Theoretical Overview

Our work aims to address the crisis in student mental health by providing tools, practices and perspectives that create and support greater wellbeing and resilience on an ongoing basis. Our approach combines mindfulness training with inquiry-based group coaching to (1) develop the practices of self-care that constitute resilience and (2) engage in the reflections that will support self-determined growth and development in the future. 

Resilience is the ability to mentally or emotionally cope with a crisis and return to a pre-crisis state quickly. It exists where people develop psychological and behavioural capabilities that allow them to remain calm during crises and to move on from critical incidents without long-term negative consequences. Resilience is best understood not as an individual trait but as a quality of the interaction between individual and environment. A resilient interaction promotes wellbeing and/or protects against the overwhelming influence of adverse conditions.

Mindfulness is a specific kind of attention: relaxed, present-centered, nonjudgmental and nonconceptual. “Relaxed” means mindful attention is not uptight or tense, but spacious and at ease. “Present-centered” means mindful attention is not concerned with the past or the future, but only with this moment. “Non-judgmental” means mindful attention is not evaluating experience as being good or bad, worth clinging to or worth pushing away; it is equanimous to this moment’s experience, whether pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. “Non-conceptual” means that mindful attention does not analyse or discursively elaborate on experience; it simply attends to the experience as it is. Colloquially, mindfulness is “knowing what is happening while it’s happening.” Deliberate training in this way of attending is known as mindfulness practice or mindfulness meditation. 

Mindful Resilience, then, is an ability to cope with crises without long-term negative consequences that is supported by the skill of mindfulness. To understand how mindfulness supports resilience, we need to understand the process of resilience and mindfulness meditation as interactions with the environment. 

Broadly, when we meet an adverse situation, we have three possible reactions. We may erupt with anger (colloquially known as “acting out”), implode with negative emotions (“acting in”), or simply become upset. Acting out and acting in are not resilient responses. They involve blaming others, adopting the role of a victim, and may include rejecting coping methods even after the difficulty has passed.

The third way of reacting -- simply becoming upset -- can promote long-term well-being. Simply becoming upset about a situation (with compassionate awareness, and without a knee-jerk recourse to blame and/or helplessness) allows an adaptive change in behaviour to cope with the challenge. People who adapt themselves in this way tend to cope with acute difficulty, bounce back, and halt the crisis.

Mindfulness promotes this resilient way of reacting to difficulty because it emphasises a non-judgmental approach to experience whether pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. In  mindfulness meditation, we experience negative emotions, troubling thoughts, or painful sensations, and instead of pushing them away we practice allowing them to be there and pass on their own. When we encounter positive emotions, gratifying thoughts or pleasant sensations, instead of clinging to them we practice allowing them to be there and pass on their own. In this way, we conduct a mild form of exposure therapy, gradually training our capacity to hold a range of experience without giving in to our habitual reflex of clinging or rejecting. Then, when we encounter challenging situations, we are better equipped to respond instead of having to react in a non-resilient way. Training in mindfulness increases our capacity to tolerate, make space for, and accept the raw texture of our whole experience.

After noticing new experiences, we can start to make sense of what we notice. This is why  journaling is the second core practice of our approach. If mindfulness lets us scout the inner terrain, journaling lets us map it. It also implicitly enacts a form of self-care: expressing and listening to the stories of one's own life is one of kindness by paying attention. As we unload our thoughts and feelings onto the page, reflecting on the process as we go along, the implication is that we are worth our own time. We realise that we have compassion for ourselves already and we can begin to cultivate it.

Finally, mindfulness meditation and journaling tend to relieve stress and support a sense of wellbeing in their own right, as a kind of helpful side-effect.

More broadly, regardless of whether we happen to be facing difficulties right now, we cannot relate with any situation unless we are aware of what is happening. Mindfulness is the fundamental basis of any approach, whether we think about it or not. Training our capacity to attend to a situation increases our creativity by making new responses available where we were once limited to habitual ones.

The scientific discovery of neuroplasticity is the neurological basis for our approach to cultivating resilience. From birth until death, the human brain continuously restructures its neural pathways to strengthen its capacity to carry out activities that we repeatedly do (whether we do them intentionally or not). This means we can train our brain to strengthen our capacity to have resilient interactions with our environment. If we do this training every day, we will inevitably become better equipped to handle challenges with grace and ease.

Mindful Resilience is a project created by Brenda Bell and Patrick Madden, facilitators and coaches with long-standing personal meditation practices. Brenda is a qualified psychotherapist and Patrick holds a Diploma in Practitioner Coaching.