About John

John has been a meditation teacher for over 20 years and a mental health clinician for over 40 years. He also has a 25-year history as a mental health trainer. He began teaching meditation in 1998 after being directed to undertake Shamatha meditation teacher training, then developed his skills further through training in Nonviolent Communication (NVC) (2003), Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) (2005), Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) (2006 in the USA and 2008 in Sydney, Australia), and Mindfulness-integrated Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (MiCBT) (2008). John feels deep gratitude that many of the training programs he took part in were led by their founders. He settled into Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) by attending a five-day retreat in 2011 led by Kristin Neff and Chris Germer. He was then invited to the first MSC train-the-trainer course in 2014 at Barre Center for Buddhist Studies. John currently attends online events with the Plum Village sangha.

John specializes in counselling and teaching compassion, mindfulness, and stress reduction. He has developed programs for members of the community and for specialists in the workplace. He has published five peer-reviewed papers, and is a senior certified teacher of Mindful Self-Compassion in private practice.   

Another of John’s loves is providing reflective therapy for individuals, these days with a focus on Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT). He provides online counselling opportunities, and he is available for consultative and reflective supervision for counsellors and trainers who are developing, teaching or participating in compassion, mindfulness or stress reduction programs.

John now lives in an old 1960s farmhouse in a field of 2½ acres. He is slowly developing a tree polyculture and a regenerative organic vegetable garden (which he affectionately calls an "insect hotel.") He enjoys walking in farming and natural landscapes. John’s primary intention now is to explore how to live compassionately in balance with the all the ecologies and elements of the landscapes we live in.

Unknown to many, John has also been a strong social activist, having been the co-mover of a motion at a youth political party in 1969 that all University Education in Australia should be free, and that all students should be able to receive a means-tested allowance equivalent to the "unemployment" benefit. This was accepted by the Labour Party and implemented by the 1972 Whitlam Government. John was also a significant reformer in the redesign of mental health services in the Australian state of Victoria in the 1980s. He now has a strong interest in ecology, and in how we can develop a capable love for Nature, possibly through gardening, as Nature now needs all the love we can muster for her health and our own.

Connect with John Julian

• John's website: ThinkingHealthy.com.au
  
• email John
• John's (online & in-person) courses & programs
  
• John's Facebook pages: john.julian.18 & Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction
  
• MSC & Nature-Oriented Retreat, 18–25 April 2021 at Wilsons Promontory Marine National Park in Victoria, Australia (Wikipedia & Parks Victoria)
• John's research
  

Resources

• The aboriginal Boon wurrung people (Wikipedia)
  
• Child labor in the tobacco industry: from The Guardian, Unfairtobacco & Human Rights Watch

Additional resources (generously offered by John)

     Perfectionism

• TEDMED talk by Thomas Curran: Our dangerous obsession with perfectionism is getting worse
• Curran & Hill. (2019). Perfectionism is increasing over time: A meta-analysis of birth cohort differences from 1989 to 2016. Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 145, No. 4, 410–429.
  

     Loneliness

• Rokach, Orzeck, Cripps, Lackovic-Grgin, & Penezic. (2001). The effects of culture on the meaning of loneliness. Social Indicators Research, 53 (1), 17–31.
• Faye Bound Alberti, One is the loneliest number: The history of a western problem  (Aeon)
  
• A Biography of Loneliness: The History Of an Emotion by Faye Bound Alberti (Amazon)

     Compassion, environmentalism & social justice

• Charter for Compassion
• Andrade et al. (2020). Rewilding for human health (Ecologist)
  
• The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has increasingly recognized the relationship between climate change and social justice: Kolstad et al. (2014). Social, economic and ethical concepts and methods. In: Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change.
• As has the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES): Sarkki & García. (2019). Merging social equity and conservation goals in IPBES. Conservation Biology, 33: 1214–1218.

     Other

• Thich Nhat Hanh in conversation with David Suzuki (YouTube)
• The Peace of Wild Things (poem by Wendell Berry)