Over the past 12 months Transformation has been running a special series on “Mindfulness and social change,” designed to explore the relationships between contemplative practices like meditation, individual experiences of stress and strength, and structural issues in society like racism, sexism and inequality.
One would think that these links could be especially important in times like the present, when the Coronavirus pandemic places exceptional pressures on individuals and reveals that these pressures are unequally distributed according to social and economic position. But is that true?
To find out, I asked four leading thinkers and practitioners in the mindfulness movement to give me their views. First up is Rachel Lilley, a researcher-practitioner at Aberystwyth University who works on mindfulness training to improve decision making and collaboration among civil servants in the Welsh government. Here’s what she told me:
