Meditation Salon and the Positive Psychology Interest Group present:

New Frontiers in Mindfulness: Mental Health Research, Cultivating Compassion, Social Engagement and Mindful Leadership

Featuring addresses by, and panel discussion and audience dialogue with:

Professor Graham Meadows: mindfulness and mental health research

Dr Petrina Barson: cultivating compassion

Venerable Bom Hyon Sunim: socially-engaged mindfulness

Dr Amanda Sinclair: mindful leadership

[Please arrive by 6.45pm for a 7pm start]

Professor Graham Meadows, MD, MPhil, MBChB, MRCP (UK), MRCPsych, FRANZCP, has worked in medicine for more than 35 years, much of this time in academic roles. Graham has an international standing in epidemiology and health services research and has led editorial teams on a major textbook for multidisciplinary mental health care published by Oxford University Press – the fourth edition of which is now in preparation. He has a 30-year history of meditation practice and associated study and in 2003 Graham made the crossover between this personal practice and clinical and academic fields, beginning a local research program - initially funded by beyondblue - and training in Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT). Since 2005 he has been leading MBCT training courses for clinicians, delivering and supervising MBCT. He was the Principal Investigator for the NHMRC-funded DARE Randomised Controlled Trial investigating the generalisability, clinical and cost-effectiveness of MBCT. A Member of the International Federation for Psychiatric Epidemiology and of the World Psychiatric Association Section of Epidemiology and Public Health, Graham is on the Editorial Boards of the ‘International Journal of Mental Health Systems’ and ‘Mindfulness’.

Dr Petrina Barson is a certified teacher of the Compassion Cultivation Training (CCT) originating at Stanford University’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education. CCT is a program that draws from traditional contemplative practice and from the science of mindfulness and compassion. She has been teaching CCT to medical students at the University of Melbourne since 2014. She is also a mother, a doctor, a poet and an activist on issues of climate change and refugee rights. Petrina is a long-term member of a progressive Christian community, which inspires, supports and tunes her understanding of compassion. She understands compassion as an innate human capacity that transcends all religious and cultural divides.

Venerable Bom Hyon Sunim is a Buddhist nun, ordained in the Korean Zen tradition. Her professional background is in education and social work with graduate training in counselling, psychotherapy, group work, and conflict resolution/mediation. She is a Rotary Fellow of the Post Graduate Peace and Conflict Resolution Studies Program at Chulalongkorn University, Thailand and trained in Korea with Dr Marshall Rosenberg, the founder of Non Violent Communication. Sunim has trained health professionals, teachers, prisoners and community organisations in mindfulness and non-violent communication. Sunim supported people recovering from the 2009 bushfires, managed the prison chaplaincy project for the Buddhist Council of Victoria and established the Buddhist Spiritual HealthCare project in conjunction with Spiritual Health Victoria. She has trained Spiritual Care volunteers from different ethnic backgrounds and traditions and is senior Buddhist chaplain for the Australian Defence Forces.

Amanda Sinclair B.A. (Hons), PhD. (Melb) is an author, academic, teacher and consultant in areas of leadership, change, gender and diversity. Currently a Professorial Fellow, Amanda held the Foundation Chair of Management (Diversity and Change) at Melbourne Business School, The University of Melbourne from 1995 to 2012. Her books include Doing Leadership Differently (1998, 2004), Leadership for the Disillusioned (2007) and her most recent work, Leading Mindfully: How to focus on what matters, influence for good and enjoy leadership more (2016). Much of Amanda’s recent work has focused on bringing insights and evidence from meditative traditions, mindfulness and neuro-scientific research, to enhancing leadership in corporate, community, medical and hospital, police, school, union, university, legal and government settings. As a yoga and meditation teacher she seeks to support people to find enjoyable and sustainable ways of being in leadership.