Social Mindfulness: A guide to meditations from Mindfulness-Based Organisation
Social Mindfulness: A guide to meditations from Mindfulness-Based Organisation provides MBOE supporting reading and as a self-study guide to MBOE guided meditations.
english language edition
Reviews
Jamie Bristow
Director, The Mindfulness Initiative
Social mindfulness represents a vital new wave of innovation in an already promising field that has the potential to transform workplace culture and communities. Mark Leonard has long been a leading pioneer of these important developments in mindfulness teaching and this book is the first that I am aware of to coherently lay out how they might be applied in practice.
Professor David Tyfield PhD
Professor of Sustainable Transitions and Political Economy, University of Lancaster
The MBOE approach teaches mindfulness practices not only as an individual and cognitive therapeutic intervention but also as a way of reconnecting with others through gentle attention to all our relationships. It is an essential element of responding productively to the unprecedented societal challenges, uncertainty and threat of the early 21st century, all of which tends to be experienced as our own individual responsibility. The choice before us is ‘Social Mindfulness’ or deepening polarization and systemic breakdown.
Mehvish Shaffi-Ajibol LLB
National BAME Health Care Awards – Winner 2021, Change Consultant NHS – North East London Clinical Commissioning Group
It’s well recognised that delivering unconscious bias and / or generic D&I trainings does not work. This is simply because people don't have a way of becoming aware of patterns of implicit bias because they are, by their very nature, 'subconscious'! It's like 'asking a fish to ride a bicycle'. Interventions that are more effective take a long time because they involve a series of behavioural trainings, which need to be embedded in an organisation to change the culture. Mark Leonard presents a structured approach in 'Social Mindfulness', which has the potential to accelerate this process by giving us the skills to see our thoughts and feelings arise in interactions with others, and so understand the way we construct a narrative that defines 'self' and 'the other'.
Dr Oumaya Belakbil Pys.D
Clinical Psychologist, Morocco
As a Clinical Psychologist, I am so glad to have read about the ground-breaking approach outlined in 'Social Mindfulness'. This is because it's the first Mindfulness-based approach, which recognises that psychological transformation can only occur interdependently. Rather than exclusively focusing on one's own individual needs and drives, MBOE works on one's sense of self in relation to others. This is what can help us identify with others and release us from a very modern sense of alienation, which divides us, and isolates us from each other!
Christoph Spiessens
Founder, The Manchester Mindfulness Festival
This is a small book describing a huge potential: The potential of Mindfulness to help create a better world. Not just through individual practice, but, more importantly, through creating the kind of high-quality, mindfulness-based connections with others that can improve collective wellbeing. As an MBSR teacher, I was, at first, a little sceptical about the need for another Mindfulness-Based Programme (MBP) since topics like communication and common humanity are often covered in MBPs, but was impressed by the author’s respectful and effective approach to expanding on some of the basics of Mindfulness and making this relevant to creating a better world. The author does so with clear rationales and examples throughout the book. Whether you are new to Mindfulness or an advanced practitioner, Social Mindfulness: A guide to meditations from Mindfulness-Based Organisational Education offers important and at times sobering-insights to us all and is a valuable contribution to the field.
Dr Caroline Barratt PhD
Senior Lecturer, School of Health and Social Care, University of Essex
MBOE, Social Mindfulness is a very accessible introduction to practicing mindfulness as socially embedded human beings and the impact mindfulness practice can have on how we live and work together
Dr Kathirasan K PhD
Centre for Mindfulness, Singapore
With this book, Mark Leonard answers critics who claim that practicing mindfulness is an egocentric self-help method for the happy few. He offers us a guidebook, which applies mindfulness to the way we relate to others and so enables us to become more compassionate human beings. Barbara Doeleman – van Veldhoven, Founder & Director BFC Compassionate Care & Mindful Medicine, Vice-President VMBN (Dutch Mindfulness Teachers’ Association) ‘Social Mindfulness’ is not only important but urgent. In a world where mindfulness is often seen as a panacea for mental illness and disorders, Mark’s presentation of the relational dimension of mindfulness can radically change the way we live as human beings in societies and communities.
Lara Crowther PhD
Researcher in Medical Education
Social Mindfulness’ provides not only a much-needed balm to soothe our collective distress but also gives us the opportunity to work together and actively push for social change. Concisely written, with a lack of unneeded jargon, this book is a timely contribution to the mindfulness conversation that will no doubt impact how we think about introducing mindfulness into organisations going forward.”
Dr Greg Bailey
General Practitioner Trainee, Co-Founder, Ocean Brothers
Mindfulness as therapy is a useful alternative to anti-depressants and CBT, but a medicalised approach can never do much about the social and economic factors, which are causing a crisis in mental health. 'Social mindfulness' gives me a sense of hope because it's about building the kind of relationships that underpin wellbeing and make doctoring worthwhile.