Background
I have worked full-time in the mindfulness field since 2009, teaching courses, workshops and graduate sessions to general public groups in London, Sussex and online, as well as offering one-to one training. I have introduced mindfulness in around 60 organisations, and have taught mindfulness to MPs and their staff in Parliament. I am also a trustee and former co-director of the Mindfulness Initiative, which supports the Mindfulness All-Party Parliamentary Group (MAPPG). I was previously a journalist and came to mindfulness through my own experiences of working with anxiety and depression. As well as teaching, I have written three mindfulness books. I am a mindfulness supervisor for the Mindfulness Network and am an associate of the Sussex Mindfulness Centre.
I love one-to-one mentoring as it enables more space and time to work individually, tailoring sessions to each person’s needs. It is wonderful to share journeys with people as they deepen their mindfulness practice over the longer term, often leading to greater flourishing and more skilful engagement of inner and outer resources in their lives. My experience is there are huge benefits to training and practising mindfulness over the long term, and a mentoring relationship is a wonderful way of facilitating this.
Personal practice
I began practising meditation in 2001 during a period of anxiety and depression and found it transformative – a practical way of understanding and working with my mind that no other approach had offered. Inspired by this, I continued to cultivate a regular practice and began exploring longer retreats. This exploration included living for a year at a meditation retreat centre, soon after which I began training as a mindfulness teacher. After 20 years of practice, I continue to be amazed by the patterns of my human mind, and how watching and working with them, with awareness and kindness, can bring degrees of insight and liberation that have radically changed the way I experience and live my life.
Influences on practice
After many years training in Buddhist contexts, and despite benefiting greatly from the depth of practice that came from working in those traditions, I am now wholly focused on practising and teaching in mainstream, secular settings. I am guided by the science of mindfulness and human behavior, cognitive, social and evolutionary psychology, embodied ethics, phenomenology, the patterns and rhythms of the natural world, and the wish for greater understanding of and skilful inter-relationship with mind, body and environment in the service of well-being.
Qualifications
- Taking It Further – Deepening Mindfulness Graduate Course, Teacher Training, Oxford Mindfulness Centre
- Finding Peace In A Frantic World, Teacher Training, Oxford Mindfulness Centre
- MBCT For Life Teacher Training, Oxford Mindfulness Centre
- Supervision Training, Centre For Mindfulness Research and Practice
- Nourishing Parents 8-week course Teacher training, Tavistock Centre
- Mindfulness Teacher Training Retreats 1 and 2, Centre For Mindfulness Research and Practice
- Certificate In The Fundamentals of Psychotherapy and Counselling, Centre For Counselling and Psychotherapy Education, London
- MA History, Emmanuel College, Cambridge
Publications
Into The Heart of Mindfulness, Piatkus (2016)
Mindful Nation UK Report, Mindfulness All-Party Parliamentary Group (2015), as co-editor
Mindfulness: How To Live Well By Paying Attention, Hay House (2015)
The Mindful Manifesto, Hay House (2010), co-authored with Dr Jonty Heaversedge
Be Mindful Report, Mental Health Foundation (2010)
Various mindfulness-related publications in The Guardian and Mindful Magazine.
Further information
For further information, please see my website at edhalliwell.com