Faith and mindfulness practice
Robert Marx initiates a day long workshop to explore mindfulness, heartfulness and compassion practices from different faith traditions. Here he explains the thinking behind the day.
I’m very excited to be thinking about and planning this day. In the NHS, we frequently talk about Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. Religion is one of the protected characteristics in the Equalities Act that often gets left out of the conversation. The NHS is rightly a totally secular organisation providing evidence-based healthcare, not religious belief and practice. And yet, it’s important to acknowledge that some of the concepts and practices directly derived from religion, such as gratitude, forgiveness, mindfulness and compassion are increasingly shown by the research to be effective tools of psychotherapeutic healthcare.
At a more national level, we see the cost of being unable to have a multi-faith dialogue in a spirit of openness and willingness to learn from each other. Cases of anti-semitism and Islamophobia have risen steeply over the last year. The othering of people from different countries and faiths is becoming more mainstream and can sometimes be dressed up in a religious context and narrative. This polarisation and exclusion can only be bad for our prospects for living in peace together.
My hope for this day is that we can join in mindfulness and compassion-based practices delivered by people from multiple faith traditions. And that out of an openness to understand, we can encounter each other in fresh and connected ways. Although there may be people in the room with widely differing beliefs, including those with no religious affiliations, our aspiration is to explore our shared experience and see if we can learn from each other. I hope you can join us.
You can find more details and how to book here.