It just keeps getting better...

I last posted over a year ago. But I'm going to try to stay more current now.

 I'm just back from Ireland where I was privileged to deliver a keynote at the Annual Conference of  Mental Health Nurse Managers Ireland. I say privileged because I'm in awe of the work these folk do and the way they seem to do it. I met so many good people there. And how wonderful - the theme of the whole conference was Mindfulness. We had the delightful Tony Bates from Headstrong in Dublin, the richly informed Mary-Jo Keitzer from the University of Minnesota, myself and the wonderful Ruby Wax giving keynotes. We had a lot of fun on the panel discussions.

It's such good news that people who put themselves on the line they way these nurse managers do, struggling to deliver good services at a time of austerity (and that's acute in Ireland right now) have had the chance to learn stuff that might be valuable to their patients, their staff and - above all - themselves. When managers are more mindful the whole system gains.

Who I am, what I do and a few thoughts about mindfulness and neuroscience research

I'm Michael Chaskalson. I live with my wife Annette in Cambridge in the UK and these days I teach mindfulness in a wide variety of contexts. I run mindfulness-based stress reduction courses for the general public in London (http://www.mbsr.co.uk/mbsrcourses.html) five times a year and I'm currently developing a level 2 course for the alumni of those courses. I teach mindfulness skills to business coaches to help them sharpen their coaching skills (http://www.mindfulness-works.com/offerings.php) and I offer courses and masterclasses to NHS clinicians, execs and their teams, and people from professional services firms.

There is so much good research around the effects of mindfulness training around these days. Especially about its impact on various aspects of brain function. Now that we know so much more about neuroplasticity and that the brain can be trained there's a real buzz around mindfulness in some neuroscience circles. More and more neuroscientists are coming on my London courses. They sometimes bring new insights to bear on what we're up to in the classes and I hope that what they learn there can sharpen and focus some of the new research that's being done. These are exciting times.