Archive for The Idea

The best of the 2011 Mental Health Congress

30 November 2011 · Filed under The Idea, The Project

Today Team Mindapples are at the Mental Health Congress, running our now-famous tree pop-up and listening to a range of specialists from the mental health care and policy communities speak about the future of the sector in the UK. Here are a few of the key points that I felt were most interesting from the plenary sessions today.

Bruce Calderwood, Director of Mental Health Policy at the Department of Health, kicked off the day with a policy overview. The Mental Health Strategy is a good document and the intention to take an integrated approach to put mental health on an equal platform with physical health is encouraging. The part that particularly interests us at Mindapples is the first objective of the strategy, “More people will have good mental health”. There is a lot in this strand, mostly focussed on supporting people to stay mentally healthy at key life stages (childhood, education, work, life, and old age). What was striking though is that there was no reference to direct mental health promotion campaigning, beyond a cursory reference to the usual “5 Ways to Wellbeing”. For the sixth objective, reducing stigma, the Department and Comic Relief have pledged over £20 million pounds to the Time to Change campaign (our clients for much of our public engagement work). I would like to see the equivalent funding committed to promoting good mental health in the wider population. I think this is the area of greatest potential impact for improving mental health in the UK, and I’d like to see it given the same level of Central Government support as other parts of the strategy.

Jenny Hyatt from Big White Wall popped up with the first question, which was about ‘e-mental health’. Do we need a strategy specifically for how digital tools can be used in mental health care? Bruce said this was an area that needs more work, and I agree. What I’d add to that is that we need to think much more broadly than simply electronic service delivery, into the role of digital in reshaping our models of care, joining up clinical and non-clinical services, and particularly in connecting people together within and outside the care system. ‘e-health’ doesn’t just have to mean transactional services.

The next panel was on healthcare service commissioning, not directly my area but it was interesting listening to the themes that emerged, particularly in the Q&As afterwards. There was a lot of talk about change, and barriers to innovation, with St Mungos making the point that if commissioners are being told specifically how to commission for care pathways, local innovation becomes very difficult. A commissioner from Croydon, now part of Mindapples amalgamated NHS partners ‘NHS South East London’ also raised concerns that the economies of scale gained from amalgamating local NHS commissioners is offset by the barriers thsi creates to localisation. The most significant point for me though was made by the ever-vigilant Michele from CoolTanArts, who pinpointed that the rhetoric around patient control and choice, so central in recovery, wasn’t being backed up with a clear plan for patient involvement and choice in the care and commissioning process. The message back, sadly, was that in a decentralised system without common commissioning pathways, service users were going to need to “stamp their feet and kick up a fuss” to be heard.

I had to skip the presentation by Peter Finn at the Audit Commission (sorry Peter) on benchmarking measurements, but I did speak to him over breakfast and he asked me what key measurement we should add to the national standards to help us measure the quality of care. My answer was locus of control, measuring how far our public services give users a sense that they are in control of their care and conditions, rather than feeling powerless in the face of external events. My reasoning for this is that an external locus of control has been linked with significant negative mental and physical health issues, whilst feeling empowered and in control of our fate is excellent for our mental health. Control is very much a subjective phenomenon, but it strikes me as very strange that no-one in our public services (and indeed in our workplaces) seems to be measuring this simple and vital factor in people’s health and wellbeing. And it would be very cheap to measure.

Ian Hulatt from the Royal College of Nursing was up next after the break, and he talked in detail about how mental health nursing has changed over the past decades. We now have a generation of nurses who were trained in a very different way from the old-fashioned, coercive world of the asylums, but mental health nursing still has an image problem, and the RCN is doing a lot of work on this. My personal experience of mental health nurses has been that they are universally very caring people who struggle every day to both care for and respect the views of some very troubled and troubling patients. It was encouraging to hear Ian talk about the importance of good health and wellbeing in the care process too, although of course crises do happen.

Some stats for you now, shared from Department of Health figures by Chris Naylor of the Kings Fund. 30% of the UK population have a long-term health condition, of whome around 30% have a mental health problem. 20% of us have mental health problems, of whom around 46% have long-term conditions. Which is a complicated way of saying that long-term conditions and mental health problems go hand-in-hand, and the cost of this ‘co-morbidity’ is huge, both in human terms to the quality of people’s lives, and also in the financial impact of increased service use and costs. Generally, for example (US data now), long-term patients with depression cost around twice as much to treat as those without depression. The Kings Fund estimates that £1 in every £8 spent on long-term conditions goes on treating related mental health issues. To be less mercenary about it, people with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia die 10-25 years earlier than the rest of the population, and far more from “unrelated” physical health conditions than from suicide. So improving the mental health of long-term conditions patients should clearly be a top priority for the NHS. Their top suggestions include adding a psychological component to existing physical care services, and improving the mental health support in Primary Care (something we’re obviously keen on given our ongoing GPs pilot work). So, if anyone out there wants to speak to us about how Mindapples might be used to support the treatment of long-term conditions, please do get in touch.

I was most encouraged by Chris’s point that, although we have physical health co-morbidity mentioned in the Mental Health Strategy,  what we also need is to place mental health at the heart of our physical health strategies. I’ve met so people in the NHS and local government who are really aware that many physical health issues, particularly public health problems, are deeply connected to low-level mental health issues – and yet public health in the UK remains siloed, with “alcohol” in one corner, “obseity” in another, “smoking” over there. Recognising the common thread of mental health problems running across so many of our health and social issues feels like an obvious and overdue policy focus, so anything that places mental health promotion at the heart of policymaking for physical health gets my vote.

And on the lifestyle point, next speaker Geraldine Strathdee made an impassioned point about the patronising attitudes we take to patients around lifestyle, and that we should never prescribe medication to patients without first giving them full information about lifestyle changes and other health considerations, to help them make informed choices. As she puts it, we wouldn’t ever prescribe medication for diabetes without also talking through information on diet and nutrition. Giving patients more information and choice about taking care of their minds – nice one Geraldine, I’m a fan. And obviously I think Mindapples could have a key role to play alongside Weightwatchers, free gym passes, sports groups and other parts of the personalised care plans that assist people to get and stay well. I asked Geraldine and Chris this question: given what we know about the value of integrating mental and phyiscal health care and of patients making more informed lifestyle decisions, was there enough emphasis in current policy on education and engagement, to ensure patients and the public know what they can do to look after themselves and are educated about their health needs? Chris felt that this was absolutely central to the Government’s new strategy, because we can’t have a deregulated and decentralised market for healthcare provision without having educated and empowered ‘customers’. However, he also felt that this element had been sidelined for the timebeing because structural concerns are dominating the debate at the moment. Geraldine’s argument was actually that there isn’t enough that policymakers can do, and it’s up to the staff on the frontline to do what we know needs doing – and if we want to create a mass movement to promote this information, we absolutely can. Inspiring and pragmatic stuff, but having tried to do just that for three years now, I can tell you that a bit more support from Central Government would definitely help!

Last up was Prof Neil Greenberg from the Kings Centre for Military Health Research. The key point I took from this is that the biggest issues faced by armed forces members being referred to mental health services are “adjustment disorders” – the struggle to reintegrate back into civilian life. This issue has been well-documented, and is a perfect example of how much our mental health is a product, in part, of our relationship to society, with people struggling to adjust to what might on the surface appear to be a less traumatic and difficult situation. Our friends at Big White Wall are doing a lot to support veterans now, and I had a good discussion with someone working on this at the Department of Health about how Mindapples might get involved in supporting our armed forces to manage their mental health more effectively during and after service. So lots to think about there too.

I will be giving a talk this afternoon about positive mental health promotion and preventative care, so I’m hoping to raise some of the points above with the audience then. I’ll post a few points from the Day Two sessions tomorrow too, and in the meantime please do leave us comments if you have any thoughts on any of this. It’s the only way we’ll learn…

**Addendum: Day Two has been very clinincal so I won’t be posting a summary of all the sessions. But, we’ve just been to an excellent couple of presentations this afternoon about involving young people in creating their own mental health interventions, so here are a few extra notes from them.**

Elise Leclerc from the Mental Health Foundation’s youth projects team presented some great impact findings from their work to engage young people in the design and delivery of services. We also heard from MAC-UK about their great work with young people at risk of mental health issues and offending. Here are a few stats from their presentation:

  • Serious youth violence much a public health issue as much as a justice one
  • 1 in 3 young people who offend have an unmet mental health need at the time of offence
  • Clinical depression is far more likely to present as aggression in young men; aggression which leads to violence
  • The evidence suggests that once young people are in the justice system, their mental health needs remain unmet

Young people who are at risk of mental health issues, and of offending, often have complex, multi-level needs, and the evidence from all these presentations is that the best way to help them involves engaging them in activities and services which they have chosen and helped to create. It’s also worth saying that fear of violence contributes significantly to the anxiety levels in young people, so it isn’t so much about stopping young people from being violent, it’s about keeping them safe.

The undoubted highlight though was Stella Charman of Right Here, who is the only person I’ve heard over these past two days (apart from us) who is talking about the central value of ENGAGEMENT. They have a lot of evidence of the clinical value of engaging young people in therapeutic activities that they actually enjoy, like rockclimbing and music production. She really knew the value of understanding what people actually WANT to do, as a route to encouraging people to participate in services and seek help. Mindapples won a Cabinet Office award in early 2011 for an idea to visualise insights data about what people say THEY think is good for their health and wellbeing. There is a huge volume of insights data being collected through Mindapples site (50,000+ suggestions and counting), and from service co-design and co-delivery projects across the country. If we were selling a product like Coca Cola, we would begin by seeking to understand what consumers value and desire, and we think all this data would be incredibly useful for understanding how to commission services that will actually engage people – and yet we’ve had very little interest from public commissioners in finding out what their “consumers” actually want.

The best quote of the whole conference for me was from Stella, who summed up our attitude to mental health services in the UK. “The therapeutic value of a perfectly-planned, fully evidence-based UNATTENDED intervention is ZERO.” Exactly. Thank you, Right Here, now let’s get engagement on the policy map for 2012!

Posted by Andy

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The Future of Mindapples Web Apps?

4 October 2011 · Filed under The Idea, The Project

Today and tomorrow, Mindapples is very proud to be at the Future of Web Apps London conference, rubbing shoulders with some of the most interesting folks in the international tech scene. Thanks very much to Carsonified for featuring us as one of the sponsors and letting us bring our Mindapples Tree to their conference.

Mindapples has been very much an offline business for a while now, running engagement events and taking our tree and applecards on tour to talk to people all around the UK about the health of their minds. We took this approach because we want to prove Mindapples works for everyone, even people who don’t have access to or interest in new technology. We actually started as a digital campaign though, and we’re hoping FOWA will be the springboard for us to get back to our digital roots.

Back in 2008, Mindapples was just a surveymonkey page and this humble little blog. Now we’ve got a great little Ruby on Rails site built by our friends at Unboxed Consulting, but we know we’re still novices when it comes to digital campaigning. There’s so much more we can do, and we’re inspired by projects like It Gets Better, Invisible Children and KaBoom! who have used digital tools to reach millions of people.

So, folks of FOWA and the wider community, we’d like your help. What do you think we should do digitally to get the Mindapples word out to millions of people? Specifically, what do you think we should build or do on the web and with mobile tools to deliver the following objectives:

  1. Get 1 million people to share the 5-a-day for their minds and think positively about their mental health?
  2. Bring people back to www.mindapples.org regularly to get tips and inspiration about the health of their minds?
  3. Promote our services and the many other products and tools out there that people can use to increase their mental wellbeing?

We’d like to hear what you think will work best for our campaign, so please reply here, post your thoughts on your own blogs and link back to us, tweet us at @mindapples, or drop us a line privately on hello@mindapples.org.

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Nudge vs. #bigsociety?

31 January 2011 · Filed under The Idea · Tagged , , , , , ,

Happy New Year folks, I hope you had a lovely mindapple-filled winter break. Last week I attended the launch of the Health Equalities Alliance and their inaugural debate Nudge or fudge – can a gentle push really tackle health inequalities? It was the first time I’ve had the chance to quiz members of the Cabinet Office’s Behavioural Insight Team about their recent emphasis on ‘nudge’ social marketing techniques, and it’s given me much food for thought.

Nudge, for the uninitiated, refers to a set of techniques described in the book of the same name by Richard Thayler and Cass Sunstein, about the unconscious influences which “nudge” us make choices in everything from the food we eat to the directions we walk. Anyone designing an environment in which people make choices is a “choice architect” and witting or unwittingly creates factors which influence decision-making – and which can therefore be altered to nudge people to make choices which are better for them.

This is nothing particularly new. The techniques are drawn from the same psychological stock as 20th Century advertising, PR and sales theory and are well-evidenced. The Coalition though sees these tools as pivotal to delivering mass behaviour change in high cost areas – such as public health – at a low cost. When you consider that a recent Scandinavian study (citation appreciated if anyone can find it) suggested the health service contributes only 15% of the overall health of the population, you can understand why nudge theory is so appealing to an indebted Government facing rising demands on an already over-stretched NHS.

The problem though, as many of the panel observed, is that you can’t nudge people out of poverty. To put it more broadly, choice architecture works brilliantly when you have a choice, but is therefore more likely to benefit the wealthier classes with more options than those who cannot afford better food, or who are subjected to abuse or poor living and working conditions. I am skeptical about the capacity of nudge thinking alone to deliver health equalities or even widespread population health improvements, at least beyond the priviledged minority. It must be blended with real progress on the critical social factors that create poor health, and not a substitute for them. I also welcomed the assessment of Phil Coppard, Chief Executive of Barnsley Council, that dividing public health into individual behaviours like smoking, diet and exercise misses the underlying truth that “this is actually about low level mental health”. Nudging people to act differently may alleviate the symptoms, but leave the sickness untouched.

I believe that nudge thinking has an important role to play in improving the design of public systems and spaces, by making designers think more carefullyabout the implicit choice architecture embedded in their creations. For example, my council landlords require me to sort recycling into several piles and take it out into the street, but if I want to send anything to landfill they will collect it daily direct from my door. Then they put up leaflets about the importance of recycling. This is patently absurd, and if nudge thinking can be used to review and correct the nudges that send people in the wrong directions, this is a good thing.

However, I also believe there is a tension between the implicit paternalism nudge thinking and the “empowerment” rhetoric of the Big Society (and more on my personal thoughts on that project over here). Dr Samantha Callan from the Centre for Social Justice cited one example of nudge in action, that of placing a bus stop outside a care home so that if Alzheimer patients ran away from their carers, they would simply wait outside for a bus until they could be collected. So far, so economically efficient. But as one audience member observed, perhaps this is manipulating patients to stay indoors rather than helping them spend more time outside rather than cooped up indoors all day. Sometimes we do things unconsciously for good reasons, even if the result isn’t as effective as we would like. Moreover, nudging people in one direction rather than another still leaves them vulnerable to being nudged back again, and when you consider that for every pound spent on nudge public health marketing there will be ten spent on getting the public to eat Pringles, the economics of this whole nudge thing start to look flawed. Nudge is powerful, but unless it builds conscious agency and involves individuals in the decision-making process, it can only disempower the people it serves.

How can we be trusted to run our communities, deliver public services and control local planning decisions when we cannot also be trusted to make informed decisions about feeding ourselves or raising our children? We cannot be nudged into taking more informed responsibility for our life choices. So are the people who are to be subconsciously manipulated into living healthier lives the same people who the Government is championing as having the power and skills to lead this country into a new era of citizen-led society? Or will we be nudging one part of the population whilst empowering another?

With this in mind, my question to the panel was “have we abandoned learning?” Dr Ronny Cheung from the Cabinet Office (who took more than his fair share of flak from the audience as the only official nudge apologist present) spoke of nudge as more effective at scale than “giving information” – but giving information is simply old-fashioned broadcast style education. There are so many more sophisticated tools for creating learning than giving information, and if we fail to employ any of them in tackling public health issues, we are effectively giving up on having an informed public who are responsible for their own destinies. We need to engage the public in making conscious choices and building personal habits based on knowledge, to empower individuals not only to manage themselves better, but also to resist being nudged in one direction or another. And if we are to capture the support of the current Government, we also need to do it at scale, and cheaply.

This is where I think Mindapples comes in. We want to build people’s conscious awareness of the connection between what they do and how they feel, and help all of us learn from each other what we each want and need to be mentally healthy. I’m sure we’ll be nudging people along the way, but everything we do will always be about helping individuals make conscious, informed choices about what they need, and getting the support they deserve to meet those needs. And we think we can use digital tools, peer recommendations and the skills and networks of our community to do this at scale, and for low cost. When you consider Mr Coppard’s observations about the root causes of many public health issues, an effective and empowering intervention in public mental health could have huge positive implications for public health in general.

Of course, education on its own is not enough. Professor Richard Parish of the Royal Society of Public Health summarised it well last week: “we haven’t abandoned education, but whether education results in behaviour change depends on social factors.” Mindapples and its like can go some way towards helping people get what they need from society, but there is still much that the Government must do to create the opportunities for people to thrive, and the social and cultural context in which good things are easier to do.

Right now though, we seem to be in the strange position of pushing subconsious behaviour change techniques to a passive, unaware population with one hand, whilst the other lifts citizens up to run our communities, take vital decisions and run public services. Is the pragmatic paternalism of nudge politics actually in direct conflict with the lofty aspirations of the Big Society?

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Mindapples in action: Brixton Market, Oct 2010

15 December 2010 · Filed under Events and promotions, The Idea, The Project

In October 2010, Mindapples teamed up with NHS Lambeth and the nice people at Spacemakers and Transition Town Brixton, to install a pop-up Mindapples Tree in Brixton Village Market and talk to complete strangers about the health of their minds. We had no plan, no permission, and no idea what would happen. So, we asked The People Speak to come down and film the day and make a little video of what happened. Here’s the result…

Thanks to Hektor and Rick for the brilliant video, and to Esther, Jenny and Sahar for collecting Mindapples on the day! If you’d like Mindapples to come to your town, please e-mail pleasedomenext@mindapples.org.

Posted by Andy

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Happy World Mental “Health” Day

10 October 2010 · Filed under Events and promotions, The Idea, Things we like · Tagged , , , , , ,

Hello folks, and a very happy World Mental Health Day to you all!

To celebrate, Mindapples have been on tour around London, beginning in Brixton on Thursday and Saturday, and culminating in installing the Mindapples Tree at CityCamp London in the Hub King Cross today. It’s been an amazing few days, stepping far out of our comfort zone to get as broad a rane of people as we could in considering the health of their minds. Huge thanks to Lucy Smith at NHS Lambeth for hiring us, to Spacemakers and Transition Town Brixton for hosting us yesterday, and to Futuregov and the gang at CityCamp for welcoming us today.

For two years now, Mindapples hasn’t done anything for World Mental Health Day. Yes, it’s partly because we’re disorganised, but it’s also because, frankly, we don’t feel a great affinity with it. Let’s face it, today is actually World Mental Illness Day. It’s really important for us to honour and support people who suffer from mental distress and those who care for them – but is it really Mental Health Day? If it was, surely we should be promoting the positive things that we all want to have – a healthy mind, a positive experience of life – and giving people a really strong image of a mentally healthy lifestyle they can be a part of? 40% of our mental wellbeing is down to our “outlook and activities” (according to Lykken, D, 1999), so why are we never told that? Why aren’t we talking about that today? Where do we fit, as individuals and as a society, in this world of “mental health”?

So on 10/10/10, Mindapples is asking everyone to join us in making this World Mental Health Day about health, not illness. Please comment here and share your stories about what you’ve done and how you’ve felt when your mind is really feeling good, and share your mindapples to get as many people as possible talking about mental health as a good thing, that we can all be a part of.

We all have minds, and we all have mental health; so let’s celebrate how well we’re all doing, and remind ourselves how similar we all are for once.

Happy Mindapples Day everyone!

Posted by Andy

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Hand Made Health

25 September 2010 · Filed under The Idea, The Project, Things we like · Tagged , , , , , , ,

I settled down this morning to have a proper read-through Mindapples Co-founder Tessy Britton’s extraordinary new book, Hand Made, and feel inspired to write a post about it. In fact, two posts – you can see my thoughts on its social and policy implications over here.

The book collects a beautiful set of stories about creative new projects that build connection and community, and features projects as diverse as social media surgeries and artistic collaborations, to the regeneration of Brixton Market and even Mindapples itself. I’d particularly recommend Tessy’s essay at the start, which collects the common elements of the projects and makes some great observations about the most effective ways to build connection and community.

What I find most striking about the stories though is that they are all based on our abilities as individuals to take control of the world around us. In his contribution, Tessy’s collaborator David Gauntlett cites radical reformer (and inspiration for our School of Everything project) Ivan Illich: “A convivial society should be designed to allow all its members the most autonomous action by means of tools least controlled by others.”

In developing Mindapples, Tessy and I have talked a lot about boosting individuals’ sense of agency, autonomy and control. We spend so much time being passive, as consumers, as patients, as citizens, that it can be difficult sometimes to imagine how we might shape the world around us at all. Recent statistics (although I can’t find a reference for this yet) apparently suggest that American teenagers, whilst boasting enhanced confidence and self-esteem, are 30% less likely now than in the 1970s to say that they have any control over their lives. We are treating the wrong thing.

We are becoming a society of victims, prisoners of a system that we feel has not been made by us. But we are the system: there is nothing beyond “us”. And as David himself says in his essay: “making the world your own, and making your mark on the world, rather than merely receiving a manufatured environment assembled by external others – is absolutely central to our health and our wellbeing”. Mindapples is based on the simple premise that we all have something useful to contribute to our own health, and all we need to do is tell stories about that and support everyone to get what they know they need to be well, and we can make our society healthier together.

If anyone’s ever wondered why I call myself Head Gardener at Mindapples (apart from the obvious pun), it’s this: I see the task of growing Mindapples as gardening. All we do is create the conditions for people to thrive and grow, and they do the rest. We don’t take credit for all the wonderful things that bloom in the Mindapples garden, but we do get to enjoy them. We may not be perfect, scientific, accurate or even right all the time. But to steal one of Tessy’s best quotes from the book, as Thomas More writes in Utopia in 1516: “things will never be perfect, until human beings are perfect – which I don’t expect them to be for a number of years.”

So, here’s to being human, imperfect, and hand made. And thank you Tessy for placing Mindapples in such illustrious company, we’re very proud indeed.

http://blog.mindapples.org/2010/09/25/hand-made-health

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The Psychiatrists’ Mindapples

18 August 2010 · Filed under The Idea, The Results · Tagged

All pretty quiet here in the Mindapples Orchard after our exertions at the Big Treat and all our various festival activities. We’ve been at the Secret Garden Party, Camp Bestival, The Big Chill and the Playgroup Festival, as well as at Edexcel and the BBC, and now we’re having a little rest.

Meanwhile, I’d like to share a lovely e-mail I received recently from Dr Keith Gaynor, a clinical psychologist at the excellent Institute of Psychiatry who specialises in theraputic treatments for schizophrenia. They’ve gathered a list of activities that they enjoy, and which also have clinical evidence to support their efficacy in improving mental wellbeing.

“I sent your email round the office (Department of Psychology, Institute of Psychiatry). We got a load of responses and I’ve collated the top five.

1. Do one totally absorbing activity (approx 30 mins)
2. Do something silly/funny
3. Do something nice for someone else
4. Smile
5. Remember it’s just a thought, it’s not real

Hope it’s useful”

It’s signed by Dr. Keith Gaynor, who sent it to me, and nine other doctors. Thank you Keith and all the staff who participated. We’ve been talking since then about how we can bring some of this scientific knowledge into the Mindapples community, to help us all find more things that we can all do that are good for our minds.

Enjoy the rest of the summer everybody!

Posted by Andy

I sent your email round the office (Department of Psychology, Institute of Psychiatry). We got a load of responses and I’ve collated the top five.

 

1. Do one totally absorbing activity (approx 30 mins)

2. Do something silly/funny

3. Do something nice for someone else

4. Smile

5. Remember it’s just a thought it’s not real

 

 

Hope it’s useful

Dr. Keith Gaynor

Dr. Sarah Casey

Ms. Anita Marsden

Ms. Anna Sandel

Dr. Nicola Archer

Mr. Tom Ward

Dr. Elissa Myers

Dr. Claire Hepworth

Mr S Khodyar

Ms. E Warnock

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The Big Treat in action

17 July 2010 · Filed under Events and promotions, The Idea

For the past three days, the AMAZING Mindapples Gardeners have been producing our first public event, The Big Treat, in central London. We’ve had massage, salads, juices, meditation, digital detox clinics, tango lessons, kung fu and even expressive dance, all in a pop-up health farm that truly surprised and delighted hundreds of unsuspecting people.

Here’s a video of me talking at the launch of the Big Treat (thanks David Wilcox for the interview). You can see some of the incredible work that went into it, including the Mindapples Tree, mindapple cards, a gallery full of REAL TURF (what a lot of work that was) and lots of happy people drinking Mindapples Martinis – exclusively designed for us by Crussh and Courvoisier.

We feel really privileged to have been able to put on such a high-profile and popular event, which wouldn’t have been possible without the support of Courvoisier, the Future 500 and their Revolutionary Spirit festival, and also the wonderful guys at Crussh, SavvyCook, Digital Health Service, Positive Touch and many other great brands.

And most of all, a huge thanks to Hege, who has been masterminding the whole thing and really taken Mindapples to a new level here, and especially to all the Mindapples Gardeners, who have worked tirelessly to lay turf, build the tree, make and staff the hugging wall, welcome our guests, hand out flyers and generally stand around looking glamorous for the Mindapples cause. And all without receiving a penny.

On behalf of Mindapples, I salute you all. You all DEFINITELY deserve a treat.

Posted by Andy

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The missing middle of modern meditation

31 May 2010 · Filed under The Idea, The Results

I have a lot of conversations about meditation.  And over the last few years, as the mainstream interest in meditation has grown and I’ve met more and more people wanting to learn the practice and the theory of meditation – and in particular mindfulness-based meditation –  the supply to satisfy the demand of that interest has not been able to keep up.

It’s too hippy for me.  This is the most common complaint that I hear from people who have either attended introductory meditation classes or have flirted around the religious end of the spectrum that is meditation provision.  Mindfulness-based meditation has Buddhist origins and so it is for very good reasons that much of its presentation is wrapped up in the language and culture of the various Buddhist traditions.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing but religious trappings can stick in the throat of those of us brought up on militant secularism and so can be so cringe-worthy that people who are genuinely moved to realise the benefits meditation can allow can be put off for life – thinking that all meditation looks like the particular form they encountered.

It’s too clinical for me.  As I’ve talked about here before, while the first wave of meditation to hit the West was religious, the second wave was clinical.  By pioneering the application of mindfulness-based techniques to the treatment of clinical mental health issues, there has been a successful and exciting translation of meditative wisdom into clinical practice.  The legacy of this fine work is that, in contrast to the one pole where meditation is seen within a religious context, we now have the other where it is seen within a formal clinical or therapeutic context.

The missing middle. However the majority of the people whom I meet and speak to tend to fall within these two pole…what I call the missing middle.  They are interested in the transformative potential of meditation, from stress-reduction to spiritual inquiry, but they want it expressed in language they understand.  This missing middle is where this third wave of meditation will come into its own – defining a meditation that is not religious, not clinical but that unites the benefits of both those approaches and it literate to the realities of our times.

It’s here already.  But please don’t get me wrong…it it not that there aren’t people teaching meditation in this new and exciting space already, it is just that this is still very much an emerging area and so there is the potential for a lot more innovative approaches.  So when people ask me to point them to what I consider the best of the material currently available, I normally suggest one of the following:

  • Jon Kabat-Zinn is the pioneer of clinical mindfulness approaches but he also has produced some very accessible resources.  Wherever You Go, There You Are is his most successful book and he also has produced an excellent audio course
  • Headspace is a brand new initiative which frames meditation as an essential tool for the busyness of modern life.  Although their London-based day sessions are a touch pricey at £249 a pop, they provide some excellent online intro materials and guidance
  • Be Mindful has made a Google map of mindfulness courses in the UK and while the teaching styles and quality may vary, it’s a good resource for finding courses near you
  • What’s known as the insight meditation tradition is good for people who are attracted to Buddhism and meditation but want it in a secular form.  The UK is home to an active London organisation as well as a highly-regarded residential centre in Devon
  • Perhaps the most exciting example of a contemporary yet spiritual meditation collective is the ID project in New York
  • And finally, if you don’t mind some old monks telling you what’s what, when it comes to the best books, two of the best around are Mindfulness in Plain English by Bhane Gunaratana and The Miracle of Mindfulness by the poet, political activist and all-round Zen legend Thich Nhat Hanh.

But this is only the beginning.  And what it all points to is an exciting period of evolution of how meditation is understood in our society.

This is a guest post by Rohan Gunatillake. Rohan is the founder of the Here&Now Project, a new initiative which raises awareness of the full potential of modern meditation as well as imagining new approaches for its expression.

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4 days left to support us!

12 May 2010 · Filed under The Idea, The Project

Hello Mindapplers,

We have lots of interesting projects coming up this summer to help raise the awareness of Mindapples and the 5-a-day campaign. Here’s a few juicy highlights…

First things first, we’ve entered the Barclays Take One Small Step competition. Please support us so we can grow more and more!

All you need to do is click firmly on the thumbs up symbol (it only takes two secs) and leave us a lovely message (and then forward to your friends of course ;o)

Support us now!

Soon, we will have a new Facebook application so you can share your Mindapples with your friends and help us spread the good word even further.

And this summer the Mindapples team, a post box and a tree will be running excitedly around the Secret Garden Party asking festival revellers to share their 5-a-day. We might pop up at a Big Chill and Camp Bestival too. Hopefully see you there!

Happy Mindappling x

Posted by Marilena

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