We’re So Glad You’re Here
Welcome to PhD Thriving. We support PhD candidates to fulfil their potential by working with individuals, groups, universities and other stakeholders. Along with our professional services, we provide access to a wide range of free resources, help with mindtraining techniques and access to inclusive communities such as the Global PhD Meditation Group. Take a look around the website and join a conversation about shaping the PhD experience. Collaboration is key to all our futures.
Our core values include compassion for self and others; this is called nondual compassion. It’s a behaviour which is correlated with individual and collective happiness, wellbeing and success. The premise we offer is that if you make positive progress, those around you will also gain. The creation of PhD Thriving is a direct response to overwhelming evidence of declining health and wellbeing among PhD candidates and the subsequent impact on the lives and careers of individuals and institutions.
Peer-reviewed research has indicated that as many as 50% of PhD candidates have moderate to severe depression. This is greater than the rates seen in the wider population, undergraduates, other postgraduates or academic staff. There are indications that levels of anxiety are also at an unprecedentedly high level among doctoral students. In many institutions, the role of PhD candidates is outdated, and institutions sometimes fail to listen to or address the legitimate concerns of PhD communities. Current levels of psychological suffering are leading to major problems for individual students and academia in general. PhDs are our brightest and best; many now see the PhD pathway as a poor investment or, at best, a necessary evil. Inevitably, some very capable researchers and scholars are turning their backs on higher education forever. Without new, happy, and productive researchers and teachers, the value of universities to society will decline dramatically. It doesn’t have to be this way; there are solutions.
There Are Solutions
We have a simple mission: to support PhDs to increase their happiness, wellbeing and success. Both through support for students and universities. PhD Thriving has been built on decades of experience in higher education, thousands of hours of specialist mentoring, professional study skills expertise, doctoral training in applied neuropsychology and over thirty years of practice teaching and research in the contemplative sciences. We support individual PhD candidates to fulfil their potential by applying The Mindtraining Method to overcome challenges and reach goals. The Mindtraining Method is built on three pillars of knowledge that underpin our approach: The Best Practice of Applied Neuropsychology, Compassionate Practices and Contemplative Science. By partnerships with PhD communities and forward-looking universities, we can also help to support improvements at an institutional level.
Top Down And Bottom Up
Our key focus is to support PhDs, both individually and in groups. We also partner with institutions in projects to help improve listening cultures; grow understanding of how to best support neurodiverse PhDs and students with poor mental health; build more cohesive and supportive PhD communities locally, nationally, and internationally; create mindtraining resources proven to support academic and life journeys; and last but not least, to increase resilience and wellbeing in general.
The Mindtraining Method
Mindtraining is a term used to describe systematic training that is intentionally used to deliver predictable and measurable change. Whilst there are a number of scientific and rational approaches that can be described as mindtraining. Dr Stephen Gene Morris has developed the first coherent system based on three of the most reliable elements of mindtraining: Applied Neuropsychology, Nondual Compassion and Contemplative Science.
Applied Neuropsychology
Applied neuropsychology (ANS) does the heavy lifting in The Mindtraining Method. It offers the scientific evidence for using and evaluating the tools. ANS supports most of the benefits students gain.
Nondual Compassion
Nondual compassion is the regulatory mechanism that ensures The Mindtraining Method brings meaningful benefit. It helps to reduce self-criticism, anxiety and impostor syndrome.
Contemplative Science
Secular meditation tools are offered to students wherever appropriate and as a regulator of stress and anxiety. We teach nondual compassionate practices, and support their wider use
