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Coursera

De-Mystifying Mindfulness

Leiden University via Coursera

Overview

Interest in meditation, mindfulness, and contemplation has grown exponentially in recent years. Rather than being seen as mystical practices from ancient Buddhism or esoteric philosophy, they are increasingly seen as technologies rooted in evidence from psychology and neuroscience. Mindfulness has become the basis for numerous therapeutic interventions, both as a treatment in healthcare and as a means of enhancing well-being and happiness. For millions around the world, mindfulness has become a life-style choice, enhancing and enriching everyday experience. Mindfulness is big business.

But, what actually is mindfulness? Is it really good for you? Can anyone learn it? How can you recognize charlatans? Would you want to live in a mindful society, and would it smell like sandalwood? What does it feel like to be mindful? Are you mindful already, and how would you know?

Evolving from the popular Honours Academy course at Leiden University, this innovative course combines conventional scholarly inquiry from multiple disciplines (ranging from psychology, through philosophy, to politics) with experiential learning (including specially designed ‘meditation labs,’ in which you’ll get chance to practice and analyze mindfulness on yourself). In the end, the course aims to provide a responsible, comprehensive, and inclusive education about (and in) mindfulness as a contemporary phenomenon.

During the production of this course, we have been supported by Willem Kuyken, Director of the University of Oxford Mindfulness Centre, and Stephen Batchelor, co-founder of Bodhi College. And we gratefully acknowledge the contributions made by Mark Williams, co-developer of Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), and Rebecca Crane, Director of the Centre for Mindfulness Research and Practice at the University of Bangor. We have recently added expert advice from Dawn Scott (Spirit Rock & Barre Centre for Buddhist Studies), Sydney Spears (University of Kansa), Elisabeth Stanley (Georgetown University), Susan Woods (Centre for Mindfulness Studies), Patricia Rockman (University of Toronto) and Jeff Corntassel (University of Victoria).

"A deep and profound dive into the ethical, social, psychological, and philosophical implications of modern-day mindfulness practice. The course is not for the faint of heart, perhaps, but it is also full of practical, guided exercises for the uninitiated! Thank you for redefining my relationship to Mindfulness in a completely new and thought-provoking way" 28 april 2021

"The course enabled me to explore the mindfulness construct at its deeper lever from philosophical, psychological and political lenses. The mindfulness labs were very useful in practicing the skills of being mindful." 23 nov 2018

"i took this course after a period of time when I was trying to practice mindfulness and meditation, but with doubtful success. The course answered many questions to me, and I needed that to keep me motivated. It really helped me understand the origins and, more importantly, benefits of mindfulness practice and made me persist in my attempts. I'm really glad I took the course, I find it interesting, well taught and very useful for all those seeking deeper explanation in why trying mindfulness." 9 Oct 2018

"I have taken other courses in other online platforms. However, this has been one of the best courses I have found online." 3 Oct 2018

"I really like the invitation to us, the learners, to rethink our preconceptions and beliefs, and then make our own judgement about mindfulness. The overall tone was very friendly and open, resources very useful." 12 Dec 2017

Taught by

Chris Goto-Jones

Reviews

4.8 rating, based on 96 Class Central reviews

Start your review of De-Mystifying Mindfulness

  • Anonymous

    Anonymous completed this course.

    Great Course by Prof Dr. Chris Goto Jones of Leiden University. I started this course with a lot of reservations. I was thinking that might be it’s a waste of time. Earlier, I completed almost a dozen of online courses on different subjects and some…
  • Anonymous

    Anonymous completed this course.

    I spent 17 years in the virtual learning industry as an online teacher and course developer, an IT Professional, and Professional Learning Project Manager, and I can tell you this course is the real deal. The course is very well built, Chris Goto-J…
  • Sylvia Amar completed this course, spending 2 hours a week on it and found the course difficulty to be easy.

    It is a very good course, reflecting to understand what is mindfulness, what implies personnaly and in the society. It provides too sessions to practise meditations.
  • Anonymous

    Anonymous is taking this course right now.

    I dropped this course after just 1 wk when it became clear that the instructor is trying to bias his students against science with striking images, outlandish images, which studies have been shown to elicit a biased response, while the meditation instructors seek to make the students more susceptible to magical thinking by having them imagine outlandish things, such as breathing through their toes or through a blow hole in the top of their head during meditation. Do not take this course, unless you want to be manipulated. I recommend the very good course, Buddhism and Modern Psychology, if you are seeking a scientific approach, from a western standpoint.
  • Anonymous

    Anonymous completed this course.

    I thoroughly enjoyed this course. It began by reviewing the stereotypes of mindfulness and then covering the earliest traditions through to modern times. Each module had a practice group of meditations, and this was, in my opinion, where the course excelled. Following the practices each day, improved my life for the better. There is a subjective evaluation at the beginning of the course and one at the end to measure several indicators in your life. The instructors and contributors are genuinely generous people. I strongly recommend this course for anyone wanting to improve their lives and the lives of those around them, as well as gaining an insight into the true nature of mindfulness.
  • Karen Cunningham

    Karen Cunningham completed this course, spending 4 hours a week on it and found the course difficulty to be medium.

    Excellent course. It was a bit more academic work than I had anticipated, but I have realized as I went along that I put a lot of pressure on myself to excell. I am a science/math person and never like essays, or having to do critical written responses to lectures, etc. However it caused me to stretch and expand my abilities.

    I really found the practical meditation exercises to be useful in my day to day life. I am hopeful that I will continue on with them to help with my daily stress, and to improve my mental and physical health.

    I will also suggest this course to some of my patients who might also benefit.
  • Just perfect. Its really my duty to thank my teacher. He was really wonderful in designing and presenting this course. I was parallely using an android app to practice the Lab sessions. This course touched and answered almost everything arises in your mind during the course. I am indebted to my teacher. he instigated, kindled so many things in my life. Very highly recommended.
  • Anonymous
    Hi everyone, I'm very much happy for completing this course. Not only as a subject or course, it brought something to my life
  • Anonymous
    Brilliant professor & his material. At the end somewhat too much/too long/not necessary. Also some of additional persons presented in the course were not really appealing.
    Numerous technical problems are still not solved by Courcera.
  • Anonymous

    Anonymous completed this course.

    Salini Devi.S : The course ,Demystifying mindfulness really opened the doors to a world of diverse knowledge. As a beginner in mindfulness learning ,after completing the course, I am pursuing for Honors to deepen my learning. A gre…
  • Anonymous

    Anonymous completed this course.

    The course ,Demystifying mindfulness really opened the doors to a world of diverse knowledge. As a beginner in mindfulness learning ,after completing the course, I am pursuing for Honors to deepen my learning. A great teacher inspires his…
  • Anonymous
    As a senior auditor and long practitioner of introspection, self-reflection, and some mindfulness meditations, I doubted that I would learn much. But I was pleasantly surprised and very happy with the course. I recall a sampling of: techniques and h…
  • Anonymous

    Anonymous completed this course.

    This is one of those rare courses which beautifully combines the academic and practical aspects of mindfulness. I not only gained a deeper understanding of how Mindfulness can impact different aspects of our lives and how it can be operationalized, but I also got to dive in and practice to see for myself what it actually feels like. This way, I got not just the third-person objective knowledge about mindfulness, but also the first-person subjective experience, in a perfect blend. I highly recommend this course to anyone who is interested in mindfulness, either academically or to practice.
  • Anonymous
    Full disclosure: I am not new to MBSR having completed 2 8-week programmes before. Yet, this course gives you a lot of insights, food for thoughts and things to take into consideration for your own practice, to how you interact with the world but also for mindfulness in general. It is not easy as you have a lot to reflect upon but it is vital to get out of your own confort zone and interrogate the world around you.
    It helps also deepening your own practice and gives opportunity to go forth or on the side.

    I am very grateful for this course.
  • Anonymous

    Anonymous completed this course.

    Wonderful course!

    I've been meditating, and reading about meditation/mindfulness for many years, yet I still found the course very valuable. Because it was very thorough, I learned about quite a few issues related to mindfulness that I hadn't heard about or considered before .

    It's a great course for those who, like me, have explored mindfulness on their own, without studying it formally, as it provides a structure, and a general idea of the field and current research.

    The professor is knowledgeable, good at explaining, and doesn't talk down to his audience.
  • Anonymous

    Anonymous completed this course.

    This course helped me a lot in becoming mindful.
    Before I started this course I had some vague notions about mindfulness and meditation, after taking this 5 week intensive practice I now feel able to meditate and bringing myself rather quickly in a position of mindfulness.
    I call this course intensive: it takes at least 4 hours/week and during week 4 an additional full day if you want to take the most out of it.
    This weekly pace is required to stay within your cohort of participants and it's the only thing I have mixed feelings about.
  • Anonymous

    Anonymous completed this course.

    Although I have practiced mindfulness for a couple of years now I didn't really have a full understanding of the background to Mindfulness. This course provided a very complete, concise overview of the background philosophies that inform mindfulness practice. The labs also scaffold to develop your mindfulness experiences by providing different meditation practices to complete. Add in to read of others in the class from around the world practising - I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Many thanks.
  • Anonymous

    Anonymous completed this course.

    This course provides the right balance between theory and practice: theory sessions are divided in mini-sessions of approximately ten minutes each, so they could be accessible to everyone. Practice mp3s, and there's a good variety of them, are easily downloadable. The platform is very intuitive, the only missing thing is some kind of notifications when someone reviews your work: however, if that's a deliberate choice, I wouldn't mind since we are surrounded by sound and notifications. I really appreciated the way the teacher talks, I found it very fitting to a course like this.
  • Carmen Cruz

    Carmen Cruz completed this course, spending 8 hours a week on it and found the course difficulty to be medium.

    This course has two parts, the theoretical one, composed by videos, and the practical one, where you get the chance to meditate to provided audio recordings.

    In the first weeks the meditation are short, between 10-20 minutes, on later weeks you are looking at 40-50 minute meditation sessions, hence the hours per week and the “medium” difficulty because it can be hard to fit that on your schedule.
  • Anonymous

    Anonymous completed this course.

    Quite a deep dive into various aspects of mindfulness, from preconceptions, history, adaptations over time, philosophy, various strands of belief and current trends, as well as practical tips and exercises that explore a wide range of meditation practice style. A expert lecturer with a lot to say, the content could be quite "dense" for the casual participant - so in order to get the most from this course and do well on the assignments one has to set aside time and pay attention (or in other words; be mindful :-)

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