MLE Initiatives
Mind & Life Europe focuses on four work domains:
Each domain has a community of practice that connects scientists, scholars and professionals in the development of contemplative science. These initiatives cover both fundamental research and applied research and translate outcomes into regionally and nationally relevant frameworks that professionals and policymakers can put into action. Further initiatives are planned in the domains of politics, management, caring economics and east-west-anthropology.
Upcoming Events
ENCECON | ICP 2022
Embodied Experience of Intersubjectivity: Exploring the Boundaries Between 'Self' and 'Other'
This July, MLE will be combining two of it's initiatives, Philososphy & Neuroscience, into one event: ENCECON | ICP 2022 to strengthen the gentle bridges of which Francisco Varela spoke during the first Mind and Life Dialogue between scientists, philosophers, and contemplatives.
ENCECON | ICP will center around the theme: "Embodied Experience of Intersubjectivity: Exploring the Boundaries Between 'Self' and 'Other'". The goal of this workshop is to explore how phenomenology and microphenomenology may be deployed to inform and benefit neuroscientific research. We will do so by engaging in a co-emergent, collaborative effort to reach greater clarity about the affordances and obstacles to the realization of a contemplative science of mind and life.
ENCECON | ICP will take place from July 4th - 8th at Domaine de Frechet - les PEP 59 in Le Reposoir, France
This workshop is an invite-only event.
Click on the link below to read the full brochure including participant biograpgies and research profiles!
>> Read the brochure here
Education
Mind & Life Europe sees education as fundamental to human flourishing, a core part of the effort to develop and utilize the full positive potential of human beings. We have for many years and since our inception, brought together leading pioneers and experts in education to enhance collective learning and the implementation of effective and sound approaches, through many meetings, seminars, conferences and publications. As well as this continuing work, we currently have a specific and energetic focus on an initiative which is creating a "Community of Contemplative Education" across Europe.
Read here all about our CCE initiative
Neuroscience
Mind & Life Europe supports European scientists engaged in empirical and theoretical research on embodied cognition, contemplative neuroscience, and neurophenomenology. Through the European Neurophenomenology, Contemplative and Embodied Cognition Network (ENCECON) we address concrete theoretical and methodological challenges currently hampering the empirical investigation of experience, its relationship to brain and body and its potential for well-being. The ENCECON network consists of researchers interested in both the empirical investigation of the mind, brain, and body and the integration of direct experiential inquiry and rigorous first-person methodology with these third-person approaches.
Nutrition
"Mind your Food" has been initiated by Mind & Life Europe with the purpose to better understand the role of the mind and consciousness in nutrition and the relations between mind function and food, our well-being and sustainable food systems.
Food and nutrition play an increasingly important role in ensuring peaceful, secure and healthy societies for our sustainable future. They represent broad, inclusive and interconnected areas embracing everything from the ritualistic, ceremonial aspects of food, the social dimension of "breaking bread together", farm to table, slow food, nutritional elements of food, consumer behaviours, local and global economies, and so on, to systemic changes in agricultural practices, from conventional to organic or bio-dynamic methods and variety of research-based policies and regulations.
Philosophy
Through the Initiative for Contemplative Phenomenology (ICP) community Mind & Life Europe demonstrates that Contemplative Phenomenology is a field of inquiry in its own right. One that can be learned and applied, with its specific problematics and orientations, without being exclusively conditional upon the needs of cognitive neuroscience. Investigating the contemplative experience, as it is lived and potentially reported by practitioners, is a project that is valuable from an epistemological, practical and ethical standpoint, even before one uses it to disambiguate neurobiological features of the contemplative brain. Through a strong team of the best specialists in Europe and beyond, we teach each of the various aspects of first-person inquiry, especially those that are relevant for contemplative disciplines