 Hello everybody. Can you can you all hear me all right. Welcome everybody. I imagine you can all hear me. Otherwise, please raise your hand if you can't hear me. We're we're good on on audio. Yeah, very good. That's the one thing that's a little bit difficult to to manage on zoom, of course, you never know whether people hear you or not until it's too late and you're spoken for 20 minutes and you discover that nobody has picked up anything. Welcome everyone to today's introduction to the degree traditions of yoga and meditation. My name is Ulrich Pargel. I'm the convener of the degree and I have been running it since inception in 2012 or so. So we've been running it now for seven, eight years, and it's continually growing in student interest. We have taken, undertaken some changes over the last few years but but not significant changes, changes for the better we hope. And one of the things that we did adjust since our early days was we introduced a greater contemporary component, because we discovered that increasing number of students are not only interested in the historical aspects of yoga and meditation but also how you can meditation shapes our current world. And with this in mind, I thought it would be useful to give a talk about modern mindfulness. Modern mindfulness is of course, a well known phenomena in the 21st century, not only in the UK but in the US and then continental Europe, and modern mindfulness is really beginning to shape how we view well being across society here in the UK modern mindfulness cannot be described through the National Health Service so in other words you can go to your doctor report chronic illness, depression or other things. And then that your local doctor your family doctor could then refer you to modern mindfulness course. In other words, you know, modern mindfulness through its therapeutic application has found its way now has a potential to find its way into our into the lives of every citizen in the UK certainly and also in European countries to to large certainly in that, and that changes in many ways, the game for for for mindfulness because in the past of course mindfulness has been a practice that is securely anchored in the Buddhist tradition that was embedded within a fairly secure and tight logical frame of reference. Originally mindfulness is no doubt you all know or suspect served to bring about awakening the awakening that the historical Buddha discovered. And now mindfulness is applied. Not so much to escape samsara to not so much to achieve nirvana, but to make life in samsara more bearable. And that is something of course the Buddha never set out to achieve the Buddha wanted to persuade his followers to leave the world to attain enlightenment and nirvana because he discovered, or he considered samsara to be intrinsically suffering in intrinsically deplorable. While through modern mindfulness contemporary therapy. Life in samsara becomes bearable more bearable perhaps. So, the lot of questions arise from that if you can immediately say yes, is that legitimate use of mindfulness. Can we should we use mindfulness to make life in samsara more bearable and thereby sort of, in a sense, sort of covering over the cracks, removing the spiritual aspiration of Buddhism which the Buddha tried to lead us out of samsara rather than trying to sort of cover over temporarily this suffering that we experience in the world. So those are just some of the issues that we need to consider we need to flag up other issues include social justice. Modern mindfulness as we discover in a minute was founded in the 1980s by American Buddhist American scholar American medical practitioner. And from very early on the focus on modern mindfulness was white middle class America and it became then white middle class Europe and white middle class UK. So what degree is it justified is it justified at all to to to make modern mindfulness a preserve of the well to do middle classes. How do we deal with social or racial exclusion. Mindfulness sets the goal very high sets out to liberate everybody the Buddha said I want to liberate everybody. And in the back door it seems that social injustice is becoming to be associated with modern mindfulness. You may say well, it's a big you know, if it's just a small people of white middle class self help practitioners who pay their own money for it and they dedicate their own time. Perhaps not not not avoidable. But now that modern mindfulness is being rolled out across society. Now that the taxpayer is actually paying for the modern mindfulness treatment that you are me can receive. Is it not time for modern mindfulness to raise its game so to speak, is it not time to take on a much broader ethical remit and make a serious effort to to to help all sectors of society. The other ones that the socially disadvantaged are the ones that most urgently need mindfulness therapy because they're most likely to be suffering from chronic disease. They're most likely to be suffering from depression. They're there they're most likely through their social disadvantages to be in need of well being a treatment. So let's just tied in or tied up in modern mindfulness and let us now sort of look explore modern mindfulness for 20 minutes or so in a more systematic fashion. I'm sharing my screen which is always a little bit of an adventure. So I'm now in the slideshow play from start. Okay. Now, I just see that. Okay, I'm now sharing my screen. I guess you can all see the screen now. Yes, can you see the marine. Yeah. Okay. Excellent. Let me just talk a little full screen. Okay. Very good. Okay, there we go. All right. So mindfulness and public discourse. This is really the topic of today's talk and as I said before I'd like us to to explore some of the key themes in modern mindfulness. What are the significance in the modern world what are its connections to historical practices, and how is those two intermesh. Modern mindfulness is that a fat or is it the future is it the the the holy grail in well being therapy. You can see modern mindfulness and on time magazine. We have wisdom conference, the FT magazine reports to it. We have journals devoted to modern mindfulness so so so clearly modern mindfulness is no longer a niche therapy it is something that has come to international awareness. In the in the UK, we had mindfulness, all parliamentary group exploring how modern mindfulness can be brought to British society overall houses of Parliament in Britain as a result discussed mindfulness modern mindfulness and its application in society. Really important mindfulness has changed significantly from the niche practice that we envisage as a lone Buddhist monk sitting in the cave somewhere in the Himalayas on the forest of Sri Lanka or Thailand. Modern mindfulness is has become huge. The problem is, we don't really understand what modern mindfulness very often is very difficult to agree on on a specific definition, it means different things to different people. Let's look at some of the issues here we have one of the definition that John club it's in himself, the inventor if you like of modern mindfulness coined was mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way on purpose. I'm sorry just have to sort of juggle the screen here. You can see it in the present moment and non judgmentally the controversy here is over the term present moment awareness. The Canon does not really focus in Buddhism on the presence according to the Buddhist tradition sati which is the Pali term for mindfulness means primarily an act of remembering. So, in the Buddhist tradition remembering or mindfulness is really embedded in the past. So instead of being a function of memory in modern world it is depicted primarily as a function of attention to the present moment. Instead of being purposeful it is without an agenda, instead of making choices in modern world it is choiceless without preference. And that is a real problem, a real issue, because in in Buddhism mindfulness is employed as a choice. It is, it has a purpose, and the purpose of course of mindfulness is awakening, and the choice is to choose virtue over non virtue. And therefore, this choice, this purpose appears to have been removed or reinterpreted. So, can true mindfulness be non judgmental. And the tradition, according to the Buddha and the Buddhist treatises say that it cannot be non judgmental. So we seem to have here a very significant departure. Let us look at the roots and see where this departure comes from. Modern mindfulness was introduced in 1979 that is when the mindfulness based stress reduction training was founded founded by a person called John Kabat-Zinn at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. Initially it consisted of group programs developed to treat patients often struggling with a broad range of conditions physical or mental illness. After 20 years so in the, in 1999 he founded the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine and Health Care and Society, again in Massachusetts at the Medical Center there. He began to apply for government grants in order to embed mindfulness practice in clinical application. Back then and until quite recently Kabat-Zinn decided not to bring out or even mention Buddhist connotation in mindfulness and he did so really above all to prevent people viewing modern mindfulness as somehow a religious practice. He did so because he sought grants he sought advocated for an application of modern mindfulness in the medical sector. A medical sector of course that has no room for religious beliefs and practices. Early areas of modern mindfulness focused on the progressive acquisition of awareness of mindfulness and the purpose was for the practitioners no longer to instantaneously react to emotional triggers, but to develop a buffer zone through which the response to an event would be separated out from the event itself. Kabat-Zinn aimed to produce a distance between the event and the reaction to the event and through that distance he believed stress chronic illness and others who health factors can be mitigated. He produced or his teams produced nearly 1000 certified instructors in over 30 countries, and he through this certification process instituted a formal tradition or school of mindfulness based practices. Much of the focus in those early groups was on informal practice, but the participants were also encouraged to incorporate mindfulness in their daily routines. And it led in those practitioners who applied it consistently to a form of self-management to form of coping. That is to say it introduced the ability to better understand an emotion and mitigate or manage its response to that emotion as it unfolds. In other words, it reduced the physiological effects of stress of pain or of illness. It led to an exploration of the experience of stress and illness itself. People learn to live better with stress, illness, and so forth. And what the idea that sort of grows that is that we need to develop a form of equanimity or equity poise in the face of change that change manifests itself in our lives all the time. And that we need to embrace it rather than set out to oppose it, because it is only through the enmeshment of change in our lives that we begin to to deal with it in a better way. We need to understand change in a non-judgmental way. We need to stop reacting in a positive way or in a negative way to change, rather than treating it as a constant and inevitable feature in our existence. This then produces a sense of clarity, a sense of serenity in our life and in every moment. It leads to a mindful state that is embedded in our lives all the time. We have a few more definitions that we encounter in mindfulness context. One developed by Bishop in 2004 reads, a kind of elaborative non-judgmental present-centred awareness in which each thought, each feeling or sensation that arises in the attentional field is acknowledged and accepted as it is. So what are the elements of this definition? One element is non-judgmental responses. The other key term is the production of a type of awareness, an awareness that allows us to observe without over-identification. In other words, we observe a mental reaction without getting totally drawn into that mental reaction. Let us say we observe pain without developing dislike, anger or frustration in response of that pain, but we develop to understand what this pain is, how it manifests itself and where it comes from. In other words, mindfulness allows us to disengage, to create a difference from our habitual compulsive patterns of discursive reactivity. It produces a reflection, a response to the difficult circumstances of life and those circumstances of life can refer to a whole range of situations. It is not necessarily limited to stress, to chronic illness. Mindfulness through Kabat-Zinn and others becomes a tool of managing life in a better, in a more productive way. Where does modern mindfulness come from? And a lot has been written on that. Most people for 20 years also connected modern mindfulness Kabat-Zinn's tradition of modern mindfulness, primarily with the Theravada traditions of Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. And while that is certainly true in large measure because of his link through the inside meditation society that emerged around Jack Cornfield, Joseph Goldstein and Salzburg in the US. It is also a simplification because Kabat-Zinn, like most Western Buddhists of his day, were equally exposed to multiple traditions. Kabat-Zinn was exposed to the Mahayana tradition of Vietnam. He was exposed to Zen tradition of Japan. He even had connections to the Tibetan tradition. So Kabat-Zinn's modern mindfulness does not exclusively spring from the Theravada tradition, but it sort of sprang from a mix of traditions that Kabat-Zinn, like so many other practitioners of his day, the 1970s hippie area, mixed together and created their own new thing. And that's an important aspect of modern mindfulness in many ways. It is much more eclectic. It is much more mixed and contaminated, if you like. It draws on so many different strands that its Buddhist pedigree, if you like, has been contaminated if you want to use a negative word or brought together across traditions if you want to interpret it in a more positive way. So what is mindfulness for? It serves in Buddhism, of course, to reduce suffering, to bring about enlightenment. In the Mindful Nation report of the UK Parliament, it serves to produce healthcare. It prevents discretion, it supports well-being, it introduces resilience across the population. In education, in particular, it is used to develop pupils that are able to focus better. In the military, it is used to develop resilience towards stress, to turn soldiers to more balanced, more effective weapons. So mindfulness weaponizes people in the military. In executive context, it introduces a better trained workforce, more sharper manager who are able to discharge their task, their work in a more effective way. In mental health, it leads to emotional regulation. It prevents depression. In its most general form, I guess, we could say it to character builds. It introduces resilience in our lives. So as you can see from those different topics here, mindfulness has a broad range of applications. And this is, at the same time, its asset, its strengths, and its downfall in some sense. Because it is nowadays used without any regulation in a whole variety of contexts, contexts that make room for or allow for misrepresentation or misapplication. Here we have some further details at the workplace. It reduces burnout, sickness. It introduces flexibility, focus, and so forth, and so forth. Here are some courses, some quotes from a course that was conducted in South London in 2019 when the practitioner, when the teacher asked the students who had participated in that eight week course. So what did you learn from our course over the last few days? And some said I'll be able to step aside from stress and drama and deal with it better. And some said we're aware of unhelpful narratives made up in my thoughts, pausing for breaths when negative thoughts appear, and so forth, and so forth. So you can see that the participants in those courses very much reflect or key into the aspirations or aims of mindfulness. It does indeed seem to introduce a distance to the event, to a mental event. It does indeed introduce greater resilience in the life of people, and has a has a general well being impact. It can reach into the spiral to domain if you look at the last quotation, you see here, the quote saying my eyes have been opened again to how important life and living every moment is. So it introduces a sense of spiritual fulfillment that this particular person perhaps had not had before his mindfulness introduction. One of the key founders of the mindfulness tradition. And one of the people who influenced Kabidzin was Tichnatan. Through his book The Miracle of Mindfulness that he published in 1976. He reached a huge audience. He was a member of the Japanese Zen tradition, even though he is of Vietnamese descent. Because of the Buddhist orientation of Vietnam he was exposed to both Mahayana East Asian Buddhism, as well as Theravada Buddhism that you encounter in Sri Lanka. But because of his, his, his environment in Vietnam, he was uniquely placed to bring together thought from Mahayana Buddhism with a focus on the Bodhisattva and the Theravada tradition. And this ability of synthesis really shaped Kabidzin's interpretation of modern mindfulness. Kabidzin in some ways continued to enmesh those two streams of thought. Tichnatan was without doubt one of the most important, certainly those East Asian teachers for Western Buddhist communities. And he has tremendously widely read and students continue to deliver his teachings perpetuate his tradition in the UK and Europe as well as in the US. He has written over 100 books in English, including of course his Miracle of Mindfulness publication. Here we have a picture of the master himself, John Kabidzin. He was a biologist by training the study, as we said in South Korea, in Japan. And much of his early practice, he developed with the insight of the Pasana traditions that emerged in the West Coast of America and then later on, also at the East Coast. The famous teacher, Suzuki Roshi, shaped his understanding of Zen Buddhism, so did Shugyam Trungpa and Tichnatan's interpretation of Buddhism. So Kabidzin really drew on all three key Buddhist traditions that existed in Southeast Asia or Asia at the time in the 1970s and 80s. He describes his own practice as a mix of Zen and Vipassana element, now living by Dzogchen, so very clearly a composite tradition. His best known book is probably Full Catastrophe Living, which operates within a secular scientific framework. But yet, where he identifies modern-based, mindfulness-based stress reduction as grounded in a universal Dharma understanding that is congruent with the Buddha Dharma. And that's a really important sentence for understanding of mindfulness. Kabidzin understands mindfulness to be a universal phenomenon, a universal teaching. He has its congruent with the Buddha's teaching, with the Buddha Dharma, but he really maps it as a tool for the whole world to consider. And that has given rise to some very interesting phenomena. First, of course, it introduced mindfulness to the West and we understand that now, but it also is now beginning to bring mindfulness-based stress reduction therapy back to East Asia. In other words, he re-imports mindfulness to the traditions from which he borrowed it in the first place, with his particular interpretations, with his particular take. This is a very recent phenomenon. You can take modern mindfulness courses in Hong Kong, in Bangkok, in Singapore and other places in Asia. And we need to see how this will play out over time. In order to sort of implement the universality of mindfulness, he really rejects all constraints of history, of culture, of religious manifestations. He, in other words, has extracted modern mindfulness and sanitized it or sterilized it to make it more likable, to make it more accessible to his still largely Western followers. What does mindfulness-based stress reduction look like? The informal practice consists of a body scan, where the individual becomes mindful of his or her various bodily organs and parts. It can include mindful movement based on yoga, such as walking. It includes sitting and meditation, focusing on breaths, on body, on the sounds of thoughts, on loving-kindness and so forth. Now the inclusion of loving-kindness is very interesting, because loving-kindness originally was not a key feature of modern mindfulness. It was not a key feature of Theravada Buddhism, in fact, but it's found its way into modern mindfulness through Kabudzin's exposure to Tibetan Buddhism. Through his exposure to Mahayana Buddhism, where compassion or loving-kindness, of course, has become a key or has long been a key feature. In other words, loving-kindness is an attestation of the syncretic nature of modern mindfulness, a tradition of mindfulness that brings together elements from practically all Buddhist traditions. In addition to those formal practices of the body scan, of meditation, modern mindfulness-based stress reduction also involves some informal practices such as mindful eating, being mindful in the routine activities of the day when we're brushing our teeth, and doing the washing up, and exercises help to bring awareness into those daily experiences. We take note whether they are pleasant or unpleasant, and we take note of our reaction to those experiences. The format is usually in that of a group session, usually eight times two, two and a half hours, often accompanied by a retreat day. The teacher participant inquiry is a key component in the practice, and once the hour is up, once the session has finished, the practitioner is encouraged to continue to do his work at home. Let us here now look briefly at the increasing popularity of mindfulness research studies. Here you have a graph, it only reaches to 2015, but you can already see the exponential growth of interest in mindfulness. It started out almost invisibly in 1994, but then multiplied in from 2008, 2009 onwards, and the curve of course continues. If I were to continue with, if I were to extend the reach of this study, the red bar would continue to increase in length. One of the important sort of changes that were introduced in mindfulness-based stress reduction therapy was the foundation of the inclusion of cognitive therapy. This was founded in the 1990s by a therapist from both the UK and Canada. Stegel, Williams, and Steve Bell all played a role in that. The mindfulness-based cognitive therapy focused on depression. So unlike the mindfulness-based stress reduction, it had a very narrow and sort of mind component. In many ways, the practices are very similar to those of MBSR, but the key focus is on the analysis of negative thinking and to explore how negative thinking can lead to depression. So it includes exercise from cognitive therapy as well as mindfulness-based stress reduction therapies. A word of caution, so and MBCT has been criticized for that. Mindfulness cognitive therapy should not be applied to patients who are in an experience of depression at that particular moment because it can make that depression worse, it can deepen it. Mindfulness is useful in the treatment of depression. Most people agree on that, but it needs to be carefully calibrated and above all timed to make sure that it doesn't evaporate depressive experiences. One of the key moments in the development of MBCT was the approval that it received from the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence. This is the key institute in the UK that approves medical treatment. MBCT has a nice recommended MBCT as a tool for patients at risk of recurrent depression. But in practice, even though nice recommended it, not every GP has access to mindfulness-based cognitive therapy simply because the rollout does not provide complete cover. The southeast in the UK, one of the wealthiest parts in the United Kingdom has a far better coverage of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy than other areas such as Wales that are typically less affluent. So we do have variations within availability of MBCT. We have some areas of research, cortisol level, activity of dollar and other biological factors are mapped, depression, emotional regulation, chronic pain, tinnitus and so forth and so forth. So a great deal of work has been done and continues to be done through MBCT. This is particularly used in addictions, alcohol addictions or drug abuse as a tool to sever the link between the substance and the addictive reaction that develops in the individual. As you can see here in its variant as cognitive therapy, mindfulness has acquired a very broad, a very wide-ranging area of application that reaches well beyond the traditional Buddhist framework of application. Further areas of research are covered on this slide, what is perhaps most important is the work into the brain's default mode network. That is to say it is used to still the mental activity to reduce the mental wandering and introduce a focus within those who are applied for that because often it is this mental wandering that is being held responsible for the increasing volatility of the person's reaction to unregulated reaction we should say to the world and to negative experience. So through the stilling of the mind, if you like, the reaction is challenged, it is focused into a more managed, a more controlled, reactive state. Let us now say a few words about Mindful Nation, the UK report. This was a big deal in the UK because we had, as I mentioned before, an all parliamentary group that convened in 1915 of over 100 members of parliament and peers to participate in mindfulness courses. It was a singularly important document for mindfulness in Europe, and one of the students on this MA participated in the production of that report. She led the initiative that gave way to the report in fact. And it was a great asset for the students on this MA to have her in the classroom and to explain out of her own experience, what were the factors that brought parliament's interest to mindfulness and how she managed to engage with parliamentarian and direct their inquiry into mindfulness. Mindfulness in this report focus on healthcare, education, the workplace, as well as criminal justice, those were the areas that were deemed to be most important areas of application or with the greatest potential application of mindfulness. Mindfulness is used also privately in other domains. I mentioned the defense a little while ago. Only a month ago, several defense groups from the US and the UK above all held a conference on mindfulness application in military context, and it was extremely interesting. It was a study for the study of mindfulness and it was quite a remarkable testimony of the way mindfulness has now found applications in so many other areas and originally minded. You can imagine what the Buddha would have said had he found out that his own teachings were now applied in a military setting. He would, I imagine, not have been pleased. Here's some examples of the workplace study. People, the group counter the sick days, lost to stress, depression, anxiety that have increased by 24% since 2009 that mental illness costs the UK economy up to 100 billion pound per year, and that mindfulness can help reduce stress and therefore reduce sick days. It can reduce the cost that is encouraged through treatment of mental illness. Here's the person who founded mindfulness based cognitive therapy Professor Mark Williams and his key publication finding peace in the frantic world. This is one of the most important studies of cognitive therapy yet produced. He worked out of the Oxford Center of mindfulness, but has recently retired. And we have further publications on mindfulness in application in depressive contexts produced at Oxford at Bangor and Exeter universities by the mindful way through depression. Again, we see that the in-depth research carried out at Oxford at Bangor at Exeter has then led to publications which in turn paved the way of course for increased promulgation of mindfulness practices not only in the medical arena in the National Service, but also in self-help groups and in society by enlarge. For example, how mindfulness and your plasticity work together. In the UK you have to take a very difficult exam and mindfulness training has shown to help them deal with the memorization of the cityscape in London, for example. Here we have an example or testimony of the presence and inclusion of mindfulness in the National Health Service. It was created to 2007, which is called a quick reference guide to depression management of depression and primary and secondary care. And it speaks about the application of mindfulness in those contexts. In areas how mindfulness improves people's lives. We don't need to cover that again. This is a summary. It deals with stress, depression, emotional regulation, chronic pain, addiction, cognitive skills, relationships and well-being. So this sort of sums up the areas of application of mindfulness. So as we teach mindfulness, of course, in our degree traditions of yoga and meditation. We have three classes, three lectures devoted to mindfulness. One sets out the classical application and the origin of mindfulness in the historical period of Shakyamuni Buddha. We have another class that connects mindfulness with the Vipassana practices as it evolved in America in the 1970s. And finally, we map the evolution of modern mindfulness and, most importantly, application of modern mindfulness in the contemporary world. So should you still be able to explore mindfulness? Should you chose to do so? Should this be your interest in your MA dissertation four years ago? I had a student who did that in connection with University College London, where she explored mindfulness and finding application in a clinical context. It was a very, very interesting publication or not publication, dissertation, because she drew on clinical data, life clinical data that emerged from trials at University College London, and then interpreted those data as a source of mindfulness that produced an outstanding dissertation. And this is the kind of thing that we like to promote through the dissertation. Dissertations are important parts of your studies. Often, dissertations represent the original reason why you come to source to study yoga and meditation. So we like to turn the dissertation into a platform, into an opportunity to apply what you have learned during your studies at source to the original interest that brought you in the first place to those studies. Here we then have more information about London Life. You will have access to the slides later on. I'm sure this will make them available to you. But that is perhaps a good moment to stop this presentation and allow for questions at this point. I will now stop sharing and open the floor to questions. Anna, will you be moderating questions or answers or shall I simply do that myself? Ed is fine. We haven't had any in the chat. If anyone has any, feel free to put your hand up and we can ask them directly. There's a fairly small group so you can also simply jump in. Good question at the moment. Nothing in the chat either. Oh, hello. Yeah, hello. Sorry, I'm just, I logged in on two devices because one was freezing. And so I was just hearing an echo. Thank you for that presentation. Very informative and inspiring. I will try to turn my screen on at some point. I just had a question about the students that have been perhaps in the last year, last few years about what they've gone on to do in the world. Yeah. Very important question. I get that question every application or recruitment cycle. Students come to the degree from all walks of life and that is really true. We have, we have teachers, we have journalists, we have lawyers, we have bankers. We have both the armed forces last year in the in the classroom. All of them come to the degree because the whole phenomenal passion in the practice of yoga and your practice of meditation. Most come to the degree from from a background in yoga about 60% 30% meditation and 10 come from other degrees. Many of the of my students are active yoga teachers. They, some of them run fairly large yoga centers in the in the UK. And many use the degree to to deepen, you know, the understanding of the history of the series intellectual cross fertilization between the traditions of yoga and meditation. And when I look at the websites of those students today or something I've done a little exercise many put the MA onto their website as a as a testimony of their further study. So, that is one application one one use to which degree is put some go on to research every year has one or two students from within the cohort who embark on PhD research that can be PhD research. In the at source, I had a student going to Oxford and other went to Santa Barbara. So the research trajectory is open to to many of them. That is another example I had some student who started writing on yoga. Without further study he published and very interesting book in many ways. And just, I think, last year or so. So, others go into well being or continue to to be and well being I mentioned my student who worked at UCL to interpret stress connected data and then and she then returned to hers to her clinical work, and you know, applied to what she you know what what the the the perspective that we brought to her through this degree. So we have a whole range of of applications some I'm sure simply do it because it helps them inform their own practice. It helps them shape what, you know, what's their experience and understand perhaps what they experience in their own yoga and meditation practice. Thank you. Yeah, and making decisions, whether to do a 300 hour a yoga therapy training, 858 hour. It's, it's interesting to see the different pathways and one of the things that you mentioned earlier was about the accessibility for, you know, people in society, who maybe, you know, disadvantaged in some way or come from some kind of trauma whether you know, so I'm quite interested to know whether there's been a diverse applicants or people joining the degree and whether there's anybody on the faculty from sort of, you know, in perhaps indigenous heritage. That's also teaching. At the, the class or the student cohort of yoga meditation is truly into an international body we have this year, good number of students from from from China from Japan from Korea. We have students joining us from Europe, although this is getting less because of breakfast the student fee status has changed. We have some students from Caribbean black African background in class, a minority but a growing minority and it's very interesting because the perspective so students brain is often hugely original they. I had a dissertation proposal brought to me just the other day where somebody wants to explore the tradition of yoga in Nigeria, and the area, which is used in Nigeria. Well being above all. So, so there's this is sort of opening up completely new ground. And I'm very, very excited to be able to supervise that. The, what a half I would say of the of the participants continue to be of Caucasian origin. Approximately those exchanges I have Tibetan monk in the current cohort I have students from from India, three or four South Asian descent. And it is it is a truly international group I had a student flying in from Lisbon every week. That sort of brought commuting to an extreme. People increasingly sort of begin to to be able to participate in those discussions you know beyond beyond the boundaries and the fact that we have taught online of course has has made it easier during the last year. I don't know where the school will go where where corporate will go I think they will continue to be blended learning of some form, but the school wants to have students on campus because we believe that face to face communication is at all times preferable, but we are, you know, increasing increasingly across the board online resources. Ironically, the MA traditions yoga meditation was has done that already since inception from the very beginning the degree was designed to be built around the professional or busy domestic lives of our students. We, we had online lectures where years before anybody else had it we had online repositories of our readings years before anybody else did it. It meant that we were very well prepared to deal with court. So, so that that is good. But in a sense, we love lost a little bit our edge technologically because not everybody does it. We need to sort of see whether we, we, we want to drive that further or whether we want to stick to the formula that we have applied in the past. Thank you. The MA is delivered either full time part time over two years or part time over three years. I think it's a great advantage, because it allows students to really adjust their study to their to their to their real lives we very much appreciate that students, not all students have the the leisure of the financial resources to dedicate to full time and many of our students continue to work while they're studying and then they often take the two year pathway or the three year pathway. And what is very good is the university allows you to switch. So if you were to start full time and then you discover, after three months all this is really not working out for me and a lot of stress, a lot of pressure I'd like to do it. But reduce pace and you can switch to two year or three year midstream through a single email it's a very un bureaucratic a very easy process. So it allows you to, to adjust your your study mode, really without complication. You ask about this delivery of the program. At the moment there are four people delivering the program. I'm the convener and I contribute. Sean horse on is our expert on world philosophy, she is contributing to the core module. And then James Malenson, who is a very well known yoga scholar, and who works on hatha yoga. He contributes and we have Peter Fluegel who works on the Jena traditions of you. So those are the, the core group. As part of your studies at source you will be able to take an open module as well. And that open module can be any ma module any ma course that we offer at the school. It could be Sanskrit, it could be Chinese, it could be Arabic. It could be politics in South Asia. It could be historical exploration of a certain period or region in Africa. It could be economic course and economics or art history. Then our boundary set. So you can either study a subject that complements quite narrowly what you do within the degree modules, or you could pick a subject that you always wanted to study but never really got around it never really had the, the time or the resources to study. And, you know, this then becomes available. And the school, you know, of course encourages that. Thank you. Any further questions. Are you still there. No one else wants to go I'll go again. Okay, of course shoot. For a full time program how many hours a week do you think is a realistic. I don't know. It's a initially difficult question to answer accurately, of course, because students come to us with different background, some of the students just came straight out of an undergraduate degree and a foot in full swing of study. They are often relatively easy to write essays because they have done it they, they know how to approach academic publications and so forth. Others have had a break in their education, maybe raised a family, maybe embrace the career and, and banking or so forth, and want to want to return to study. And the, and that of course means that people need to put different amounts of time into the degree as a as a rough guide and that's a really rough guide, and you will understand the minute why it is a rough guide. We expect the full time study takes about 35 hours per week. Part time study over two years takes about 17 hours, and part time study over three years takes up about 13 hours per week. So you can immediately see all we have done is really divide the regular working hours by either two or three to to achieve that figure. My own sense is that these figures are not terribly off. But they vary so much. Typically, if you do full time study you will need to attend four lectures a week, which takes an each lecture and seminar together amount of two hours let's say the generates in two or eight hours of time. I would say that each of those lectures calls for, you know, at least three hours of preparation reading around it. So, you know, you have said 24 plus eight yes 35 is reasonably close but this doesn't apply uniform across all months remember that teaching runs only from October to the middle of December, and then from the first week of January to the, to the end of you then write essays and you write your dissertation so they're there are sort of their gaps in the schedule and it gives you flexibility, you know you can shift work around really as you as you need as you as you want you could. If you have time of the weekend you could dedicate part of the weekend to that. If you have family then maybe you want to do it in the evening. If you all be available online. You don't have to come to source regularly, except for the classes and essays are submitted online so it allows you to, to study the great deal within the comfort of your own home on your own resources you don't have to worry about the validity of books for example in the library, if, you know, if you don't have time to spend in the library, for example. In addition to the lectures and seminars we provide workshops on essay writing. We provide workshops on dissertation writing. The program is really very well supported through those workshops and the workshops fall into two categories there's also that we deliver program specific through yoga meditation staff I run many of those. The school itself source has more generic workshops on essay writing on the dissertation production and so forth. And, and these are all quite well integrated. The, the first workshops deal with book reviews which then support the essays the essay workshops support the essay and then lead to the production of the dissertations. So there they all hang together quite, quite well. The progression of many of our students is truly breathtaking, in particular with the apartheid students over two years or three years the first essay is often quite laborious and difficult and not hugely successful but then some of them by the time they reach the dissertation. They, they get the dissertation published in peer review journals. So the dissertation becomes much more than just a component of CMA it becomes a platform for something new in some cases, not not at all obviously the thing in total. I had about 56 dissertation published over the last few years, which is a small component but it's a significant component. And I then see the journey of improvement over those three years. It's really, really astonishing. How much headway they have made and the skills that you pick up along the way. So not skill that you can only apply to your own meditation once you know how to write effectively how to engage with evidence effectively, you can, you know, use those skills and any walk of life. You know, quite, quite beyond what what you have done at source. One question in the chat actually, which I think we'll probably have to make the last question. Saskia has just asked if the part time three year is always fully in person or if it is online as well. The difficult question, because in the past before COVID it was always in person, but it typically meant one day a week in London. And, you know, you will then do other modules on that one week in the other years. So if you if you live somewhere in the UK and you can manage to come to London on one day a week that is what we had in the past. Now, during the last two years, much of it was online during the last year everything was online now we have blended learning and the in the school and visitors to continue that blended learning pathway, because it works well for many students. It leads to innovation in program delivery which of course is a good thing. And it also allows source to reach out to students to which it formally could not reach out. So for example, at the moment we have our lectures delivered online, and we have a small group seminar teaching on campus. So I would deliver a lecture online and then the next day or two days later I would have the students in the in the classroom and we will then discuss the content of the lecture. My own sense is that this will probably continue so that there will be an online component and that may vary from program to program. But my sense is also that students will be asked to be on campus to to to some degree and we want students to be on campus to some degree to promote an identity as a student to promote student cohort for many students learning in groups is good it works really well. It is good for mental health to to meet your peers, not to be cut off from from university life overall. We make arrangements occasionally that allow us to minimize travel to London. At the moment we can. I had a student who had significant changes in her domestic life she now moved to, to the Lake District to Lancaster and rather than coming every week to London teaching she agreed she would come every second or every week to London and participate in the online seminars very actively so so we try to be as flexible as we can, but it would be misleading to say that. Yes, absolutely you can continue to study fully online. I simply do not know. And I suspect if COVID receipts, then we will want our students to come to source at intervals at least. Hannah tell us this was the last question allowed. It was a great pleasure meeting you. Thank you so much for finding the time. This is a collective event and some of you perhaps have questions that you didn't want to bring up in in this context, do send me an email. If you have any any other question any issue personal circumstances that you want to raise with me, we can easily arrange for another zoom meeting one to one. Or in London or near your source we can meet on campus as well. Or we can just do it through email it's entirely up to you. I'm available for those conversations I very much enjoy participating in those conversations or do let me know if there's any other question that you have. Yes, you know if you put in an application you can always defer or reject the offer if you do get an offer it doesn't tie you into anything that doesn't generate any commitment. Sometimes it's useful to know to have an offer, and then, you know, begin to make plans around that offer. Things change. As I said, you can defer by year without needing to reapply. So it's a good way of testing, you know, what is possible, really without without from commitment on your part at all. And I'm of course available to help you with the application if you have any any questions although the process is fairly well mapped on the on the website. And it's not a very honorous application process itself. So now we're coming to the most awkward part of the lecture I've never, it's always easy to start zoom meetings, it's always a little bit awkward to end zoom meetings. So, I leave it to you, why don't you navigate yourself now through the through the closing of the call. Yeah, no problem. Hopefully that talk was useful to everyone I've just popped or it is email in the chat so if you do have any questions you can use that. Thank you to the student and along my panel which started about 15 minutes ago but if you did want to join that you can join that now as well. And thanks so much for attending. Have a good day everyone.