On November 21 2019 I chaired the Developing Mindfulness in Wales Conference in Cardiff, which I have been working on over the last six months. It marks a unique collaboration between mindfulness researchers and teachers, including myself, and the Welsh Government. We are particularly exploring how mindfulness can be integrated into the Health Service, the Education system and training for civil servants. 

The Wales Mindfulness Network Conference site has accounts of what has been happening in each of these areas: Education, Health, Public Sector, Ways of Working. There’s a full account of the conference, with summaries of the speeches here, plus details of what is happening in Education, Health and Public Sector Ways of Working. Here, I want to consider the issues this project raises.

Mark Drakeford’s Challenges

In a sign of how seriously the project is being taken, Mark Drakeford, the Welsh First Minister addressed the gathering. Apparently this was the first time a government leader or First Minister has addressed a mindfulness conference anywhere in the world. He commented that Wales had a long contemplative tradition and offered three challenges.

• Mindfulness in Wales needs to be based on evidence. Good intentions aren’t enough.
• It needs to focus on individuals not in isolation but in relation to others and in communities. This implies a ‘social model of mindfulness’ that reflects the model of distributed leadership that the Welsh Government seeks to follow. 
• And it must pay attention to the causes as well as the consequences of social distress. This means mobilising people to work collaboratively to address those underlying causes. 

These challenges show the FM’s caution about this project. They suggest a concern (which other commentators have also expressed) that mindfulness can be based on sentiment rather than evidence, can reinforce the individualisation that neoliberalism fosters, and can address symptoms of what is wrong with society, such as stress, and palliate the desire for social change, rather than harnessing it. At the same time his willingness to make them suggests that he takes this project seriously – he spoke for 25 minutes – and considers mindfulness a serious social movement with some potential.

Responding to the First Minister 

 I offer here some responses, or at least reflections on how we can proceed. My own background is that of a mindfulness who has tried to innovate to address some of the issues the FM raised. But I also approach these through my experience of exploring the social contribution of Buddhism, as a writer and broadcaster, of working with The Mindfulness Initiative in relation to the UK parliament, and as a member of the group that has been engaging with the Welsh Government. In doing so I suggest that we distinguish three areas that have a bearing on this work.

• Challenges in introducing mindfulness and Mindfulness Based Programmes in the public sector 

The FM’s challenge that the things we introduce should be based on evidence has been addressed over several decades, especially in Health and Education. The strength of this evidence base varies between sectors, and even the strongest evidence is sometimes challenged. However, in practice the effectiveness of mindfulness is accepted in certain areas, especially in MBCT for depression relapse and as a support for the wellbeing of staff and students in Education. That leaves an ‘implementation challenge’ and the collaboration with the Welsh Government involves considering together what these are and how they can be addressed. Much of the work we have done so far is on this level, and there is a long way to go.

 2. Mindfulness as a paradigm for a different approach to Public Services

Introducing mindfulness into established systems means that they must fit into those systems as they already exist. For example, MBCT is one of a range of psychological therapies that are approved within the Matrics Cymru framework and it is usually taught by clinical psychologists operating within Mental Health Services. These structures have their own approaches to service users and, explicitly or implicitly, their own values and ways of understanding the mind. 

 Like other mindfulness teachers and practitioners, I believe that mindfulness itself implies a set of values. These follow from its concern with the mind, mental states and mental attitudes and a sense that some are more conducive than others to happiness and understanding. I also believe that these often differ from the values that are instantiated within most organisations and public services. Fully adopting a mindful approach therefore means changing those institutions in the light of what we learn through personal practice: developing ‘mindful’ schools, hospitals and so on. 

 This is a larger ambition than just teaching mindfulness within these institutions, and I don’t know of a comprehensive account of what this might mean in practice. As a starting point I would point to two significant areas

1.  Mindfulness involves the ‘teacher’ as well as the learner. Mindfulness training courses expect trainees to be practitioners and to teach from their experience because, fundamentally their role is to communicate a particular way of being and relating to experience. This is a radical demand on professionals, but it is fundamental to the mindfulness community’s conception of good practice. The principle here is that collective change can start with personal change. This has implications beyond the realm of mindfulness teaching. It suggests that how people in responsibility think and feel will shape their behaviour and communication and therefore their effect on others. This is, to some degree, a matter of common sense, but mindfulness contributes in two main ways. It offers a method for shifting mental states that has proved simple, flexible and accessible; and mindfulness has come to represent, or even stand in for, a much broader set of concerns around emotional intelligence and how to foster it. ‘Mindfulness’ is often a rallying point for professionals who are unhappy with the managerial and institutional culture within which they operate.

 2. The next area is how the culture of the organisation as a whole. Specific interventions, will inevitably be undermined when the ethos of the institution is at odds with those of the intervention. So will Mindfulness Based Programmes be forced to fit into existing institutional paradigms, or can they alter the institution itself?  Mark Drakeford’s second challenge – that we must regard individuals as social beings, not simply as isolated individual – also suggests the need for institutions to change. This area has been explored much less than the role of mindfulness for individuals, but I have some tentative suggestions about what it can mean in practice:

• The first suggestion was made by Mark Drakeford himself. His discussion of the importance of distributed leadership involved a critique of overly hierarchical structures and mindsets. The alternative model he proposed is one that is more self-aware and cognisant of the limiting effects of hierarchies and power structures. The Mindfulness Based Behavioural Insights and Leadership course developed by Rachel Lilley is designed to address these issues among public sector leaders. 
• A second suggestion concerns the radical nature of the attitude at the core or mindfulness courses of turning towards difficulties with an attitude of openness and acceptance. As formulated by Jon Kabat Zinn in his seminal book, Full Catastrophe Living (1991), this challenges the predominant medical paradigm which views physical or mental health difficulties as problems to be fixed through medical interventions. It recognises the role of the patient in addressing the causes of their suffering; and in education, by analogy, it emphasises the role of the student in their own maturation and wellbeing. The model has changed since 1991, and mindfulness is an ally of those changes, which still have a long way to go.
• Beyond this, the psychological understanding behind MBCT tells us that, for individuals, ruminating on the discrepancy between one’s actual experience and an imagined ideal is a key driver of stress and depression. A more helpful alternative, which is taught on mindfulness courses, is turning towards present moment experience with an attitude of kindness and curiosity. If we hypothesise an analogy between individual psychology and how organisations operate, this points to the problems in running large organisations such as the public services by setting targets and monitoring results. The alternative is not necessarily to abandon targets altogether, but to balance them with an appreciation of the qualities that make for good healthcare or education and are hard to measure, such as care and compassion.
• A final reflection concerns the language we use. In engaging with this work I have found myself drawn into a world of acronyms and organisational jargon. The language is abstract and exclusive and quite at odds with the mindfulness movement’s concern to be concrete, inclusive and embodied.

 The ‘social model of mindfulness’ that Mark Drakeford proposed is already being explored by mindfulness researchers and practitioners, but we are just at the start of this work. My reflection here is that an effective social model must reflect what disciplines such as the social sciences and economics have to tell us, but also, and perhaps fundamentally, draw on the lessons of mindfulness practice itself.

 3. Finally, there is the role of mindfulness in wider social change. Mark Drakeford challenged the conference to develop mindfulness in Wales ways that address the causes as well as the consequences of social distress and suggested that this meant mobilising people to work collaboratively to address those underlying causes. 

 The FM had relatively little to say about this, perhaps because of time constraints, but I take it as a challenge to reflect on what we believe supports this sort of social change and how the mindfulness community itself needs to adapt. Cardiff University’s project of profiling mindfulness teachers in the UK will help us recognise more clearly the character and constraints upon this movement. 

One important dimension is developing models of mindfulness in the community, peer-led projects and overcoming social and economic barriers to training in mindfulness. We also need to recognise the financial and economic weakness of the UK mindfulness movement which limits its capacity to choose its models or address large social issues. Most of the resources for this are are within the public sector. It might be that initiatives of the sort need to occur with the public sector, in which case the FM’s challenge is to Health and Education policy. Another is that we need more third sector mindfulness teaching organisations that are connected to their local communities, but developing these will require funding if this aspiration is to be realised. Again, this is an area that requires much deeper exploration and research fi we are to understand the models that will help this work develop. 

Concluding

I have listed issues and challenges in this work, but perhaps the most significant element is that we are having this discussion at all. Mindfulness has moved very quickly from the fringes and is becoming a force for change. Collaboration with government offers the opportunity to magnify this effect and, was the stakes are raised, the FM’s caution is understandable. My own excitement about this process stems from a faith that the mindfulness movement possesses resources and potential that mean it can rise to his challenges and add something fresh, all of its own.