Well-being

Lord Stone of Blackheath Excerpts

Thursday 12th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stone of Blackheath (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, your Lordships will be aware that I have been an advocate of mindfulness and yoga for many years, in the knowledge that mind and body are one and that you should care for each for the sake of the other, as spoken about beautifully by the noble Baroness, Lady Burt. Every year about 850 scientific articles on mindfulness are published. These studies have consistently shown that from just eight weeks of mindfulness practice there can be significant increases in well-being. Mindfulness has proven a radically popular approach to treating poor mental health at one end of the well-being spectrum and supporting flourishing at the other. It is now routinely used by corporations to help reduce stress and improve well-being, as well as boosting performance among their people. Organisations such as HSBC, GSK and SAP all have established mindfulness programmes, with SAP citing a 200% return on investment in its mindfulness programme.

However, there is a societal divide that needs healing here, as addressed by the noble Lord, Lord Bird. Yes, there are those receiving mindfulness training through the NHS to treat recurrent depression but, by and large, the people accessing mindfulness training are generally in the affluent middle classes, who have heard about it and can afford it. The lack of public funds or co-ordinating policy to widen access to those who cannot afford it, but arguably need it most, is creating greater inequalities in society. Well-being inequalities are interrelated with social and economic inequalities, so are every bit as serious. We need a wider and deeper concept of what it means to be a fair and equal society—one that includes well-being, emotional intelligence and self-regulation capacities, which underpin citizens’ ability to thrive.

Similarly, national surveys investigating the health characteristics of yoga consistently reveal that practitioners’ experience improved mental and physical health, which ultimately reduces their healthcare utilisation. It saves money in the long run for the state and local authorities. Yoga requires practitioners to stay present with a host of sensations and emotions and provokes neuroplastic changes. Practitioners are thereby more empathetic towards others and report a greater sense of connectedness to the world in general. These findings indicate positive social, health and financial outcomes, which equal well-being. To increase well-being, then, yoga and mindfulness should be rolled out nationally in schools and the NHS.

That brings me to a wider point. Unfortunately, current conceptions of well-being tend to combine hedonistic, subjective measures with good functioning; thence meditation and yoga are often used as a drug to deal with stress and enable one to get on with the painful job of living. That is not holistic enough. Yoga and mindfulness were developed within ancient wisdoms that saw the benefits of developing the spiritual and relational dimension of being human. Well-being is more than pleasure and good functioning. It should be constituted by deeper spiritual features of our lives, such as the quality of our consciousness; our sense of ourselves as persons; our lived emotions, especially joy, hope and love as opposed to fear, sadness and despair; and, importantly, our relationships with each other—the sense of belonging to our communities and an experience of oneness with all that is.

Economic growth for its own sake does not make sense humanly or environmentally. A holistic understanding of human well-being must be the basis for developing indicators. These should include a human’s spiritual well-being and our oneness with the natural universe. Government policies to improve people’s lives should be designed around such experiences and purpose. In particular, education in schools, rather than just testing performances that turn students into exam machines—the pressure of which has partly been at the root of their ill-being—must stress the spiritual and relational aspects mostly missing from pupils’ current educational experience. That should include nurturing human consciousness, interconnection and oneness, as well as cultivating relational appreciation across difference. An excellent programme to help enable teachers to introduce such concepts into the classroom is already being rolled out in many of our schools by an independent organisation called Loving Classroom. To widen its adoption in schools, perhaps the Minister might accept a meeting with this flourishing organisation utilised by many schools in the UK and other countries.

If, after good schooling, one finds in life what one enjoys doing, what one is good at, what the world needs and how one can earn money from doing it, it will provide well-being for oneself and others. It comes from a system called Ikigai, from Okinawa, where people live longer and for many more happy years than any other place in the world. Perhaps we should look into that more closely.

Finally, we are what we eat. Trillions of bacteria live in our guts. We know that these can be altered by diet to promote well-being. Again, there are thousands of published research studies showing how prebiotic and probiotic interventions can have positive effects on our well-being. They address coughs and colds, eczema, inflammatory bowel disease, bowel cancer, obesity and even mental illness. The International Scientific Association for Probiotics and Prebiotics brings together leading scientists in gut microbial research to enhance understanding in this area. As such, there are many useful resources available on its website. That would be another route to national well-being that the Minister might have the department examine, thereby increasing well-being and saving money and resources in the long term.