Healing with Joy: Sailing through Depression with Mindfulness

Day of Mindfulness (one-day retreat)
for Health Care and Human Service Professionals
from 9:30 to 16:30 on Saturday Oct. 31, 2015
at Centre on Behavioral Health, The University of Hong Kong

CBH-DOM-2015-Oct-RegistrationForm-Final.pdf  Registration is on a first-come, first-serve basis. There are only 60 spaces available.

Oct. 1, 2015

Dear friends,

You are invited to attend a Day of Mindfulness (DOM) for health care and human service professionals, co-organized by HKU Centre on Behavioral Health and Plum Village Mindfulness Academy - Hong Kong. This DOM is part of our “Healthy Body, Healthy Mind” Initiative to integrate mindfulness practices to the physical and mental health fields.

The foundations of this initiative are the teachings and practices of Mindfulness based on the Discourse on Full Awareness of Breathing (Anapanasati Sutta) and the Disco on the Four Establishments of Mindfulness (Satipatthana Sutta), as taught by the Buddha about 2600 years ago. We also studied how the mind works, based on the teachings of Manifestation- Only Psychology, which was systematized in the 4th century by the Indian Buddhist monk and philosopher Vasubandhu of the Yogacara Buddhist School. Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh has used these teachings to form the foundation for meditation practices to help us nourish our body and mind, to develop insight and to help us transform pain and suffering into peace and happiness. Even though the teachings are from Buddhist tradition, the practices are non-sectarian and are open to people of all faith.  

In this DOM, we will look deeply into the role of mindfulness in coping with depression, especially with the feelings of anxiety, helplessness, worthlessness and the "empty" feeling ... that often arise when one is in a depressive mood. How can we lift ourselves out of negative thoughts, cultivate and maintain positive thoughts? Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh offers the following morning verse for happiness “Waking up this morning, I smile. Twenty-four brand new hours are before me. I vow to live fully in each moment and to look at all beings with eyes of compassion."We have unwholesome mental seeds as well as wholesome mental seeds laying deep down in our store consciousness. The thing for us to do is to create conditions for the positive seeds to manifest and stay in our mind-consciousness while not to create conditions for the negative seeds to manifest and stay in our mind-consciousness. We will see how the mindfulness practices of stopping, calming, resting our body and mind, and the process of looking deeply into the inter-being nature of the unwholesomeness and wholesomeness can set us free from the wrong ways of looking at things, which may put us into a depressive mood.

Materials in "No Mud, No Lotus: The Art of Transforming Suffering" (Thich Nhat Hanh, Parallax Press, 2014) and "The Upward Spiral: Using Neuroscience to Reverse the Course of Depression, One Small Change at a Time" (Alex Korb, New Harbinger Publications, 2015) are referred to in the lecture for the DOM. We will see the oneness nature of body and mind, as mental activities affect the body and physiological activities affect the mind.

In the day of mindfulness, we will learn the practice of going back to our breath, anchoring our mind in the in-breath and out-breath. We become calm and clear when the mind and body are together in one place, with the help of our mindful breath. We will practice listening to the bell, walking meditation, eating meditation, exercise meditation (mindful movements), and relaxing meditation (total relaxation) … We practice to stop, to slowdown the thinking in our mind via bodily actions.You can find more information about activities of past days of mindfulness at http://mindfulnessacademy.org/en/programs/health-care-dom

 A sample programme schedule for the Day of Mindfulness is as follow:

9:30                 Sitting and Slow Walking Meditation (indoor)

10:30               Lecture

12:30               Lunch

13:30               Total Relaxation

14:30               Group Discussion

16:00               Walking Meditation (outdoor)

16:30               Farewell

Location:        Centre on Behavioral Health, The University of Hong Kong
2/F, The Hong Kong Jockey Club Building for Interdisciplinary Research,
5 Sassoon Road, Pokfulam, Hong Kong

香港大學行為健康教研中心
香港薄扶林沙宣道5號香港賽馬會跨學科研究大樓2樓

Fees:               HKD200.00 per day (including light vegetarian lunch and tea)

How to register: CBH-DOM-2015-Oct-RegistrationForm-Final.pdf  Registration is on a first-come, first-serve basis. There are only 60 spaces available.

For more information, please contact us at Centre on Behavioral Health, e-mail: bhealth@hku.hk, Tel: (852) 2831 5163.