Weaving Complementary Knowledge Systems and Mindfulness to Educate a Literate Citizenry for Sustainable and Healthy Lives

Weaving Complementary Knowledge System and Mindfulness to Educate a Literate Citizenry for Sustainable and Healthy Lives contains 24 chapters written by 33 authors, from 9 countries. The book, which consists of two sections on mindfulness in education and wellness, is intended for a broad audience of educators, researchers, and complementary medicine practitioners. Members of the general public may find appeal and relevance in chapters that advocate transformation in a number of spheres, including K-12 schools, museums, universities, counselling, and everyday lifestyles.

Innovative approaches to education, involving meditation and mindfulness, produce numerous advantages for participants in schools, museums, and a variety of self-help contexts of everyday life. In several striking examples, critical stances address a band wagon approach to the application of mindfulness, often by for-profit companies, to purportedly improve quality of education, in contexts where learning has been commodified and ideologies such as neoliberalism have been mandated by politicians and implemented by policy makers. In different international contexts, Buddhist roots of mindfulness are critically reviewed by a number of authors.

Chapters on wellness focus on complementary practices, including art therapy, Jin Shin Jyutsu, Iridology, and yoga. Foci in the wellness section include sexual health, prescription drug addiction, obesity, diabetes, cancer, and a variety of common ailments that can be addressed using complementary medicine. New theories, such a polyvagal theory, provide scope for people to become aware of their bodies in different ways and maintain wellbeing through changes in lifestyle, heightened self-awareness, and self-help.