Mindfulness in Action

Mindfulness-in-Action courses: exploring

New thinking for challenging futures
The art and science of habits and change
Contemplatives practice and neuro plasticity
The presence of mind and the power-of-not-quite-yet
Strengthening the power of attention and awareness
Harnessing new ways to think: Thinking about and Thinking into
Coping with discomfort and distraction
Surviving digital days/daze

John Woodward and the Mindfulness-in-Action programme

This is an on-going programme that has been tailored to continue the work that has been unbroken for over 30 years at Bashful Alley.

In the current uncertainties around the Covid-19 crisis this work can be managed within an appropriate social distance.

There are special and unique challenges to surviving in an analogue body in the Digital Age. The growing popularity of mindfulness practices respond to some the special needs posed by these challenges. The Digital Revolution seems to be having the effect of rapidly shrinking the present moment– at an alarming rate. This causes our attention to become weak and distracted. This shrinking goes on in modern bodies that seem to become progressively more contracted.

The ancient contemplatives practices emphasize ways and means to strengthen the ‘muscle’ of attention that has becomes so weakened in the Digital Age. The ancient wisdom traditions are finding some solid scientific support from the recent insights of contemporary neuroscience. The notion of neuro-plasticity seems to promise endless potential for change.

Many individuals embrace the ideas of mindfulness practice but are frustrated when the ideas seems so difficult to apply in everyday life. It is hard to walk the talk and to change habitual patterns of thinking and action. The Mindfulness-in-Action program addresses this difficulty.

The Mindfulness-in-Action principles and practices devised by John Woodward have been developed not from any of the great spiritual traditions and not from any school of neuro-science. The principles and practices are an outgrowth of a fascination with natural movement and natural running and our evolutionary origins. Modern life and ways of thinking have disconnected us from our evolutionary heritage. The unique principles that underpin Mindfulness-in-Action have developed out of ways to navigate to the Mind-body interface and to establish a reconnection to our origins. This forms the springboard to dive into the extraordinary and creative inter-play that goes on in the neuro-muscular relationship – between the mind and body.

On a Mindfulness-in-Action course various ancient wisdom practices are explored as well as fascinating insights from neuroscience but all of this is presented within a unique and integrative perspective for creative change and expanding awareness.

The Mindfulness-in-Action courses do not so much pedal answers and solutions but open up ways to self-discovery.