Deeper Mindfulness: Exploring Feeling Tone Frame-by-Frame is an 8-week course developed by Professor Mark Williams and colleagues, designed for you if you’ve already completed a mindfulness-based programme and you’d like to explore mindfulness more deeply.

It’s informed by recent psychological findings that reveal that every waking moment, our understanding of the world is dominated by imagining how we can take action within it, coloured by what is called ‘feeling tone’ – the moment-by-moment ‘read-out’ of whether a sensation, thought or emotion feels pleasant, unpleasant, or neither. Based on this moment-by-moment ‘read out’, the body allocates its resources as it gears up for real or imagined action. This can prepare us well for action, but it can also put us at risk of becoming exhausted without our realising it.

Ancient traditions saw feeling tone (vedana) as a fundamental element of every moment of experience and a central aspect of mindfulness practice. Learning specific practices to help us become aware of feeling tone allows us to see clearly the very instant where we become caught up in pursuing or rejecting something and become entangled in a web of emotional distress. Meditation teacher Joseph Goldstein has said that mindfulness of feeling tone is one of the master keys that both reveals and unlocks the deepest patterns of our conditioning.

During the 8 weekly sessions, you’ll learn meditations that prepare you for, then help you tune into, feeling tone – frame-by-frame. This provides you with an opportunity to see more clearly both the tipping points for distress and exhaustion, and also how to flourish by freeing yourself to appreciate life again, even in the midst of difficulty.