Words: Smart ED editorial team｜Images: Sing Tao media archive, supplied by the interviewee
Getting to know yourself better
Peter had just earned a master's degree in psychology from the University of Hong Kong last year, and the natural next step would have been to become a clinical psychologist. But he came to feel that this discipline focuses on treating mental illness, and does not fully address the mental wellbeing of ordinary people or help prevent problems before they arise.
Psychotherapy comes mainly in three forms: the first draws on Freud's theories; the second is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT); and the last is mindfulness meditation.
Freud held that the human psyche is like a pressure cooker — as we grow older, pressure keeps building, and defence mechanisms even kick in to repress it.
But excessive repression leads to illness, so a clinical psychologist will help the patient locate where the pressure lies, and then deal with it through various methods.
Image: supplied by the interviewee
Treating or preventing emotional illness
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is the mainstream of psychotherapy today. If, for example, a patient struggles with social anxiety and believes that nobody likes them, the clinical psychologist will show them how irrational these beliefs are, and then encourage them to try changing their behaviour.
As for mindfulness meditation, it originates from Buddhism. You sit quietly — though you can equally stand or lie down — and then carefully observe your own thoughts without adding any judgement; you might also focus on your breathing, or scan different parts of the body.
The aim of mindfulness meditation is to return to the present moment, no longer dragged down by unpleasant experiences of the past or worries about the future, so that the mind grows calmer.
In recent years mindfulness meditation has begun to catch on in Hong Kong, generally as one of the methods for treating emotional illness. It is mostly run by religious groups or social-welfare organisations, offered on a subsidised basis to people with a relevant medical history.
Beyond that, various organisations and groups also run mindfulness meditation events, many of which emphasise preventing depression or emotional illness.
"Mindfulness meditation doesn't only help people with depression or emotional illness — it can also help ordinary people understand themselves better and look after their mental health." Last June, Peter began running meditation and mindfulness experience workshops in his own name, in partnership with a study society, leading groups of nearly 20 people in sitting practice together.
By last December, he had formally founded TreeholeHK, positioning it as an independent academic group promoting philosophy and mindfulness meditation, with the goal of raising Hong Kongers' psychological wellbeing.
TreeholeHK's start-up capital was under HK$10,000, used mainly to register the company and rent venues; the biggest costs were energy and time.
TreeholeHK focuses on two main lines of business: public events and corporate training programmes. Individual events are free, so as to draw more people into trying mindfulness meditation.
Helping people make business decisions
Lately TreeholeHK runs an average of six to eight events a month, including hikes and cooking sessions, weaving a mindfulness meditation segment into each so that participants can explore their inner world in a relaxed setting; each event draws around 20 to 40 people on average.
Another type of activity is the lecture. Some time ago it held a free "Psychology × Philosophy" talk; around 170 people signed up, but because of venue limits, only 70 could ultimately be accommodated.
"Mindfulness meditation has its roots in Buddhism, and of course we also explore the meaning it carries in religious terms, but we place greater weight on philosophical theory — stressing that everything is grounded in evidence and reason."
Most participants are professionals in their early twenties to nearly thirty, with a male-to-female ratio of about 4:6.
In daily life they feel lost — back at work, they long for the weekend; off work, they long for the holidays — chasing the values society hands them, and hoping to explore the meaning of life.
"Mindfulness meditation has to be promoted in order to reach more people, and TreeholeHK does this mainly through content marketing, writing different articles and spreading them online, alongside the more traditional EDM and other offline promotion."
TreeholeHK has built a website and a Facebook page, regularly publishing articles on a range of topics that introduce philosophy or psychology theory in an accessible yet thoughtful way, while also offering all sorts of practical tips for everyday life.
Earlier on, TreeholeHK was invited by various organisations to design related courses; it once ran a parent-child communication course for a children's charity, and delivered a course introducing mindfulness meditation on behalf of the Chinese University of Hong Kong's Centre for Whole-person Development.
Developing the right courses
"Corporate management often has to make various decisions, yet they are frequently swayed by human nature into irrational choices. Mindfulness meditation helps them judge calmly and ultimately make the right call."
Suppose an audience member has bought a ticket to watch a film and finds it isn't any good; they will often keep watching anyway, reluctant to walk away simply because the money is already spent and cannot be recovered. In truth, leaving partway through to do something more meaningful would be the better choice.
To that end, Peter is developing tailored courses for banks and investment firms. He is himself a programmer, and often runs into stumbling blocks at work, so he is also considering producing training material on that front.
Corporate training courses are still at an early stage, and they will be one of TreeholeHK's major areas of growth this year.
It also intends to launch a membership scheme for individuals, and plans to cross over with different groups to run more varied activities — for instance, blending elements of mindfulness meditation into calligraphy or dance.
"In the past, most of TreeholeHK's events and courses charged only a token fee. More recently we have started adopting reasonable pricing, and our average monthly attendance is still growing at a double-digit rate."
Peter notes that TreeholeHK may not necessarily make big money, but with market demand for mental-health care rising steadily, he hopes it can earn a reasonable income.
Image: supplied by the interviewee
Learning to observe the mind quietly
Mindfulness meditation originates from Buddhism. Its founder, Siddhartha Gautama, was originally a royal heir; seeing the impermanence of life, he decided to give up everything and seek the meaning of life, and in the end attained enlightenment beneath the Bodhi tree.
Gautama spent many years in spiritual practice, turning matters over in his mind again and again and uncovering truth, striving to transcend the suffering brought by life's impermanence, and finally reaching the state of nirvana.
The Buddha statues we commonly see are mostly seated with the eyes closed — this is "sitting" practice: dispelling distracting thoughts and seeing through the affairs of the world.
Modern mindfulness meditation dates from 1979, when Jon Kabat-Zinn, professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States, devised the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBRS) psychotherapy method.
It is used to help treat depression, anxiety, chronic pain and various other illnesses brought on by the emotions, with no small measure of therapeutic effect.
Mindfulness meditation is not simply about sitting still. It is guided by an instructor; people follow the cues, focusing their attention on the breath, or on different parts of the body — including mindful chewing, body scans, walking meditation and attentive listening. Human thought often runs on autopilot, easily stirred into emotion by all sorts of things, frequently dwelling on unpleasant past experiences or fears about the future.
In the process of mindfulness meditation, people can learn to return to the present moment and quietly observe their own thinking — simply watching the activity of the mind, without adding any judgement, no longer swayed by thoughts of the past or the future, so that the emotions become calmer.
Over the past twenty-odd years, mindfulness meditation has grown ever more popular, finding applications at different levels. In the business sphere, this method can help management make decisions and make employees happier in their work.
Large US corporations such as Apple, Google, General Mills and P & G all provide their staff with training courses on mindfulness meditation, or work related segments into the working day.
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