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How Can Mindfulness Benefit The Climate Conversation?

We are living at a time when climate change, the greatest crisis of our civilization, threatens a sustainable environment that supports life on Earth. The scope of what this means can feel overwhelming, and seem insurmountable, and lead to feelings of ‘stuckness’, of anxiety, suffering and despair. Mounting research on the physical and mental health benefits of mindfulness has contributed to and helped to legitimize a growing interest in meditative practice, with recent studies linking mindfulness with emotional stability, improved sleep, increased focus and memory, enhanced creativity, and higher levels of emotional resilience to be able to ‘be with’ anxiety, depression and despair.

Mindfulness offers a critical role in being able to support people to awaken and respond to climate change, and to explore how practice can support and motivate wise effort in response.

Cinema screenings are a great way to get together, be inspired, learn and share about climate-related issues. They could be big or small – in a sangha of friends at home or organised for the wider community. Films such as Home, Chasing Ice, Age of Stupid, No Impact Man, An Inconvenient Truth and Gasland or Planetary – can catalyse inspiration, action and engaging discussions.

If you are interested in putting on a screening for the wider community, you can find information about public screening licenses and hiring films from Popup Cinema and Good Screenings.