Professor Mark Williams – An Introduction to Mindfulness
Professor Mark Williams – An Introduction To Mindfulness
Professor Mark Williams is Emeritus Professor of Clinical Psychology at Oxford and was also the Director of the Oxford Mindfulness Centre until his retirement in 2013.
Professor Williams, along with colleagues John Teasdale (Cambridge) and Zindel Segal (Toronto), developed Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy for prevention of relapse and recurrence in major depression. He is also co-author of the best selling book ‘Mindfulness: Finding Peace In A Frantic World.’
In this interview Mark elegantly answers the question ‘what is mindfulness?’ He also leads 2 simple introductory practices for beginners and talks about why mindfulness is so effective for the treatment of depression relapse.
In this interview you’ll also discover…
- The difference between mindlessness and mindfulness.
- Why mindlessness often gets us into so much trouble.
- The cutting edge research on mindfulness for depression (Mark is one of the world premiere researchers in this field).
- The ‘breathing space’ mindfulness practice, which is great to use in times of stress and difficult emotions
- How to use ‘habit releasers’ to bring more mindfulness into daily life.
- An experience of the ‘body scan’ mindfulness practice.
Listen to the audio version here
Show Notes
Join the The Mindfulness Summit Journey here
Come and join the community discussions at any time on our Facebook page
Check out Melli’s blog, events and retreats at MrsMindfulness.com
More about MBCT (Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy)
Check out Marks books ‘Mindfulness: Finding peace in a frantic world’
More about the Oxford Mindfulness Centre
Audio
Video
Transcript
Download Mark Williams audio interview
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Download Mark Williams audio meditation
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Download Mark Williams breathing space meditation
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Download Mark Williams video interview
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Download MP4 – Standard Def, 640×240 (Right click to save)
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Greetings from South Africa. Thank you for this wonderful share xxx
Greetings! Southern Utah checking in. Enjoying the first day of this wonderful summit.
Greetings from Italy. Thank you very much for this opportunity!
Hello from Chicago, USA. Best of luck to everyone participating. This is truly exciting!
Listening in from New York. So grateful to be a participant and for those who put this together: a very large thank you!
Hello everyone. Very excited to start this. I am in Boca Raton. I am new to Minduflness, but I have read a lot about it and I am ready to begin this new journey in my life.
Hello,
Same problem here, I can’t download the audio? how to solve this
Thanks
Thank you very much. Fantastic discussion. Wonderful opportunity. I’m listening in from Sydney Australia.
Hello From Chicago, IL. Thank You for this Opportunity and this ability to learn. Looking forward to the weeks ahead.
Hi everyone! Taking the challenge in California and I’m very excited to start. 🙂
Have just listened to the interview with Mark Williams and he is obviously someone who knows his stuff! I’ll be checking out the Oxford Mindfulness Center’s website, as well as his book. Thank you very much indeed for a fantastic start to what I believe will be a terrific 31 day!
All the best from Massachusetts!
Greetings everyone from Michigan USA.
Namaste from Boston, MA. What an insightful interview! Is there a way to download audio of the 2 meditations? I would love to keep them on my phone. Thanks! I’m so excited to be a part of this Mindfulness Summit!
Felt so fortunate that I registered for this Summit. Day 1 is already very inspiring. I look forward to joining the rest of the talk and training. Thank you for making this available online !
Greetings from Utah. I enjoyed your interview with Mark. Thank you for putting this together for us. I am looking forward to this month,
That was wonderful. Thank you.
Hello from Twickenham , the home of Rugby World Cup????
Thank you for getting this event on the road !
Caroline ????
hi!!! breath and mind for everyone!!! from Buenos Aires
Thank you. Wonderful start.
Hello Everyone, 🙂 Joining from Colorado, USA.
Howdy All! Watching from West By God Virginia! Really enjoyed this video. The imagery of fads and froth and the fading out of mindfulness resonated with me. Seems this all too often happens. Building a mindful world amongst all people, including the poor and disenfranchised is vital to humanity. Mark, loved your remarks about the compassionate Healthcare workers for the senior years! Looking forward to these October Days.
Hi to all from Sydney Australia. I just finished listenning to Professor Williams…..and really really enjoyed what he had to say >Im a a novice to mindfulness and this summit is my introduction to what i hope will be an illuminating journey. Its 2.40 am!!. I not normally a night owl but i was out and thought i would quickly check in to the summit to get a feel for it. However, two hours later… im still here…talk about getting caught up … Looking forward to the next 30 days
Listening from Seattle and so appreciative of Mark’s insight and guidance. A great first day!
Hi everyone from Seattle WA 🙂
Thank you so much, to be able to share this with so many is wonderful! Special,! And a privilege! The Secret of Mindfulness Spreads!!!!????
Hi I am logged in, but I cannot watch the videos :/ What should I do? Is there any other way I can get the information from The mindfulness journey? Maybe an article I can read or anything? I was excited to join and listen to what is being said to help and I can’t listen or watch the videos.
Thank you; the first day was great. From the Eastern Tennessee Mountains.
Wonderful experiment with meditation. However I experienced frowning, tightening in my brows that cannot go away. Any suggestions?
Thank you ! It”s an amazing opportunity to learn from such brilliant people! Great first day! Congratulations!
Firstly, thank you for the summit. My comments on this first interview are that it felt haphazard to me – that Nellie was scattered in her questioning. I felt that it could have and should have been more sequential in the process of learning about Mindfulness.
I know very little about this subject and it was a good half way through this conversation before being taken through a meditation on how to implement mindfulness. In fact, I still have so many questions on the why and how to implement this in my life.
I am hopeful that as I tune into this seminar several more days that it wont feel so scattered and will come together. Sorry, not trying to be critical but just feel this interview should have been conducted much better as there’s so much information that Mark Williams has to offer!
This was profoundly inspiring and powerful.
Wouw what a great way to start the summit! Thank you for sharing and making it possible.
Excited about the summit! Participating in El Salvador, Central America.
All the way from South Africa….great start. Now to practice what was preached….’just do it’
Hello
It is Agata from Denmark. I am grateful for this project.
Fantastic talk. Very helpful beginning to the mindfulness summit. Glad to be participating from Toronto.
I really liked learning the 3 minute breathing space. It made me smile to say, Hello! to myself in step three
What a wonderfully informative talk from Professor Williams and a great start to the month. Listening and watching mindfully from near Raleigh, North Carolina while waiting for the hurricane to hopefully pass without incident!
Hello and thank you, love the reading Hokusai Says.
From Hertfordshire UK
So cool. I had this epiphany the other day as I was teaching my daughter to drive. As a young driver – who learned to drive through video games – her attention was limited to the road in front of her. She wouldn’t move her head or blink her eyes for fear of doing it wrong. We are told to ‘keep your eyes on the road.’ So, she literally was keeping her eyes on the road. I would sit in the front seat and talk her through everything. See the man walking the dog. See the kids playing ball in the drive way. See the couple biking. See the cat sitting in the window. It was fun…for me. Because I realized how peaceful it was to see things but not react to them. Because I have experience, I know the potential of things, but until there is something to react to, I just sat back and enjoyed the ride. I explained to my daughter, that you see the man walking the dog, you see the cat sitting in the window, you know that the dog could break free and run towards the cat, but you don’t break for it, you don’t anticipate it happening. You just are aware. If the dog does break the leash, you have a better chance of stopping because you saw the dog and you saw the cat and you noticed the dog’s reactions. It was a great awareness for me. I realized how peaceful it feels seeing, knowing, but not reacting, not anticipating, not worrying, just waiting to see what happens. And I think about how people say “they knew it, ” like when they stop as a child runs into the street. I realize they did and didn’t ‘know it.’ They are in state of awareness – which to some may seem like a mystical thing. Now to figure out how to be aware but not reactive in my daily life…
I have said to myself and others for years – Be the first one on your block to cut yourself a break.
You don’t have to like it, just do it….just meditate 🙂
So true, thank you for the reminder.
Sara from Portugal 🙂
Amazing, congratulations!
Thank you for the great interview with Mark Williams. I felt really inspired by what he had to say and I am going to try to stick to the practice. I look forward to his book as well as the rest of this summit! Thank you! Fantastic, the “Hokusai Says” video link. Yes, words to live by…
Hi, enjoying the podcast from Homosassa, Florida. Very enjoyable and lots of food for thought! Thank you.
Hello from Sacramento, CA. I so need to learn mindfullness. I could not even get through the first exercise of being mindless for one minute!
that was great .. i loved the idea of the mind gym, going to use that
HI, Listening from Quebec, Canada
Hi,
Have just watched and listened to Mark Williams – thank you for the opportunity – thoroughly compelling! Am really excited about participating in the next 30 days.
From Lisbon, Portugal great start. Thank you all for sharing this valuable knowledge.
Thank you for a wonderful experience. (I think I’m in love.) 😀