Alumni Spotlight: Darko Lovric

Darko Lovric completed the Master’s in Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy in 2012, and now works in innovation and people analytics in New York. 

Below, Darko discusses three aspects of the course – personal meditation practice, scholarly detachment and teaching – and how he continues to use the skills developed during the programme in his everyday life.

  


Three ways MBCT helped me to take mindfulness into the world 

Mindfulness often implicitly implies a separation from the world. Sitting on a mat removed from everyday habits of the mind and body. Attending a retreat. Retreating to a mountaintop. Spirituality is frequently contrasted with the everydayness of life, and the path forward entails leaving our normality behind and entering a different space. 

While certainly a time-tested tradition across spiritual practices, such an approach leaves most of those interested in meditation with an obstacle and a challenge. An obstacle in creating a separate space for meditation, and a challenge in understanding how exactly this practice will benefit the lives they do not plan to leave behind. 

The Breathing Space meditation has fundamentally transformed my practice – the simple act of cessation of everyday frantic activity and turning inward while remaining within my everyday context has enabled me to see and live mindfulness woven within the fabric of the everyday. Breathing Space has for me been the bridge between my mindfulness practice and my practice of daily living, reminding me again and again that mindfulness is not linked with a posture, place or space but rather by the quality of internal attention, that can be helpful anywhere and everywhere. 

Secondly, MBCT has helped me was to skilfully separate the practice of meditation from a belief system. While seemingly easy, this task required great skill - for the best instructions about mindfulness (how and why to practice) come from within existing belief systems and are connected with it in myriad ways, with threads that both illuminate and bind. Too many approaches either accept the belief system completely, or ignore it to their detriment - and it is in this area that scholarly detachment and nuance becomes invaluable. To preserve the teaching while not requiring a subscription to the belief system is a hard task - but essential if mindfulness is going to become a more established part of life across our diverse world. 

Finally, MBCT course was designed for a dual purpose - to develop one’s own practice whilst learning how to facilitate the practice of others. Shifting back and forth between these perspectives is immensely helpful, turning what is by necessity a solitary practice into a communicable and shared experience that binds groups together. Much like advice for mastering any subject centres on explaining the topic to others, so deepening one’s own practice benefits from the task of crystalizing it to others. Conversely, the act of skilfully teaching from personal experience without becoming too didactic is a great test of an experienced meditator (and one with which I certainly struggled) - the temptation to escape into words and a teaching role and away from the unfolding inner experience is strong, and mimics well the pull of the everyday. Learning how to expertly engage with such pressures has been a great way to ensure my mindfulness practice becomes deeper and more resilient. 

While by no means the only things I’ve learned, these three aspects of the course have undoubtedly made me a better meditator and a better teacher.