Mindfulness Initiative Belgium
Mindful ness Initiative Belgium
'Mindfulness Initiative Belgium' MiB is an initiative of Ilios Kotsou and Caroline Lesire.
The Mission of MiB is to inform and educate politicians and institutions regarding the benefits that mindfulness can bring to society, especially in the areas of education, health, justice, and social and ecological change.
In November 2018 MiB was joined by the initiative of the Leuven Mindfulness Centre and vzw MOMENT
to combine forces for an emerging Mindful Belgium.
Together, our objective is to create an inventory of mindfulness initiatives already in existence in Belgium.
The information will be compiled into a report to be offered to the Belgian Parliaments.
You are warmly invited to bring mindfulness initiatives to our attention and stay close to the process leading up to the goal of a comprehensive report and follow-up actions to inform and educate politicians and institutions regarding the benefits that mindfulness can bring to society.
Your contribution is highly appreciated.
Thank you for getting in touch!
For further information
please contact us at moment@mindfulmoment.be
Observation - Mission - Vision
'Towards a Mindful Belgium'
We notice that many people are faced with an array of challenges of health and vitality, and we envision
people living and working with attention and awareness for their personal and collective well-being.
Our mission is to encourage human potential at all stages of life within all walks of life, in particular heartening resilience, compassion and responsibility.
We honour the many initiatives in Belgium and within the EC in Belgium to integrate mindfulness in life and work for more personal resilience and interpersonal understanding.
This initiative arose from the intention to connect these initiatives with each other, to create synergy and reinforce each other, and to explore possible collaborations.
Our vision is a Mindful Belgium, more specifically communities / society enabling greater awareness, understanding, wisdom and responsiveness. This might lead to fully engaging with each other to create results we all experience as valuable and meaningful.
We are grateful for the Inspiration found in the MINDFUL NATION UK initiative and the report on societal initiatives to encourage awareness and understanding.
We commit to bringing our knowledge and expertise to connect with people and organisations in Belgium, including the European Commission, around this initiative of emerging towards a Mindful Belgium.
We also engage to collect information and insights from comparable initiatives in other European countries or regions. We wish to learn and share what we are learning to contribute to a mindful society that cares and attempts to alleviate suffering.
Wherever you and your organization translate mindfulness to serve a collective purpose, you are kindly invited to share your insights and activities, e.g.
-
researching the effectiveness of mindfulness practices,
-
testing mindfulness programs,
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experimenting with mindfulness and/ or implementing mindful practice
in your school,
in your cure and care institute,
in your work environment and in creating new forms of self-government and leadership,
in negotiation and harmonisation efforts,
in the implementation of safety measures and
in other wholesome change processes, and
in reducing harmful strain and stress leading to exhaustion and burn-out,
etc.
The present members of the working group:
Caroline Baerten
Claude Maskens
Dirk Sturtewagen
Katharina Mullen.
We are members of the advisory board of the vzw MOMENT and can be contacted through
1st Roundtable Dialogue
10 November 2018
The dialogue was framed by the conference on burn-out as a social symptom and is inspired by the work of Pascal Chabot 'Global Burn-out'.
Chabot takes the phenomenon we call burn-out as not just an individual problem that affects a few exhausted people, but rather 'a disease of civilization', connected to concepts of progress, technology, and desire, which seem the hallmarks of this era of experimentation.
This first Mindful Belgium- Dialogue
brought together representatives
from policy making, government, consumer organisations, workplaces, politics, health care and persons who care to build and contribute to interpersonal understanding grounded in personal awareness and resilience.