not have very much mindfulness meditation experience as such but often have immense life experience and compassion which everyone can draw on if the teacher is able to bring this to the fore through mindful sharing without chat beginning to dominate, for example. I have been teaching mindfulness in lots of different formats including residential retreats, themed days,ongoing grouos and now 8 week and 10 week courses. I also have reservations about the lack of follow up with the 8 week course. I live in a rural area in Southwest Scotland where there is very little of the kind of diversity of courses and ongoing support you might find in a city context. When I talk to people who have trained with me or someone else the main difficulty people encounter is keeping the practice going on their own once the course has finished. In my experience of my own mindfulness and observing other people especially in the early stages, it can actually take years for people to get beyond ‘trying to be mindful’ or ‘trying to meditate’ and actually get a strong natural feeling for it and a concrete visceral understanding of what mindfulness actually is, what the relationship betwen the mindfulness support and just dwelling restfully in awareness is and ultiamately the simplicity and glaringly obvious nature of mind/I am itself. To get people to a stage where they have some sense that they can actually flex the ‘mindfulness muscle’, as it is being termed with ease and confidence can take quite long time. What this means is people who have done an 8 week course think they have ‘done’ mindfulness and quite a small percentage of people will ongoingly intergrate it into their daily lives without substantial support and follow up. I was very disappointed when mindfulness started going through the universities and having an Msc or Ma became one of the main badges for teaching it. It’s a big funding stream and there’s a market -mid life health care professionals just as Bangor university aimed its courses for mindfulness teachers at ‘busy’ health care professionals. Do they make the best mindfulness teachers? Not necessarily. Most of the people I see 1-1 are busy health care professionals whose stress levels have reached critical levels as they try to maintain themselves doing a ‘mission impossible’ job with a mission impossible case load. But they do have the money to pay for the course, recognise the need and potential benefits for themselves and their clients and want to bring it in. But I think making it into an academic course of study shows a real lack of imagination and has made it market led and over professionalised rather than mindfulness led. Evidence based research- yep- important, shared good practice and applicability to different educational and health care settings-yes, also important. Years served as a mindfulness meditation practitioner and group facilitator with a balanced life rather than a ‘busy life’- still no short cuts!
I learnt structured meditation with the friends of the Western Buddhist Order and developed it with the secular organisation of the teacher Thicht Nhat Hahn the commmunity of inter being and have learnt from dozens of other teachers and individuals including my dog probably my best mindfulness teacher to date-seriously and also in the last few years I’ve done some modular training with Rob Nairn of the mindfulness association. Ive also read about every mindfulness manual and variation on the 8 week course thats around and created my own generic health approach- otherwise known as ‘getting the basics in place.- sleep diet exercise hydration, minimising screen time etc because these are wildly out of balance in many peoples lives and without a strong base mindfulness doesnt stand much chance of flourishing. Although Jon Kabat Zin is credited with having created secular mindfulness the ground has been laid for years by buddhist organisations consciously making mindfulness methods available to non buddhists and I think its always worth remembering that the Buddha himself was the original secular mindfulness teacher. He primarily encouraged everyone to try things out in their own life to experience the benefits first hand. There was no doctrine of any kind. His whole life was devoted to methods which could alleviate suffering and promote kindness.Very Very simple and Simplicity to some extent is getting sacrificed by the professionalising and marketing of mindfulness. I think of mindfulness as having the potential to be The Friendly Revolution, to restore the values and ways of being our souls long for. A secular spirituality to restore depth in an age which has been dominated by consummerism and shallowness and a profound betrayal of its children and young people who are now, according to Mark Williams of Oxford University, experiencing levels of anxiety which would have been considered clinical in the 1950’s. What a tragedy. The best time to learn mindfulness I would say is from about the age of 7/8 upwards preferably so that by the time they reach adolescence, the young person already owns it. We could really be seeing a friendly revolution then. warmest regards Debra x
Oustanding comments. Never come across a mindfulness blog like this one. These comments are of the highest quality. Thanks to Vish for opening up a critical debate and I believe has been the big unspoken topic on the 8 week MBA tidal wave that has washed over us.
Vidyamala and Deb Hall too. Great comments and insight.
Deb would you post a link to your website ? I would like to train with you.
John, sorry you had a crap experience. There are a lot of double degreed academic types being rolled out of the MBSR with very little personal practice under their belt. An MA or even PHd is useful but secondary to a good decade of daily personal practice.
I teach the Mindful Schools 6 week program in schools here in Canada and also teach the Mindfulness Based Relapse Prevention to recovering addicts (particularly recovering parents of small children) in recovery. I have 5 plus years daily practice (OK, I am 5 years south of my own reccomendation:)
It’s funny beacuse I think the whole mindfulness thing will be commodified to death, in the way yoga has been destroyed in the US. Yoga is a bit of joke now. I hope we don’t go that way. I could see courses in mindful skydiving or something..
Although my practice and approach is largely secular, I now see why it’s so important to have a solid ethical base in a spiritual tradition so we don’t go the way of the yoga ‘industry’.
Why don’t you guys all get together and teach or put on a retreat. Seriously, I think you could knock it out of the park.
Have only just discovered your site – particularly appreciated your views here.
Hello Vishvapani
Good points! – I have been addressing these same issues in some articles recently.
Just to mention – I am on the BOD of Dharma Centre of Canada, and we offer retreat support that is extremely flexible and wold indeed fit with secular participants pursuing a less Buddhist and not necessarily full silent retreat.
To book retreats, anyone can write me directly.
Best,
GJ
647 292 5415
I only started meditating about a year ago, with the aid of some books and my computer. I would like to do some more formal training and have been considering an 8 week mindfulness course. I came upon this blog through looking for reviews and comments on courses.
Thanks to everyone for their comments on here. I feel that I have learnt so much from reading them.
John’s experience has made me decide not to be too hasty and to find out more about the teacher before signing up to a course. The idea that I may be left feeling I’d just purchased a “commodity” which I could just as easily purchase on line has been holding me back.
I particularly loved reading Debra’s comments and like Max, felt immediately drawn to wanting to learn from you. Might this possible? How could I reach you?
Once again, thank you all for your wisdom.
Love Sara
Dear Colleagues! Congratulations for the article. I identifiy deeply with all your words. It touchs me, it makes me angry and several other emotions ….as a YOga and mindfulness and Meditation teacher for 13 years. I try respect the “certifications, and rankings, and reviews and ratings” and all other capitalistic thinking to quick solve problems and make money. But …somestimes, I get really sad about all this. The way I got really sad when 10 years ago yoga become almost “a joke” like the colleague above says. It is sad but its true. My hairdresser this week said the yoga is a Sport….i was terrified and asked why. She answer that everyone at the GYM thought that….
So thank you all for reflecting on this subject…and being critical about this. Best wishes to all from Portugal!!
I wholeheartedly echo the sentiments that a week long retreat is often too much for a lot of people. I have just struggled with a 5 day silent retreat and I teach mindfulness! However with my past experience I stuck with it as I knew how much benefit I would get from it in the end. Is there not a gap for more relaxed mindfulness retreats to help those having done the 8 week course but not fully immersed in meditation in their daily lives. Maybe a retreat that allowed a range of diets and not just vegetarian, lots of time to relax amongst led meditations and maybe the odd glass of wine?! There must be some middle ground between today’s hectic society and a full on Buddhist retreat. Am I alone in this thinking?
I have been doing meditation from 2 years but I usually do it at home. Never enrolled myself in any kind of course.