De-Mystifying Mindfulness

People come to the study of Mindfulness for all kinds of reasons; I’m curious to know what brings you here. Perhaps you’re someone who already has a Mindfulness practice and you’re keen to know more about it? Perhaps you’re someone who has heard a lot about this mysterious thing called ‘Mindfulness,’ but you’re suspicious or skeptical about it, so you want to see what all the fuss is about? Is it really something real? Just a fad or fashion? Does it really cure all our ills? Perhaps you’re a student of psychology, or philosophy, or politics, or you’re an entrepreneur or a therapist? Whoever you are, and whyever you’re here, you’re very welcome. I look forward to learning about and from you as we embark on this adventure together.

'De-Mystifying Mindfulness' was first launched in 2016 and, since that time, it has been honoured by the participation of about 200,000 people on Coursera. During these years, we have listened carefully to the views, feedback, and needs of the participants, which have prompted us to make a series of changes and additions to the course. Thanks to the generosity of our donors (through our voluntary 'dana' box), we had the resources we needed to make the additions. So, as well as some minor changes, we've launched 2 major rounds of updates, including adding extra materials about sitting with difficulties and about the challenges of teaching mindfulness in 2019. We also added some extra audio files with meditation guidance for participants who requested these in the voice of Chris Goto-Jones. Then, in 2021, we added two entire new modules (Mindfulness, Trauma & Social Justice; Mindfulness, Nature and the Land), both of which included additional video and audio sessions. This 2021 update also included a new group of interviews with leading figures in the fields of the practice and study of Mindfulness. The result of these updates, we hope, is a responsive and relatively comprehensive guide to de-mystifying mindfulness; a side-effect might be that the style of presentation might sometimes seem a little inconsistent -- we hope that isn't too disconcerting for you. Good luck with the course, and best wishes for your new adventure!

In this first module, we’re going to explore the foundational question of what Mindfulness actually is! This module has been designed to approach this question by considering a series of preconceptions about Mindfulness in contemporary societies. Hence, here we meet the characters who will help and guide us through the rest of the course: the scientist, the monk, the ninja, the zombie, and the hippie. I hope you find these to be worthwhile companions on our journey. In the end, we’ll discover that these preconceptions are not without merit, but that they are only partial pictures of the whole. We’ll also engage in our first Meditation Lab so that we can begin to weigh these preconceptions against our own experiences. Begin working on the week's Meditation Lab exercises at the beginning of each week. Be prepared to set aside time each day for the exercises in the Meditation Labs. The exercises can range from just a few minutes to nearly an hour, as indicated on each of the guided meditation recordings.

One of the most significant developments in the field of Mindfulness in recent years has been the development of ‘construct Mindfulness’ as a therapeutic tool and as a scientific technology. Both of these rest upon (and produce) bodies of scientific evidence about the effects and correlates of Mindfulness practice, both in terms of therapy and neurophysiology. In this second module, then, we’re going to explore some of implications and elaborations of these approaches. We’ll see what happens to the idea of Mindfulness when we make it into something that can be measured, and then we’ll investigate some of the most popular (and effective) Mindfulness-based Interventions, such as MBSR and MBCT. In the end, we’ll also ask whether this operationalized approach to Mindfulness actually hides deeper philosophical, religious, and existential questions, to which we’ll turn in the next module.

One of the great debates in the field of Mindfulness revolves around the question of the nature of its relationship with Buddhism. In this module, we consider some of the ways in which this relationship can be understood, including by paying attention to the fact that Buddhism is a diverse and multivocal tradition. Going even further, we explore the possibility that traditions of thought other than Buddhism might provide valuable insights into Mindfulness, ranging from Daoism through Stoicism to contemporary American philosophy.