The Mindapples campaign

Hand Made Health

25 September 2010

I settled down this morning to have a proper read-through Mindapples Co-founder Tessy Britton’s new book, Hand Made, and feel inspired to write a post about it. The book collects a beautiful set of stories about creative new projects that build connection and community, and features projects as diverse as social media surgeries and artistic […]

The Psychiatrists’ Mindapples

18 August 2010

All pretty quiet here in the Mindapples Orchard after our exertions at the Big Treat and all our various festival activities. We’ve been at the Secret Garden Party, Camp Bestival, The Big Chill and the Playgroup Festival, as well as at Edexcel and the BBC, and now we’re having a little rest. Meanwhile, I’d like […]

The Big Treat in action

17 July 2010

For the past three days, the AMAZING Mindapples Gardeners have been producing our first public event, The Big Treat, in central London. We’ve had massage, salads, juices, meditation, digital detox clinics, tango lessons, kung fu and even expressive dance, all in a pop-up health farm that truly surprised and delighted hundreds of unsuspecting people. Here’s […]

The missing middle of modern meditation

31 May 2010

I have a lot of conversations about meditation. And over the last few years, as the mainstream interest in meditation has grown and I’ve met more and more people wanting to learn the practice and the theory of meditation – and in particular mindfulness-based meditation – the supply to satisfy the demand of that interest […]

Rethinking mental illness

20 April 2010

Rethink has created a petition calling for the new UK Parliament to act to improve things for people affected by mental illness. I just signed it, and rather than e-mailing everyone, I thought I’d post it here. The pledge is simple, ‘we care about mental illness and need a government that will act’. Rethink wants […]

A brief history of mindfulness

15 March 2010

Hang out around mental health circles either side of the Atlantic at the moment and soon enough you’ll hear someone talking about mindfulness. And here in the UK, the status of mindfulness as official flavour of the psychotherapist’s month was secured this year when the Mental Health Foundation launched its Be Mindful project. With its […]

The Mindfulist

31 January 2010

Each day The Mindfulist posts a new topic to meditate or think on – to slow you down and help you focus. The best time to practice mindfulness is right now. Take a deep breath.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

20 January 2010

At his Stanford University commencement speech in 2005, Steve Jobs, CEO and co-founder of Apple and Pixar, tells a heart-warming tale of some of pivotal moments in his life. Told in three stories – the first about ‘connecting the dots’, second on ‘love and loss’ and the third about death, Steve urges us to pursue […]

Communicating ‘Mindfulness’

19 January 2010

With Mindapples kicking off 2010 with plenty of team discussions about visualising and designing this seemed appropriate! Photography agency LPA, The Mental Health Foundation and Clear Channel Outdoor are calling creatives to generate ideas for a poster campaign to help build awareness with the general public of Mindfulness, (a form of meditation that is, the […]

The Americanization of Mental Health

11 January 2010

A very interesting article in The New York Times, by Ethan Watters, describe’s how the US’s view of mental health is homogenising mental health: “For more than a generation now, we in the West have aggressively spread our modern knowledge of mental illness around the world. We have done this in the name of science, believing that our […]