TThroughout his 30-year career as a technology professional, Ken Lunn has regularly spoken to audiences of experts and leaders in his field. But it was in 2016, when he taught his first meditation class to a dozen or so beginners, that he felt nervous. “Leading meditation into a quiet room was the most nerve-wracking thing I’ve ever done,” he says. “It’s a scary experience to have people explore their own psychology and try to lead by example.”
At 60, Mr Lunn recently retired from a data and IT management role in the NHS and decided to pursue a completely different passion – one that had been central to his health in midlife. . In 1989, when he was in his mid-30s and with his three young children, Ran’s wife Susan was diagnosed with skin cancer. She passed away in her 1993 year. Ran, who suddenly became a single parent juggling work and childcare, began to suffer from depression and insomnia. “It was a hellish few years as a sole caregiver,” he says. “I didn’t know how to deal with it, but one day his friend suggested he try meditation to at least see if it would help him sleep.”
After struggling to find a meditation teacher at a time when mental health was still a sensitive topic, Ran eventually started taking Transcendental Meditation classes. “He just meditated for 20 minutes every morning and evening, and he felt instantly calm,” he says. “His insomnia went away and he started to feel like he could breathe again.”
While adjusting to his new life without Susan, Ran continued to explore the world of meditation, learning about Buddhist practices and mindfulness. By the time he’s in his late 50s and considering retirement, he’s using it regularly as a way to cope with day-to-day stress, and he’s looking for ways to leverage his years of experience more broadly. I realized that there might be.
“Meditation has changed my life so much that I wanted to give back,” he says. “Although I also have a scientific background, I was never comfortable with meditation because it often has spiritual elements. I wanted to find a way to teach it more rigorously.”
In 2014 I moved into part-time work and completed a Masters in Mindfulness at Bangor University. “I have a PhD in computing, and it was the most challenging academic thing I’ve ever done,” he says. “It was all about being able to explore my personal experience and share it.” Looking inward, Ran reconsidered the impact Susan’s death had on his life. “My perspective on myself changed because I realized how much I was trying to embrace the positives and ignore the negatives,” he says. “This course helped me regain my balance and encouraged me to be open about my inner self. As a man, that can be difficult, but we created a safe space.”
Qualified in 2016, the newly retired Ran immediately began teaching at the Buddhist Center in Wakefield, as well as a yoga studio and an adult education college. By the following year, he had rented his own room and assembled a group of enthusiastic participants eager to learn techniques of mindful breathing and observation.
“The key is to teach people tools to cope with the stresses of everyday life and to build informal habits of being aware of what’s going on around them,” he says. “Mindfulness can be really restorative in grounding yourself firmly in the present. I have many people who have experienced mental health issues and say that coming to my classes has changed their lives. ”
Ms Lan, who moved to online work during the pandemic, now runs weekly drop-in classes for people of all abilities and helps supervise trainee teachers for the charity Mindfulness Network. He no longer feels nervous leading a class, and his grown children have started experimenting with mindfulness with him. “I love seeing the impact it has on people and I learn something new every day,” he says. “That has become my purpose, and I still take 30 minutes every morning to reconnect with myself through breathing exercises.”
At 68 years old, Lunn feels there is still work to be done. “The conversation has completely changed when it comes to mental health, which is great, but there are still people who think there’s nothing they can do to help themselves,” he says. “I want to show them. That’s why I don’t plan on quitting anytime soon.”
