A fresh start after 60: meditation cured my insomnia. Now I help others deal with it

TThroughout his 30-year career as a tech professional, Ken Lunn regularly lectured to rooms full of experts and leaders in their fields. Yet he only became nervous when he gave his first meditation lesson to a dozen newcomers in 2016. “Leading a meditation in a quiet room was the most nerve-wracking thing I’ve ever done,” he says. “Trying to get people to explore their own psychology and lead by example is a terrifying experience.”

At the age of 60, Lunn had recently left his role in data and IT management in the NHS and decided to pursue an entirely different passion – one that had taken center stage in middle age. in his well-being. In 1989, when he was in his mid-30s and had three young children, Lunn’s wife Susan was diagnosed with skin cancer. She died in 1993. Lunn suddenly found himself a single parent juggling work and childcare and beginning to suffer from depression and insomnia. “It was a hellish few years as the sole caregiver,” he says. “I didn’t know how to deal with it, but one day a friend suggested I try meditation to see if it could at least help me sleep.”

Struggling to find a meditation teacher at a time when mental health was still a sensitive topic, Lunn eventually began taking a transcendental meditation course. “I was able to calm my mind very quickly with just 20 minutes of meditation every morning and evening,” he says. “The insomnia disappeared and I felt like I could breathe again.”

As he adjusted to his new life without Susan, Lunn continued to explore the world of meditation by learning about Buddhist practices and mindfulness. By the time he reached his late 50s and retired, he was using it regularly as a way to cope with everyday stress and realized that there might be a way in which he could use his years of experience more broadly.

“Meditation has changed my life so much, so I wanted to give something back,” he says. “I also have a scientific background and never liked that meditation often had a spiritual component that you had to attribute. I wanted to find a way to teach it with more accuracy.”

In 2014 he started working part-time and enrolled for a master’s qualification in mindfulness at Bangor University. “I got my PhD in computer science, but that was the most challenging academic thing I’ve done,” he says. “It was about exploring your personal experience and being able to share it.” Turning inward, Lunn revisited the impact of Susan’s death on his life. “It became transformative in the way I looked at myself because I realized that I had been trying to move on from the positives but ignoring the negatives,” he says. “The course brought me back into balance and encouraged me to be open about my inner life. As a man it can be difficult to do that, but we have created a safe space.”

After qualifying in 2016 and recently retiring, Lunn immediately began teaching at a Buddhist center in Wakefield, as well as yoga studios and an adult education college. By the following year, he had rented his own room and built a dedicated group of participants eager to learn the techniques of mindful breathing and observation.

“It’s about teaching people tools to cope with the stresses of everyday life, and building an informal practice of noticing what’s going on around you,” he says. “Mindfulness can be very restorative if it anchors us in the present. I have many people who have had mental health problems and say that attending the classes has changed their lives.”

Lunn has transitioned to online work during the pandemic and currently runs weekly drop-in classes for people of all abilities, as well as helping to mentor trainee teachers for the charity The Mindfulness Network. He no longer finds it nerve-wracking to lead a class and his adult children have even tried mindfulness with him. “I love seeing the effect it has on people and I learn something new every day,” he says. “It has become my goal and I still take 30 minutes every morning to reconnect with myself through my breathing exercises.”

At 68, Lunn feels like he still has work to do. “The conversation around mental health has completely changed, which is fantastic, but there are still people who don’t think they can do anything to help themselves,” he says. “I want to try to show them. That’s why I don’t see myself stopping anytime soon.”