“As long as you’re breathing, there’s more right with you than wrong.” Jon Kabat-Zinn delivered the first Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course in an American hospital in 1979. It was originally designed to catch people falling through the cracks of the healthcare service, a clinic in the form of a course, helping people with all manner of conditions. It gave patients hope and empowerment, and treated them as people, not diagnoses or body parts, re-establishing the common humanity that can easily be lost within healthcare. Jon and his colleagues successfully brought meditation into medicine, an idea that is continuing to develop with life changing results. Since then, similar eight week mindfulness courses have spread around the world, not limited to healthcare. 145 MPs have completed an MBSR course; perhaps the wisdom will start filtrating Parliament? “Human beings are technologically phenomenal. Why can’t we take care of people? Why can’t we realise what the causes of suffering may be before we create the catastrophes, and address them?”Jon said. “Much of our diet is the news and there seems to be fantastic compassion after events, but zero wisdom beforehand.” He suggested localised greed, hatred and delusion are often motivators, which we need to move beyond if we are to change. “How do you know if you’re doing harm unless you’re awake, you’re mindful, you’re heartful?”Read More