Episode 1 - Context

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Our guest for the first episode is Jamie Bristow, Director of The Mindfulness Initiative, a policy institute about mindfulness and compassion training that grew out of a programme of mindfulness teaching for politicians in the British Parliament.

 

Jamie was formerly Business Development Director for Headspace and has a background in climate change campaign communications, advertising and software development.

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Jamie is also a mindfulness teacher and a teacher-in-training in the Insight Meditation tradition that’s associated with Gaia House, IMS and Spirit Rock retreat centres. His teachers and mentors have included Stephen Batchelor, Rob Burbea and Christina Feldman.

 

Learn more about Jamie at: jamiebristow.com 

 

About the Mindfulness Initiative

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The Mindfulness Initiative provides the secretariat to the UK Mindfulness All-Party Parliamentary Group and helped politicians to publish the seminal Mindful Nation UK policy report. Jamie now works with politicians and other decision-makers around the world to help them make trainable capacities of mind and heart serious considerations of public policy and has supported the introduction of mindfulness courses in over 10 national parliaments. He is the author of several publications including Mindfulness: Developing Agency in Urgent Times.

Link to website: The Mindfulness Initiative..

 

About the Mindfulness Initiative's latest report, "Reconnection: Meeting the Climate Crisis Inside Out"

 

Climate change is a physical reality, demanding political and practical solutions, but its inner dimension, overlooked entirely by mainstream approaches, is a human crisis of relationship. 

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Reconnection: Meeting the Climate Crisis Inside Out outlines the relevance of mindfulness and compassion practices in addressing the endemic disconnection from self, others and nature at the root of the climate crisis.

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The report explores the cognitive and emotional foundations of conscious connection and discusses the potential for mindfulness and compassion practices to be developed into powerful enablers of reconnection, fostering both greater resilience and more appropriate responses to global sustainability crises.

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Written by Jamie Bristow, Rosie Bell and Professor Christine Wamsler (LUCSUS), the report follows a research collaboration between the Mindfulness Initiative and the Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies, including 25 in-depth interviews with national and transnational politicians and policymakers, and a large-scale consultation with leading experts working on linking ‘inner’ and 'outer' aspects of the climate crisis. The report draws upon the emerging evidence base linking internal transformation to sustainability, and broader academic literature on the prosocial impact of mindfulness and compassion training.

 

Download the report: Reconnection: Meeting the Climate Crisis Inside Out | The Mindfulness Initiative