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Mindfulness meditation adapted for city life

Mindfulness meditation, a form of the Buddhist practice developed in the West and now available in Hong Kong, can restructure the brain

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Illustration: Henry Wong

Meditation can still a restless mind, better prepare us for the challenges life throws at us, even make us more creative. But did you know it can actually change the structure of your brain?

Professor Mark Williams, director of the Oxford Mindfulness Centre at Oxford University, is among the growing number of academics and scientists who have dedicated their careers to unlocking the potential of mindfulness meditation, a Western, non-sectarian form of meditation based on Buddhist practices.

And now, decades after the ancient art made its way to the West along the hippie trail, it is making its way back to Asia in a form well adapted to city life, and with Hong Kong as the centre for teaching in the region.

"In the 1970s, teachers came back from Burma and Thailand and started teaching mindfulness meditation - sometimes called insight meditation - in the West in retreat centres," says Williams.

Those early American Buddhist teachers, among them Jack Kornfield and Sharon Salzberg, set up retreat centres and published books on meditation. It was on one of these retreats that Jon Kabat-Zinn, who worked with patients with chronic pain, was inspired to take the practice out of the retreat centre and the monastery and into a hospital.

In 1979 he set up a clinic in the US state of Massachusetts. Wary of putting people off by calling it a "Mindfulness Clinic", he instead called it a Stress Reduction Clinic.

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