A guest post from Continuing Studies' Learning and Development Consultant, Tracey Peever.
What do you get when you cross a neuroscientist and
leadership educator with a lifelong Buddhist meditator? There’s no punchline,
just potency, and I found out first-hand when I spent a February weekend in the
good company of Paul Mohapel and Peter Kedge, in their co-facilitated Continuing
Studies course, Neuroethics of Mindfulness.
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| Tracey Peever |
Offered both à la
carte and as part of the Applied Mindfulness Meditation Certificate between RRU
Continuing Studies and the Factor-Inwentash School of Social Work at the University
of Toronto, this two-day weekend course attracted all sorts of diverse seekers,
from athletic performance coaches and committed meditators to primary school
teachers and human resources professionals. We all came together to explore the
practice of mindfulness and the ethics that guide our pursuit of a more
peaceful self and world.
Meditation is simple, but not easy. Just like peace is
simple, but not easy. The brain, however, is complex. Dr. Paul Mohapel did a masterful job of
simplifying the complexity of the human brain’s three-phases of evolution and
explaining “the brain on fear” and “the brain on mindfulness”. Together, Paul
and Peter enjoined the scientific understanding of the brain with what
Buddhists and meditators have known for centuries about our human potential. With
regular practice of meditation and mindfulness we can boost our capacity to be
high-functioning and skillful with our words and actions, and in turn become
better able to mitigate the habitual effects of fear and anxiety, to carve well-honed
grooves of peace and wellbeing into the plasticity of the brain instead.
The ethical explorations of this course were the highlights
for me. To unite the brain science with our meditation practices, we worked
with a 16-guideline framework “for a happy life” offered by the Dalai Lama,
which outlines four principles in four key areas of being: internal
self-reference, external reference with others, our personal actions and
choices, and a universal or systemic relationship with our wider environment.
While these guidelines and the practices used to explore them were inherently
Buddhist, they are also universal human values, upheld as secular principles of
good conduct and relationship. Examples of these 16 universal values include:
humility, patience, respect, gratitude, service and generosity.
The guiding question that any ethical exploration is
concerned with is “what is the most beneficial outcome for all?” Grounding
these 16 principles for a happy life in a concern for all beings offers an
accessible gateway to those hoping to bring the benefits of mindfulness to a
diverse audience, including those who have an aversion to anything even mildly
religious.
I have struggled with finding an easy and secular way to
explain the utility of mindfulness in the workplace, as my background is in
“preaching to the choir”—that is teaching experienced practitioners of yoga and
meditation. Since 2010 I have been an organizational development consultant and
Integral Coach, helping organizations and leaders through times of rapid
change, and through the process of creating a desirable future for themselves.
My interest in the Neuroethics of Mindfulness course came from my curiosity for
a different approach to offering mindfulness principles and practices to work teams
and organizations, who have had no previous experience. This approach offered a
new way into the practice from the common ground of values we can all uphold—simple,
but not easy.
Tracey Peever
Learning and Development Consultant
Visit us at cstudies.royalroads.ca.
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