WITH local elections just passed and the snap general election around the corner I thought it might be interesting to explore where mindfulness could fit in a positive manifesto for society.

While a very robust and extensive amount of research shows that virtually everyone can derive great benefits from mindfulness, there are groups who I feel are priorities or who would benefit most.

Let’s start with school teachers and the senior management and others in our primary and secondary schools. Teachers are among the most stressed and fatigued people in the country. Their role is indisputably of the greatest importance, yet they get little recognition for what they do.

All teachers should be trained deeply in mindfulness so that they can manage the stress and irritations that come with the job. There should be a systematic programme rolled out to achieve this, and all trainee teachers qualify as mindfulness teachers as part of their teacher training.

While we train the teachers in mindfulness we should, at the same time bring regular mindfulness sessions to all pupils of primary and secondary schools. Classes could be started and ended with two minutes of silent practice, while a deeper understanding of the neuroscience and workings of the mind can be systematically worked into the school curriculum.

This would equip children for the challenges of adolescence, the cultural pressures towards alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs, and nurture compassion, friendships, tolerance and mature sexual behaviour. As a scientific-based subject mindfulness can readily fit within secular or faith school systems. Such a strategy could be transformative and liberating for the teaching profession and pupils, bringing a much gentler and kindly culture to schools, and, as the evidence shows, raising intellectual attainment.

I’d love to see parents and their children being taught mindfulness together, as happens in my Hamilton class, where often couples come to the session together, sometimes with their children, occasionally three generations together. This nurtures a common language and understanding within the home, and helps bond families.

I’d also like to see mindfulness introduced into the criminal justice system, especially prisons. I believe that much of how our life unfolds is purely by chance. Some are lucky, some unlucky. We can be lucky with the genes we inherit, the parents we had. Lucky with all sorts of things as we grow up – a special teacher, good local facilities, a chance meeting. Others are unlucky in life – their genes, their parents, the events that shape who they become. Some of those people are now in prison.

Prison is extraordinarily expensive. Moreover rehabilitation of offenders isn’t particularly successful. Reoffending rates are high. Prisoners could be trained in how their minds work, how they came to commit the crimes that they are in prison for, how to manage their lives while imprisoned, and how to shape the content and culture of their minds in readiness for life back in society. I have done several mindfulness talks and sessions in prisons in Scotland, for staff and inmates. Among many there is a deep sense that such training, properly introduced and integrated into the daily rituals of the prison system, would help change the culture in each institution and prepare staff and inmates alike for the present moment and the future.

There is a connection between the prison system and schools of course. Some children have one or both parents in prison. Clearly therefore many prisoners are parents. The children of people in prison need help in coping with so many aspects of their lives; and if they knew that their mother or father was learning mindfulness at the same time as the children themselves were learning it at school, the potential for mutual support and a renewed relationship would multiply.

Victims of crime – and often their family members – need mindfulness for an entirely different reason, and can be considered as having similar needs to those who have suffered other forms of trauma. These include people who have experienced the horrors of war, people who have suffered or witnessed terrible injuries, and most poignantly of all, people whose family members or closest friends have committed suicide. When you consider all of these groups put together we can see that, underneath the thin sheen of normality in our society there is a very large group of people who live with deeply ingrained pain, grief, anger and other forms of mental suffering.

What these people have in common is that the tragic suffering continues long after the cause of the suffering occurred. In some cases, especially murder, rape or suicide, the individuals generally fight the very idea of moving on, because it suggests to the human mind that the perpetrator in some way gets off the hook, or that to move on would be disloyal or even an abandonment of the loved one they are grieving for. And yet the suffering they endure is so debilitating.

There is substantial evidence that many people who suffer from trauma of these kinds may benefit significantly from practising mindfulness.

So in my mindfulness mini-manifesto we could use the practices to help teachers, schools, pupils, prisoners, prison staff, and those suffering from trauma to live happier, healthier, more resilient and more joyful lives. Properly thought through this could be delivered at extremely modest costs. Ah well, now it’s in the hands of the politicians.