Podcast in Your Pocket
- infostillworks
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
Podcast in Your Pocket is an initiative which came out of a conversation between myself and Emma Marshman, Head of Games, Design and Animation at The University of South Wales.
Emma has been practising mindfulness for many years and has often offered informal mindfulness exercises to staff and students to help with stress, exam preparation and just general well-being. But Emma wanted to reach more people in the university, not just those she personally came into contact with.
Like me, Emma has used mindfulness to support herself managing a chronic condition, and we are both aware of the many ways our practice has helped us navigate the extra complexities that illness bring to an already complicated world. So, one morning over a coffee (whilst sketching out some ideas for a book we are co-authoring) Emma mentioned the new recording studio being developed on the campus in Cardiff. Within half an hour we were on a Teams call with the university arranging to record a podcast series, and within the hour we had written the outline for the first four episodes.
It was almost too easy to be true, but as word spread we found more and more people getting excited and offering to help, and within a few weeks we had a fantastic team all focused on providing an accessible resource for the university to offer some science backed tools to manage everyday situations.
So what do we do?
We wanted a podcast that was interesting and informative, that offered some facts about mindfulness, how it works & why we need it, so we chose a conversational format where Emma poses some of the questions I get asked a lot in my role as a mindfulness teacher and therapist, and I answer them.
We also wanted to be able to offer some practices that were not time consuming and could be done 'on the go' if necessary, so we generally chat on a topic, I offer a 'nerdy fact' (because I do love a nerdy fact) and then we try a short exercise. We try and keep each episode to 20-30 mins because it is meant to be a pocket-sized introduction to mindfulness for everyday.
The feedback has been incredible from a wide range of listeners, both within the university and from the general public in Wales and England, and we are now finding that more students and staff want to be involved, either helping us with the practicalities, being interviewed, or making topic suggestions.
One of the great things that happened was that our producer, 'The Lovely Matt', who had no prior experience of mindfulness or meditation, started joining in the exercises during the recordings and from there has developed a new interest in mindfulness, sharing with us some of his insights from the practises. Through chatting with Matt we learnt of his concerns about the impact of social media on university life, so we have just recorded a series of interviews with people from different backgrounds on some of the pitfalls of social media and how mindful approaches can help us navigate these skilfully.
We have more exciting interviews lined up and our guests are becoming more high profile as word spreads, so it feels as though we are at the beginning of something which can really make a difference.
We are very excited about where this can go, and are looking forward to being able to share lots more tips, advice, myth-busting and support (in a light hearted format) to help as many people as possible discover how science-backed mindful approaches can help us in very practical ways in everyday situations.
If you haven't discovered Podcast in Your Pocket yet - here is the link, feel free to share widely, comment and subscribe!
Comments