← Compassion in a T-Shirt
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A
Hi, I'm Dr. Stan Steindl. Welcome to Compassion in a T shirt.
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Now, when people think of mindfulness, they.
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Often think about slowing down, breathing deeply and maybe sitting quietly on a cushion. But there's a whole world of rigorous science, careful training and compassionate intention that sits behind the mindfulness based approaches that we often use in clinical settings. Today I get to speak with someone who's been at the heart of that world since the beginning. Professor Rebecca Crane is one of the leading voices in the global mindfulness movement. She's directed the Centre for Mindfulness Research and Practice at Bangor University and has helped shape the training, assessment and integrity of mindfulness based programs for, for over two decades. She's an author, researcher, practitioner, and someone deeply committed to ensuring that mindfulness stays.
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Grounded in compassion, equity and care.
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A
In this conversation we talk about the distinctive features of mindfulness based cognitive therapy. How to teach with authenticity and skill and what it means to bring mindfulness into complex systems, from mental health to climate justice. And so I bring you Professor Rebecca Crane.
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B
Well, Professor Rebecca Crane, welcome to Compassion in a T shirt.
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C
Lovely to be with you. Yeah, delighted.
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B
It's an honor to have have you on. You've been deeply involved in developing and researching mindfulness based cognitive therapy MBCT for many years. I guess for those who might be new to this, could you just share.
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What you see as perhaps the essence.
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And maybe the structure of mbct?
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C
Yeah, so NBCT was developed out of a particular aspiration to support people who were vulnerable to recurrent depression and at that points to its particular sort of distinctive features that it really. The developers of NBCT were not particularly looking for a mindfulness intervention. They were looking for an intervention that did this work of enabling people who are vulnerable to depression to build the skills they need to stay well in the long term. And it was through their theoretical exploration of that challenge that they arrived at mindfulness. So they came at it the other way around. And so that really points to the particular element of MBCT that is distinct, which is that it has this tie up with cognitive science, with a real understanding of the ways that the mind works from a cognitive science perspective. And it integrates that with the well established work of John Kabat Zinn, the mindfulness based stress reduction BSR work. So that model, that eight week program was integrated into the cognitive science paradigm and NBCT is the result of that. It's an integration of these really two ways of seeing and thinking and understanding the human mind system heart. So yeah, it has this very beautiful precision of focus.
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B
It's an interesting thought that actually there was a kind of a treatment challenge, I suppose, that they were facing the way that depression in particular can have a relapsing course. And I guess they were approaching it from a CBT perspective initially, but were trying to think how can we augment that, how can we sort of power that up in a way? And perhaps that was where they came across mindfulness and the MBSR approach.
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C
Yes, exactly, very much that they, they began to recognize that the people who did stay well in the longer run were people who developed this process understanding of the human mind, this particular way of relating. And they. John Teasdale, who was one of the developers, was a meditator and he began to see the links between these, you know, the particular way of relating to experience that comes through mindfulness meditation and exactly what they needed to cultivate in this group of people. I mean, of course NBCT has really widened out from that particular focus, but in the widening there is this precision is still there. So if you're applying MBCT to other populations, there's this real sense of accuracy about what's this particular vulnerability, how does it manifest in the moment, what is it that drives it? And how might the mindfulness model meet that? What's this interface between the vulnerability and the particularities of the program? Each element of the program, the way the teacher engages with that, you know, what, what's that interface? So that, that's the sort of, sort of key characteristic of MBCT is that we're way of thinking, yeah, it's got.
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B
That sort of process based kind of aspect to it that the trying to identify what's the need and perhaps what's the process behind it. And how might this approach or mindfulness specifically help to address that? How do you really define mindfulness, I suppose as part of the MBCT approach?
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C
So I mean the very classic definition is John Kabat Zinn's definition. And I think it holds really, really well in the MBCT context. So mindfulness is the awareness that arises when we pay attention in the present moment without judgment. So it has this, this training of the attentional system towards aspects of experience with this present moment focus. And then the non judgment bit is a piece that we often get tripped over because it's not that we're eliminating judgment, that would be not a possible thing, but it's that we're cultivating a certain orientation of how we relate to experience so that if there's judging, we see that there's judging and we're not judging the judging, but we're relating to experience through this mode of care, of kindness, of appreciation, you know, bringing these qualities of, of not getting into. It's almost the opposite of getting into the sort of tangles of judgment and layers of criticism that often often sort of habit patterns of how we're relating to inner and outer experience.
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B
Yes, I've often kind of pondered the non judgment piece because of course it's very difficult with these tricky human brains of ours to not sort of judge at times. And presumably at times some sort of judgment call is a useful thing to do in certain.
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C
Yeah, we wouldn't be able to function without it. You know, it's a necessary part of navigating every day of our lives to be able to make discernments and choices and discriminations and. But it's sort of, in a way, what we're training with the practice is to see the tipping point of that into a way of relating to experience that is antagonistic towards the experience itself. So we're making a problem of something that is a kind of innate, inherent aspect of being human. Yeah.
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B
Yes, I've liked the phrase care and discernment. You've mentioned both those words. And that idea of the antagonistic towards the experience, that's really worth pondering as well, because that's where the suffering arises, I suppose, isn't it, when we get caught in that.
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C
Yeah. And so mindfulness, another aspect of the answer to your question, what is mindfulness? Is that there is underneath the. This whole approach, there's an understanding, there's a way of recognizing what is it that leads towards suffering, what is it that leads towards, well, being and actually beginning to get that clarity and really recognizing, oh, this way of relating, this mode of mind that I'm in, I know this. It takes me down that road towards. And feeling depressed or sad or whatever or, you know, this way of relating takes me in the direction of feeling more at ease with life. But so there's this real sense of recognition so that, you know, there's the practice and there's the understanding that goes with the practice.
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B
And it really begins with that notion of stepping out of autopilot. I think that the program perhaps, and being able to bring that awareness and bring choice in. I mean, as you know, this, we, we. We call this podcast Compassion in a T shirt. And so it's about compassion and, and I suppose it's. What are your thoughts there? Like, is. Is compassion explicitly mentioned? Is compassion really just sort of behind a lot of it? Or, you know, more implicitly? I mean, it's because it does. It is about suffering and it is about awareness and non judgment and how to approach those experiences in a way that move a bit from suffering to a life of ease. And so. Yeah, what are your thoughts about that?
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C
Yeah, so this is a really interesting area. So John Kabat, Zinn and myself and others, you know, really our understanding is that compassion is completely integral to mindfulness. You can't talk about mindfulness without a recognition that compassion is embedded into it. The choice was made from a pedagogy perspective in the design of NBCT and MBSR really to have the compassion be part of the embodied practice of the teacher rather than an explicit named piece. And I, you know, I think there's pros and cons about this. And listen, really, as you know, you're heavily involved in the whole compassion program world and, and there's some really beautiful work that's happening in that space and making a tremendous contribution. And I don't see those as being competition at all. You know, they're very much part, you know, that you need a suite of things, suite of different sorts of ways in. But what in the, in the work, the developers of nbct, in their work of developing the program and their recognition of the vulnerabilities of the particular population who are coming to these programs is that explicit ways of developing loving kindness. Compassion can easily trigger the ruminative mind, the avoidant tendencies, the sense that the sort of critical idea of that I can't do that, that's not me, I'm not that person. I'm not the person who has that way of being in me. So it's almost like the MBCT comes in the way of teaching. NBCT comes in through the back door and sidesteps the cognitive resistance that might be there to cultivate compassion. And it comes sort of, it emerges from the practice in a sort of implicit way. There was some research that in the in from Oxford Mindfulness center on loving kindness practices, which actually did show that for certain groups of people who had strong ruminative tendencies, that loving kindness practices actually deepened those ruminative tendencies in ways that were really unhelpful. So I think it's kind of like courses for courses. There's different ways in that probably lead to very similar places. And some people are going to respond to certain ways and other people to other ways. And yeah, yes, it may well be. One of my hypotheses would be that people who've been through the MBCT program may well then be more ready to take on a compassion program that has a more explicit way of orientating towards compassion. So it may be that it sort of warms people up to different ways in.
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B
Yeah, that's very, very interesting. Yes, I am, I take especially in my clinical practice but in my research and so on as well, a compassion focused therapy approach. And Paul Gilbert really identified those fears blocks and resistances to compassion, which I suppose is what your really referring to there that people can become quite fearful of or resistant to compassion and self compassion and often the self criticism that might arise, especially for someone who is experiencing a depressed mood and so on, that can become a real barrier to self compassion. I suppose in a way the self compassion is sort of also helpful response to it. But yes, it's those, those blocks really isn't it that that can arise and, and the MBCT really sort of finds another way in the. That the sense of compassion is there, the motivation of compassion is there, it's embodied by the teacher, but it's also sort of. Yeah. Implicit and, and not necessarily directly targeted, at least using that word, so to speak.
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C
Yeah, exactly.
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B
Yeah. Your book Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy Distinctive Features very beautifully breaks it down. I think 30 key features spanning the theoretic theory and practice. What have you noticed over the years in terms of people learning MBCT and perhaps the different key distinctive features. But you know, are there things that people perhaps overlook or misunderstand or are there things that really you feel are kind of important to really sort of get through to people?
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C
Yeah, so I was, you, you gave that question in the notes before our conversation. So I was reflecting on that and had another look and looked through the book and actually the one that just clearly jumped out at me was the last, last chapter of that book Embodiment.
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B
Ah.
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C
So. So the, the process of the teacher actually embodying the way of being that is being cultivated in the, in the, in the teaching of NBCT and of any mindfulness based program that, that is, you know, a key characteristic of all mindfulness based approaches is that how we teach is just as important as what we're teaching. So this, this, we were just talking about the implicit curriculum. So there are some explicit content elements in any mindfulness based program. The practices, the exercises, the sort of structure, the homework. But actually the way that those are conveyed is just as critical because what we're teaching is a new way of being, a new way of relating to experience. And there needs to be a tie up between how the teacher goes about that and you know, the content itself. Otherwise it, you Know, if the teacher, when things get difficult in the session, the teacher sort of shifts into a fixing, problem solving mode. There's, there's immediately a sense of undermine that actually this does this, this doesn't stand up when things are difficult. This is something to use when things are nice. But actually when the rubber hits the road, I'll revert to my default habit tendencies. So this embodying is like really conveying to people that actually there's a deep confidence that awareness, kindly connection is a container that is big enough to hold all of our experience. Whatever happens, even the hardest, most challenging aspects of experience can be met in this way. And it doesn't solve anything. It doesn't take away the fact that they're challenging and hard, but it makes things workable. Actually there's sort of this real confidence in the workability of meeting experience in this way. So the embodying of that just needs to be a continual thread. And the teacher cultivates the capacity to do that through their own work, through actually doing, engaging in the practice in their life. This isn't something that you can, you know, confine to your working day and do when you arrive at work and then get back to business as usual for the rest of your life. It's actually a practice that becomes part of the life of the teacher. So this is a sort of interesting dynamic in terms of this being a profession where, you know, but, you know, actually it isn't, it isn't something that, that we try on for certain times in our life. It's actually a lifelong engagement.
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B
It's a profession and a, and a personal practice and, and it's, it's, it. That's what it is. It's a practice, isn't it, which is an ongoing kind of engagement with, with the approach and you know, having it as a. Becoming more and more a part of how you are in the world. And that gets embodied, well, I guess when you're with a group and in that teaching or facilitating role. But it kind of gets embodied throughout in a way and one starts to embody it in one's relationships and workplaces and, and all sorts of things. You gave a really interesting description of. Well, firstly, you were, you were first exposed to mindfulness through your father, I think, when you were a teenager, which I was just like, oh, that's, that's so good. And I kind of vaguely wish I had been a father like that myself, but, but I won't struggle with that. But also your time in Thailand and just the noticing of the Striving coming in. And it really does take practice, doesn't it? Even for those of us who are just deeply committed and doing it and so on. Can you talk about that striving piece and the role that plays as we move into that embodiment of it all?
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C
I think the first piece, I would say, is that it's easy to idealize that actually we get to a certain place and then we're able to seamlessly embody mindfulness, you know, in our lives and in our teaching. And the reality is that it's a. It's just a forever journey. And, you know, striving will crop up right till our dying breath. And, you know, it's part of being human. So it's not to sort of make a, you know. Yeah, not. Not to sort of set ourselves up to be some sort of ideal, but. But rather to aspire to sort of know the humanity of our experience and know the vulnerability of that is just inherent in being human and to know that we're flawed and imperfect and. And it's kind of through the meeting of that in a certain way that we can step into these relationships with our participants in our teaching process in a way that. That is honest and, yeah, it comes with that sort of frailty that we all have. So. So it's so the striving piece, you know, it's always going to be there. And. And, you know, I'll always come into the teaching wanting to be a great teacher or wanting to. Wanting my participants to, you know, move to a different place where they're, you know, where they're not struggling with all that they're struggling with, but the reality is that they'll still struggle, and I'll still struggle, and we'll all still struggle, but we'll be together in that reality in ways that have more kindness and love and care surrounding it all.
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B
When you were talking about embodiment before, you sort of mentioned confidence as a part of that. And I guess you're also sort of adding honesty or even humility or something to that as well. There's kind of. There's both of those things. And that. That awareness and honesty around just one's own frailty or sensitivities or in fact, in some ways, being able to embody it and to work with our own frailties is itself a way to convey things to participants and an understanding for them of how this might go on to roll.
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C
Certainly, if I look back over the years, you know, at the teachers who've really touched me and who have supported me to grow. And they're teachers who showed themselves, you know, who. They didn't sort of set themselves up to be some sort of ideal. They were willing to be vulnerable, to share their humanity. So that, you know, that I feel that's really important to us. It's like, you know, by design. And obviously these days it's so often on the screen. But, you know, when we. NBCT was developed, it was a circle. And I think actually feeling, even if it's on the screen these days, actually feeling like we're sitting in a circle, shoulder to shoulder alongside. It's not like the teacher is some sort of expert sitting outside the circle, sharing, you know, this great technique that will help to reform your life. It's. We're all in it together. We're all on the journey.
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B
The way you talk about how. Of the importance of not just what we do or teach, but also how we do that and teach it and this, this really key role of embodiment that you describe and so on, I suppose, you know, how is this disseminated or trained or implemented with the sort of integrity and fidelity to the program, I suppose, in cft, I've been thinking about that too. How do we kind of promote this approach as being really helpful and so on, and at the same time help people to, to. To. To have that fidelity to, to the, to the approach itself and so on. What have you learned about all of that? You know, in terms of the integrity and fidelity, especially as mindfulness kind of grows in popularity and, and it, it seems to have, you know, when, whenever I see people in my work, they, they seem to know about it already sort of a thing. So. Yeah. What, what have you, what have you found there?
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C
It's something that really that has been a central question to my whole journey in this world has been, you know, how does one grow this work and allow it to become more accessible and to cultivate great teachers who can continue to share this work in ways that don't dilute the transformational potential of it, in ways that carry with it that central piece that we've been talking about embodying. And really the. What we, what we. Our understanding of this is that we need to design training methods that give teachers space to cultivate their own practice alongside space to cultivate the skills that are needed to share it with others. So it's kind of really tying up that, you know, those two things together. So we embed the requirement for retreat for teachers to have their own space to go on retreat. So that's embedded as a necessary piece into the training of teachers. And it's required in the UK and most other countries that this is happening in as to be an annual thing. So in the uk, we all teachers are required to do a five day personal teacher led silent retreat where their only priority is to engage in the practice in a sustained way and to really do the work that's needed to cultivate this way of being as a priority, really to give yourself over to that and then, you know, to really embed the expectation that this is a daily thing, that people give space each day to a period of formal practice. So that expectation is, is really built into the training. And you know, we, you know, we really sense that the embodying just grows as people cultivate their practice. You know what the research that we've done over the years shows that some of the, you know, some teachers at an earlier stage develop competencies in certain areas like understanding, you know, the curriculum and the structure of things. You know, that comes quite early on, but actually the deepening into the teaching and being able to really seamlessly flow with their own kind of connection to experience comes out of years of engagement. It's just ongoing process. Yeah. So, and this is really challenging, you know, as, as the, you know, we're in a time of cost, you know, cost of living crisis and it's, it's, it's very hard for teachers to take that time to, to go on retreat. It's hard for health services to actually give that time to clinicians to engage in this. And so there is a squeeze and it's always this balance between continuing to make the things available and you know, what, what do we need to do to really ensure the integrity of this?
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B
Yes, there's sort of a parallel process in the world, isn't there? In a way, because some of these ideas and practices and contemplative practices are becoming more and more disseminated and people know about and understand it. But on the other hand, the world is becoming so much more kind of restrictive and, and stressful and lots of pressures and that squeeze you talk about, I can really feel it, you know, in a way, and so many things trying to grab our attention, you know, not least the phone and, and things like that. And yet just the importance of stepping away from all of that and having attentional practices of our own, I suppose, and mindfulness practices of our own. It's kind of learning about it, practicing it and then embodying it. It's this sort of process that you.
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A
Take people through I had a weird.
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B
Little curiosity in my mind. Do you ever notice at the other end of it a kind of a dogma developing for people that they sort of feel like things must be done in a certain way, you know, to adhere to perhaps a program or something and can sometimes lose the flexibility or creativity or anything like that. It was just a thought that popped to mind.
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C
But yeah, I think it's a really good caution. And actually, in a way, the times we're in, you know, deeply troubling and challenging and that, you know, in, in all realms of life, including, you know, in the work of bringing these practices into the world, we're all having to look really deeply at what, what is called for now. And you know, there's huge attachments, appropriate attachment to models such as NBCT and mbsr. They're really beautiful programs and I believe will continue to have a place. But simultaneously we're having to really question, you know, those models don't apply as universally as they used to. We're needing to adapt and evolve and find different ways to meet the challenges of our time. So, you know, in our training program, we have a master's program at Bangor University and we used to really ask our students to adhere very closely to the 8 week MBSR or MBCT model. But actually now in our assessment of teaching skills, we're being much more flexible about what program people are using, what mindfulness based program people are using. Because what we're discovering is that teachers on the ground are needing to be much more flexible in order to enable the work to happen. So I think that if there was dogma, we're having to let it go and having to really, probably very, in a very good way, really question ourselves, you know, and really examine how, how does this, how can this work have traction now? Because, you know, I would say it's just totally clear that the world needs more caring awareness. Like that's not in, that's not in question. But it's much harder to. It's much harder for ordinary teachers on the ground to get people into the teaching spaces than it was before the pandemic. Probably a plethora of reasons. So finding ways to actually enable people to encounter this work is needing, is really challenging us to think about what are our models and how are we doing this work.
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B
Yeah, because you've developed the mindfulness based interventions, teaching assessment criteria, I think, which is, I suspect that's been born out of what you've just been describing, this idea of trying to kind of balance fidelity with flexibility. I suppose, and responsiveness to different people and different places and you know, so it's, it's finding that balance. How does that tool kind of help teachers and trainers and learning all of this?
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C
I mean, it's. Interestingly, that tool emerged at a time when the growth of mindfulness was exponential. You know, there was huge interest, it was really getting embedded in our health service. Schools were picking it up, workplaces were picking it, and there was a lot of concern about how it was being shared and disseminated. And the tool really arose out of a desire to build shared understanding across training centers of actually what are the skills we're cultivating and how do you recognize those when they're there? It's very much a process orientated tool tool. So it's not curriculum led. So it identifies six areas within the teaching process that are kind of core process skills that all teachers need. So just to name them very briefly, there's the area of the curriculum and understanding. The content element is the first domain. There's the area of the relationality of the, the teacher with the participants in the program. There's the embodying, there's the working with the group or you know, the way in which the group container is held safely. There's the area of inquiry, there's the actual methodology of engaging in conversation, how that happens, and there's the area of guiding practices. So all of these elements of the teaching, they're always happening in every mindfulness based program. Whether it's NBCT or MBSR or mindfulness based childbirth and parenting or there's like so many different mindfulness programs and they all have these elements within them. But obviously the curriculum is going to vary with the population, with the context. So actually, as long as we're really clear what is the curriculum for this particular group and what are the particular tweaks and adjustments that are going to needed to enable this teaching to meet this population in this context, then the tool is a really useful kind of anchor to helping us understand what processes are happening in the teaching process. So I think that sense of balancing fidelity with flexibility is really important. And what people are discovering is that the tool is a really helpful way of guiding that because it gives some kind of clear anchors of like this needs to happen, this needs to be happening, whatever the population, whatever the context. But then there's these important adjustments that the teacher needs to make that are accounted for in the tool also.
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B
Yeah, I really sort of love the sound of that because for example, the piece about sort of group management and holding the group in a safe space and so on. That's a, a beautiful anchor which can then probably will be implemented in different ways depending on where you might be. You know, even from the UK to Australia it might be sort of different, but of course in lots of other places around the world. And, and so there's the, there's the kind of the fidelity and then there's the flexibility within the, the piece there and, and, and the inquiry too. I, I, that part of the mindfulness based approaches, the notion of sort of the practices and so on, but then the inquiry, you know, let's, let's sort of have a conversation about what, what you noticed sort of a thing and that can be then adapted in different sorts of presentations as well.
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C
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we, you know, it's, it in its essence it's a conversational approach. You know, it's very much about, you know, having conversations in particular ways that allow learning and insights to, to come to the surface and be seen. It's like, wow, you know, let's look at this together.
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B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I really appreciated your, I think it's a 2024 paper. I'm not sure I can see myself in this world experience of mindfulness teacher training among trainees from diverse backgrounds because I suppose that really starts to explore this in, you know, sort of more specifically too. Just trying to work out people or trainees from diverse backgrounds and are there sort of barriers to entry there or things that make them feel hesitant or self conscious or other sorts of things that might arise versus, you know, making mindfulness spaces more inclusive and really just genuinely welcoming.
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C
Right, right, yeah. I mean, you know, we're on a, A, a learning journey about all of this. It's, you know, really, you know, became, you know, over the years it became really uncomfortably clear that the people who were coming into our learning spaces were more often white, more often female, more often middle aged, more often middle class and of course not exclusively but you know, those trends were there and this was even the case when, because NBCT is offered in the UK health service free at the point of delivery and even in those cases where the financial barrier has been taken out, the people who are coming do not represent the diversity of our population. So there's clearly cultural issues as financial challenges that are barriers and yeah, really, you know, it behoves us to understand those and you know, there's been some really good work happening in the mindfulness world globally to look at this challenge, but we've got a long way to go and it's, of course it's not. This challenge is not exclusive to mindfulness. It crosses over many domains of practice. But I think there's something about the mindfulness where the, you know, we're embedded in an ethic of equity and justice that, you know, that's what we're, you know, what we aspire to. And there's something in that paper, the participants who we interviewed who were from diverse backgrounds, you know, one of the things that they were saying was it particularly hurts in this context, in a mindfulness based context, that I don't feel included. I'm used to it in other spaces. But there's something about it also happening here where the teachers are saying that this is a completely inclusive space and that everybody's welcome. But actually I don't feel that completely. I don't feel like I really belong here. So that mismatch is very tender and really, really, you know, I feel it's a necessary part of my practice. And I hope, you know, and I know actually that, you know, many, many mindfulness teachers are using their practice as a lens to look at these challenges. There's a lot of work that we each need to do individually, but also collectively to understand our own conditioning and how inadvertently we're causing harm without even knowing that we're doing it.
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B
I mean, the title of the paper itself is just a sort of a wake up call in a way. You know, it's sort of that, that quotation there and it's. Well, but also, yeah, sort of a motive, motivation to, to try to sort of work, work it out and be helpful and be, and you know, have, have people included you, you, you really have sort of widened your gaze a little bit too, I think in terms of, I mean that's to do with participants or trainees coming into the training and, and whether they feel welcome, but you're sort of talking about things even more systemically and, and in the world with, you know, diverse populations and, and how we can sort of create safe places for people to, for all people to feel welcome and to flourish really. And, and of course other things too, like, you know, climate and, and bigger, bigger than self sorts of issues. What have you been, what have been your, your, your thinking there in terms of the mindfulness practice and the role that it can play in these, these wider, pretty kind of urgent societal, but, you know, environmental concerns?
- [43:53]
C
Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, I absolutely feel that there's a place that mindfulness can make it, you know, an important contribution to meeting the challenges of our time. I think, you know what, what became increasingly clear to me and many other colleagues was that in our journey of bringing mindfulness into the mainstream, we had inadvertently joined a paradigm that is embedded into our mainstream, which is one of my depression, and finding an intervention that addresses my depression. So a much more kind of individualistic orientation of depression, how, you know, my system is operating and how I can do things for myself to get, to get to a better place. Whereas, you know, at its heart, what mindfulness is teaching us is, is that we're all entirely interconnected and my well being is totally contingent on your well being. And you know, the well being of each of us is totally contingent on the well being of the natural world. And we can't see depression as an isolated issue on an individual level. We need to see it as part of a systemic process that's arising through a complex interaction of what's going on within this being, but also through, you know, interactions with systemic social justice issues that are happening around us. So, as you know, I think what we're aiming to do in our training programs now and preparing the next generation of teachers is to be, is to have a much wider lens. And Jon Kabat Zinn had this from the beginning. But I think there was something that happened in the translation of these approaches to actually make them have traction in our systems and in the research of them, where you're often capturing individualized outcomes that kind of orientated us in a way that perhaps narrowed the potential of this work. So, you know, it's very possible to teach NBCT to people with recurrent depression in ways that support them to do their individual work that they need to do, but also support them to see how their way of being in the world is, you know, that they're interacting with their families, with their communities in ways that are also part of what helps them stay well. That generosity is a key element for each of us in enabling our own well being. That actually how we interact with the natural world is a key element in our well being. So I think there's ways of teaching these beautiful programs that really support people to see that they're part of an interconnected web of life. Yeah, there's a lot I could say about this theme. You know, I think, and I think it's a, it's a frontier question for the whole world. But, you know, given that this is the work that I, you know, I feel I can contribute to the world. It feels like a frontier question for myself and for many colleagues of like, what's really called for now, how can we evolve this work in ways that really support this transition, that support the recognition that the inner way of relating that we have in our lives is seamlessly part of how we engage in the world, how we act in the world, how what we give out, that there isn't really an inner and an outer. You know, it's all one whole and, but, but there's. Attending to these inequalities gives us a sort of the ground from which we can engage in the world in ways that, you know, hopefully have more, you know, are embedded in sustainability and in the fullest breadth of what the meaning of that word. So yeah, this a lot, A lot I could say. And I, you know, I think there's just to add one, one other piece around the, you know, that actually the issues around climate and injustice, you know, racial injustice, class injustice, whatever it is, they're not different things. They're all coming out of a sort of a certain mindset that, that a very unhealthy mindset that, that actually can be healed if we begin to have this more holistic way of understanding ourselves and our place in the world and the sense that humans are an embedded part of a system. We're not some sort of, we don't have, we're not apart from things. We're not, we're not a special species. We, we are totally reliant on, on every other element of this living system.
- [49:58]
B
Yeah, yes, it is, it, it is the, the, the, the front, the frontier work by the sounds of it. And, and it's funny the, the, the way that perhaps turning the mindfulness based interventions into something very applicable and, and so on, you know, creates that narrower focus or that more individual focus, but at the same time there's almost an, an inevitability to mindfulness opening up our awareness to, to the, the wider world. Anyway. It, it sort of, it just takes us there whether we like it or not almost. And, and we suddenly become aware of ourselves but our interconnectedness with others and the world and then with care and discernment we feel motivated to, you know, to look after it and to look after others and so on. And it's hard because there's so many, so many strange but probably very, you know, tricky brain human things that are going on at the moment in the world. And so we, we have these, these hopes and aspirations and then they feel dashed sometimes by events that occur or people in the world. And then we sort of, you know, keep, keep going. It's, it really is a, it's Sort of a rebellion of sorts, in a way, and, but also just a sort of a. An opening up to that kind of what, you know, what it really is real about being a part of the world and this planet.
- [51:32]
C
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I totally agree with everything you're saying there. And it's a, it's an extraordinary time because, you know, there's a huge renaissance of interest in. In these approaches and, you know, there's like, there's, there's a. The accessibility to teachings now is phenomenal. Never was there a time in history when there was so much available to us to cultivate wiser ways of relating. And the amount of engagement across the population is growing and that's happening simultaneous to some hugely challenging directions of travel in the world. And yeah, it hangs in the balance how, how all this will unfold. But, but it certainly for each of us, you know, hugely helps to find our place in these difficult times if we have the anchor of a practice that really gives us a North Star to point towards. If, you know, this is. This is what I care about, this is what I value. And I'm. I'm really going to commit myself to holding. Holding myself to account for engaging in the world and with myself in ways that matter. Yeah, yeah.
- [53:14]
B
Yes, I can. I can see the passion and inspiration you're feeling for those ideas and, you know, sort of, well, using the practice, I guess, to start to open up to. In terms of where to next. You train internationally, I think you're still the director of the center for Mindfulness Research and Practice at Bangor.
- [53:37]
C
Actually, not. I stepped down from the direction a couple of years ago for health reasons. So I live with Parkinson's, needed to not have quite as much pressure. I needed more space to look after my own health, but still very involved and I still have a foothold in, at the university.
- [53:58]
B
And yes, I had a. I thought that that might have been something. The case. So. But, but what. What is. What's sort of on your horizon then, with all of this? Do you have things that you're really going to focus on from here or I suppose your health and so on is important part of that.
- [54:16]
C
Indeed, Yeah. I mean, that's an evolving question for me because it's relatively recently that I have made that, you know, big step and I'm still feeling my way with the answer to that question. So let's, let's see. You know, what I'm. What I'm certainly what I feel very drawn to is supporting depth. So I'm, you know, teaching retreats is something that I really feel. I really love feel it. You know, it really feels like it supports my own practice. And. And it feels so important that people have the opportunity to go deep with their practice. I. And I see the, you know, it inspires me to see the shifts that happen when people come for a week of engagement in a retreat, and I have huge confidence that that is of service. So that's one piece that I'm certainly engaged in.
- [55:23]
B
Yeah. Yes. Great. Well, I'll put the various links to some of the papers we've mentioned, but also perhaps if you have any links regarding retreats and so on, I might ask you to send them along. But, gee, I really appreciate the work you have done all this time, and I also really appreciated hearing about it and hearing your thoughts and learning from you tonight or this morning where you are. But that was really, really fabulous and so much food for thought. So, Professor Rebecca Crane, thank you very much for speaking with me on Compassion in a T shirt.
- [56:04]
C
Thank you, son. It's been a complete delight. I've loved the conversation.