Chapter 20

About Ten Resources for Further Study

In This Chapter

Checking out websites

Browsing through books

Taking advantage of apps

Looking into training

This chapter points you towards a host of resources which can help you develop mindfulness in your daily working life. Whether you’re a dedicated online surfer, a bookworm or in search of some face-to-face guidance and training, dive in: There’s something here for you.

Whizzing through Websites

Websites devoted to the subject of mindfulness abound. To make your web surfing easier, here are a few good ones.

Mindfulnet.org

Juliet launched Mindfulnet.org in 2010 to provide easy access to a wide range of information on mindfulness. Its packed with free resources and information. Site users tell me Mindfulnet .org is a good first port of call if you’re trying to find out more on the subject. Its and is designed to be accessible to newcomers and mindfulness professionals alike. The website includes informationon the following:

• How mindfulness can be applied in the workplace, schools and medical practice
• Research into mindfulness
• Making the business case for mindfulness
• The bi-annual Mindfulness at Work Conference
• Teachers (finding one and training to be one)
• The neuro-science underpinning mindfulness

Check out Mindfulnet at www.mindfulnet.org

Mindful.org

Mindful.org covers all aspects of mindfulness in daily living, including work. It provides information via its website, monthly magazine and social media.

Mindful.org offers new ideas from leaders in the field about mindfulness as it applies to health, happiness, family, career, society and more – and explores the science proving the techniques work. The content on the website continues to grow everyday, and the creative and intelligent ways of offering mindfulness in different settings is impressive. If you want to know more about mindful leadership, mindfulness in the workplace, or just being more mindful in your own life, check out the website from time to time for the latest research and ideas in this exciting, growing field.

Take a look at http://mindful.org

ShamashAlidina.com

When you sign up to Shamash’s site, you can listen to free interviews with leading experts in the field of mindfulness in the workplace, including Chade-Meng Tan, Dan Goleman, Dan Siegel, Frank Bond, Elisha Goldstein and Mirabai Bush. You can also try out his 21 day e-course in mindfulness for free, completed by thousands of people.

Check out shamashalidina.com

Benefitting from Books

Secular books on mindfulness mainly fall into two camps, those on mindfulness-based stress reduction (MSBR) and those on mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT).

MBSR

Jon Kabat-Zinn is regarded as the founder of modern-day mindfulness. Jon developed MBSR in the 1970s and his work was the catalyst for a huge volume of research into the applications of mindfulness. We have met him on a number of occasions and warmly recommend him to you.

Jon has written a number of highly regarded books on mindfulness, including Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life, now in its tenth edition and Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness, updated in 2013.

MBCT

Mark Williams is Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Oxford. He co-developed MBCT and was founding director of the Oxford Mindfulness Centre. Mark is one of the premier researchers in the field of mindfulness worldwide, and has been a pioneer in its development and dissemination. Check out Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Finding Peace in a Frantic World (co-authored with journalist, Danny Penman, 2011) which, unlike many other mindfulness tomes, is a self-help book for a healthy population; it includes lots of real-life examples and is an easy read.

Other books worth a read

We could list hundreds of books in this section but manage to restrict ourselves to just four:

• Mindfulness For Dummies: by Shamash Alidina: This was Shamash’s first book on mindfulness and is a good general introduction to the whole field of mindfulness, both at home and work, and includes many ways to develop mindful awareness. If you liked the style of this book, you’ll probably enjoy Mindfulness For Dummies too.
• The Mindful workplace: Developing Resilient Individuals and Resonant Organisations with MBSR (Michael Chaskalson) This book, published in 2011 is one of the first books published on mindfulness at work and is full of practical ideas and workplace examples.
• The Mindful Brain: Reflection and Attunement in the Cultivation of Well-Being (Daniel J. Siegel) – this author is co-director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center and executive director of the Mindsight Institute. This book integrates neuro-science research with the ancient art of mindfulness. It describes how personal awareness and attunement can actually stimulate emotional circuits in the brain, leading to a host of benefits.
• Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long (David Rock) – although not specifically a mindfulness book, mindfulness is at its heart. The book is all about understanding how your brain functions and applying this knowledge to your work to help you become more productive and resilient.

Practising with Audios

Mindfulness must be practised – not just read about. And guided mindfulness audios are perfect for the job. Here are two that you may like to try out, in addition to the CD that comes with this book:

• Working with Mindfulness: Developed and narrated by Mirabai Bush – a key contributor to Google’s ‘Search Inside Yourself’ course – this is a set of guided mindfulness exercises that are ideal for use at work. Access them at www.morethansound.net.
• Practicing Mindfulness: In 24 detailed lectures, including guided mindfulness exercises, Professor Mark Muesse teaches the principles and techniques of mindful sitting, the related practice of mindful walking and the highly beneficial use of mindful awareness in many important activities, including eating and driving.

  This programme is a thorough one for anyone who enjoys the lecture format and wants to gain an in-depth understanding of the art of mindfulness. Access at www.thegreatcourses.com.

Reading Up on the Research

Research into mindfulness has grown exponentially in recent years. Finding out how to be more mindful in your approach to work can have a number of benefits from both the individual and corporate perspective, as the research studies described below prove.

• Dane, E. and Brummel, B.J. 2013. Examining workplace mindfulness and its relations to job performance and turnover intention. Human Relations, June – The results of this research conducted in the service industry suggest that, in a dynamic work environment, workplace mindfulness improves job performance and reduces staff turnover.
• Ostafin, B.D. and Kassman, K.T. 2012. Stepping out of history: Mindfulness improves insight problem solving. Consciousness and Cognition, 21(2): 1031–36 – These researchers studied the impact of mindfulness on problem solving and were the first to document a direct relation between mindfulness and creativity.
• Reb, J., Narayanan, J. and Chaturvedi, S. 2012. Leading mindfully: Two studies of the influence of supervisor trait mindfulness on employee well-being and performance (Mindfulness, 2012). This research examines the influence of leaders’ mindfulness on employee well-being and performance. Supervisor mindfulness was positively related to employee job satisfaction and psychological need satisfaction. Furthermore, leader mindfulness was positively related to both overall job performance and organisational citizenship behaviours. The results suggest the potentially important role of leading mindfully in organisations.
• Reb, J., Narayanan, J. and Ho, Z.W. 2013. Mindfulness at work: Antecedents and consequences of employee awareness and absent-mindedness. Mindfulness, (2013) This study examined two aspects of mindfulness in a work setting: employee awareness and employee absent-mindedness. Using two samples, the study found that these two aspects of mindfulness were beneficially associated with employee well-being, as measured by emotional exhaustion, job satisfaction and psychological need satisfaction, and with job performance, as measured by task performance, organisational citizenship behaviours and deviance.

Accessing Apps

Lots of mindfulness apps are available for smart phones – some good, some not so good! In some ways, frequent use of mobile devices is bad for mindfulness, but used selectively and not slavishly, they can be a real help.

• Mindfulness Meditation: This app is an eight-week set of daily activities that help you establish and maintain regular mindfulness practice. It includes six guided meditations of varying length, from 5 to 40 minutes and eight talks on integrating mindfulness into everyday life. Available from www.mentalworkout.com/store/programs/mindfulness-meditation
• Insight Timer: This free app includes a range of lovely Tibetan singing bowl sounds to guide you through your practice. You can use it as a timer and to record your experiences if you wish to. Recent updates include guided meditations by teachers. The upgrade version (paid) includes interval bells, a wider variety of bells and an optional daily meditation reminder. The app is available from Google Play and iTunes.
• Mindfulness Bell: This app is a nice simple one that costs less than £1. You can set it to ring periodically during the day to give you the opportunity to consider what you’re currently doing your state of mind while you’re doing it. Available from Google Play and iTunes.
• Walking Meditations: This app is designed to lead you through walking meditation. You can set the duration of and your intent for the walk. You receive instructions and reminders as you’re walking. Available from Google Play and iTunes.

Locating Training Providers

You can find mindfulness training providers the length and breadth of the UK, but here are three we particularly recommend – including our own, of course!

Mindfulness at Work Training

Mindfulness at Work Training (MAWT) delivers the six-week workplace course outlined in this book, developed and delivered by Juliet and Shamash. It combines scientifically proven core elements of the eight-week MBCT syllabus with practical everyday practical applications of mindfulness at work such as mindful meetings, mindful emailing and mindful communication. The mindfulness techniques taught are shorter than those used on traditional courses, but have been proven to be highly effective. For more information, visit http://mawt.co.uk

The Mindfulness Exchange

The Mindfulness Exchange (TME) is a spin-off from the Oxford Mindfulness Centre. It provides mindfulness programmes for the workplace using cognitive scientific principles based on Williams and Penman’s book Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Finding Peace in a Frantic World (see the ‘Benefitting from Books’ section earlier in this chapter for details). The programmes TME offers are scientifically based, but take half the amount of time of standard mindfulness training. TME takes best practice from mindfulness-based research and training in clinical fields and applies it to a business paradigm. Check out http://mindfulness-exchange.com

Mindfulness Works

Michael Chaskalson teaches MBSR in London and at client premises across the UK and internationally. He is the founder and chief executive of Mindfulness Works. Michael coaches senior executives and teaches mindfulness in corporate settings. For more information, visit www.mindfulness-works.com

Identifying Universities and Management Schools Utilising Mindfulness

An increasing number of business schools are embracing mindfulness, offering it within modules or as stand-alone courses, or incorporating it into MBA programmes.

Ashridge Business School incorporates mindfulness into elective modules forming part of the MBA and Diploma leadership programmes. Its ‘The Leader as Coach and Facilitator’ module aims to help leaders to engage with and lead in complex and uncertain environments.

Since 2012 full-time MBA students at Cranfield University’s School of Management have been learning about and applying mindfulness to improve their resilience and personal effectiveness. Mindfulness training forms part of the core curriculum in applied evidence-based personal and leadership development techniques at Cranfield. Anecdotal evidence from its recent MBA graduates suggests that these mindfulness-based techniques have helped them lead more effectively back in the workplace.

On the leadership course at Harvard Business School in the USA, Professor of Management Practice William George focuses on helping business people to better understand their emotions. According to him, ‘It isn’t a lack of intelligence that causes executives to make poor decisions, but a lack of awareness of the feelings that drive their reactions.’

Reflecting on Retreats

If you want to deepen your mindfulness skills, consider attending a mindfulness retreat. Here are a couple:

• Gaia House Meditation Retreat Centre offers silent meditation in the Buddhist tradition. Located within the peaceful beauty of South Devon, check out Gaia House at http://gaiahouse.co.uk
• The Mindful Leadership Foundation exists to support, nurture and develop leaders grappling with the big issues. It runs Mindful Leadership Retreats for people working in the public and voluntary sectors, in the beautiful setting of Parcevall Hall in North Yorkshire. Visit www.themindfulleadershipfoundation.com

Training to be a Mindfulness Teacher

No worldwide recognised qualifications in mindfulness teaching currently exist. In 2010, the UK Mindfulness Trainers’ Network developed some good practice guidance for teaching mindfulness-based courses, which the main teaching institutions in the UK now adhere to. Institutions offering mindfulness teacher qualifications in the UK include Aberdeen, Exeter and Bangor Universities and the Oxford Mindfulness Centre.

The Oxford Mindfulness Centre is an international centre of excellence within the University the Oxford’s Department of Psychiatry. It offers a range of mindfulness courses, including an MSc in Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy. Visit http://oxfordmindfulness.org/train.

Enter Mindfulness is one of the few independent mindfulness teacher training providers in the UK. It offers a two-stage approach to mindfulness teacher training that broadly follows the UK good practice guidelines. Visit www.entermindfulness.com/workshops.

Shamash runs a professional certified 10-week teacher training programme, Teach Mindfulness, for people who cannot access courses in person. The training is based on the MBSR and MBCT syllabus but can be adapted to meet the needs of your client group. Contact him via shamashalidina.com or visit www.teachmindfulnessonline.com for further details.