Not many people have heard of neuroaesthetics. Pioneered by Semir Zeki (University College of London) in the 1990s, neuroaesthetics began as the scientific exploration of the human brain’s perception of beauty. More recently, the field is cross disciplinary and translational and, while it is still considered frontier (read: controversial) science, we are beginning to understand the potential benefits of beauty apprehension for human wellbeing.

Schema Therapy (Jeffrey Young, 1990) is an evidence-based approach to healing from past traumas, dismantling unhealthy and conditioned patterns of thinking, feeling, and coping, and creating a more compassionate and meaningful relationship to self and life. It combines elements of cognitive-behaviour therapy (CBT), attachment theory, psychoanalytic/psychodynamic therapy, and gestalt therapy.

Consider for a moment – if health, happiness, and wellbeing are more than just the absence of disease and distress, what does it mean to thrive in life? What does it mean to you?

I believe there are two main ways that mindfulness can help us to, not just survive and ‘get through’ life, but thrive. The first relates to struggle. There are so many things we struggle with. We fight, resist, suppress, or avoid situations, people, interactions, and perhaps most especially, we struggle with ourselves. Our thoughts, emotions, body sensations, impulses, actions, choices, even who we are or who we’d like to be, what we want or don’t want, all of these things are fertile ground for struggle.