Mark Maund: My journey with mindfulness
How mindfulness has helped me engage with my anxiety and workplace stigma
“Mindfulness isn’t just a theory,” says Mark, charity worker and mental health activist. “It’s not just about sitting around meditating. It’s about what we do and how we engage when we practice mindfulness.”
Mark Maund describes how mindfulness has supported him to engage actively both with his own challenges with anxiety, and to stand up to stigma and prejudice about mental health in the workplace.
This blog post is based on an interview with Tamsin Bishton using Mark’s words. It’s part of a blog series “My journey with mindfulness” edited by Tamsin.
My journey with mindfulness began with my anxiety
The main reason I turned to mindfulness was because I have experienced acute anxiety in my life. I had a challenging upbringing which affected my mental health. And I’ve also faced some of life’s difficulties as an adult. I began to experience acute anxiety at a time when my mother had passed away and my wife was suffering from oesophageal cancer (with only a 5% survival rate). She has since suffered with four further primary cancers.
Initially, I was prescribed a course of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and I also tried medication, but I found that medication was not particularly helpful for me in relation to my anxiety. I am Expert By Experience for the NHS. Through this role I was offered the opportunity to take part in an eight-week Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course with the Sussex Mindfulness Centre. I did the course and it really helped me.
I followed this up with another course with the Oxford Mindfulness Foundation, and am now training with the Sussex Mindfulness Centre on the adapted mindfulness-based approaches teacher training course so I can offer something adapted to the people I work with. Most of the people I meet in stressful workplace settings aren’t yet ready for the eight-week course. But I can use mindfulness practices with them to help control the breathing, to stabilise and ground ourselves.
The personal benefits for me of mindfulness
What has really helped me with mindfulness is that it’s more than just a process. It’s a structure. I have found that with different meditation practices I can explore my feeling tones and my emotions – and then let them go. Sometimes I have gone quite deep with my meditation and then it’s just like a teacher with a board rubber – just clearing the emotions away.
I also find it helpful the way it has overlapped with my Hatha yoga practice. So practices that focus on breathing in the body and exploring body sensations are familiar to me from that.
It impresses me that there is science behind mindfulness which is how we know it works. Also I like that it is not religious. I have a really inquisitive mind and I don’t like to take “no” for an answer or to accept the status quo. What I appreciate about mindfulness is that it isn’t just a theory. It has texture and flesh on the bones. So it’s not just about sitting around meditating. It’s about what we do and how we engage when we practice mindfulness.
Mental health challenges should not hold people back in the workplace or anywhere else
When I was struggling, I found that some attitudes in the workplace were actively unhelpful. For example, I was told to “man up” and “what does not break you will make you”. I faced losing my job because my stress meant my attention to detail at work deteriorated. I experienced significant stigma and that put me on a collision course – I needed to make change in the workplace.
Having mental health difficulties was costly to me in terms of my situation personally and at work. I decided to try and fight the stigma and to use my willpower to fight for others because we live in a world where “wokeism” is ridiculed and stigmatised itself. This has been a motivation for me to become a mindfulness health campaigner. I trained in law, and began working as a charity worker for Worthing Citizens Advice Bureau. And I have campaigned in my work place in the banking sector for a more enlightened view of mental health. I successfully managed to help establish mental health forums at that business. As a result stigma has been reduced there.
The work I do now as a mindfulness mental health campaigner is on the front line of charity work. I support The Capital Project and West Sussex Mind. I also help out at a Carers Group in West Sussex where everyone practices mindfulness. That group has a tremendous impact in helping a lot of people. It’s about working with trauma in the right way. You help people to let things go. But you don’t just lie down and say: “That’s it, I’m a victim.” You let it go until you feel strong enough, with a clear mind, to come back to it. So mindfulness is offering people a toolbox and ways to open new pathways in the brain, to respond to difficulties.
Mindfulness comes in all shapes and sizes
My wife does mindfulness in a completely different way to me. She loves knitting. And while I might take a three minute pause and listen to my body and how it’s feeling, she can sit and knit. She has a wristband that monitors her heartbeat and when she’s knitting it slows right down. For another person, going fishing can be a form of mindfulness.
If you are considering trying mindfulness to help address your challenges it’s important that you are ready for it, that you are in the right place mentally. Just talking about your problems to someone else is a good place to start. If someone talks to me about their challenges, I am always honoured that they are opening up to me. I might suggest we do a little bit of mindful walking – but I wouldn’t necessarily suggest an eight-week course. The thing with mental health challenges is that it’s not one size fits all. I think we can find mindful moments in anything we’re doing, though. And that’s a great place to start.
If you are interested in trying mindfulness check out some tasters and courses here.