About

British Heart Foundation Report on Heart Failure care in the UK

Dr Maya Campbell is a research scientist, psychologist, author and mindfulness teacher living and working in Colchester. Having initially trained as a research scientist with a PhD in Physical Chemistry, she retrained with a Masters in Psychology and as a Mindfulness and Compassion teacher after experiencing major trauma and burnout. She has been teaching mindfulness based courses since 2012 as well as running retreats, workshops and drop-ins.

In 2016 she travelled to the USA to train in the Mindful Self-Compassion course with Kirsten Neff and Christopher Germer, co-founders of the Centre of Mindful Self-Compassion. She is an accredited teacher of this course after having done additional advanced training in 2017. Since 2016 she has been teaching the MSC courses and has mentored a number of MSC teachers in the UK.

In her work, Maya brings her professional trainings and expertise to her teachings as well as the lived experience of having gone through major traumas and illnesses and flourished despite currently living with the life-threatening disease of heart failure. Maya brings kindness and compassion to her teaching and is especially interested in the teaching of self-compassion to people. The ability to bring kindness and care to the self is profoundly healing, both mentally and physically and underpins all the gains individuals experience through undertaking a mindfulness course.

Recently Maya has written a book about her experiences of having a cardiac arrest as well as 2 months spent in a coma after being resuscitated. In her book she describes her life’s journey through childhood and teenage trauma, her life as a research scientist investigating crystals that could be used as an invisibility paint, years of depression, heart attack and cardiac arrest and how she overcome the illness to once more engage and enjoy life. Along the way she describes a profound shift in her awareness and perceptions of the world around her and a new found sense of connection with people.

My Story

I became interested in psychology and mindfulness after having experienced exhaustion and burnout, leading to years of depression and ultimately a heart attack and cardiac arrest. After having been resuscitated, and spending two months in a coma, I began years of personal, physical and mental therapy. Along this journey I became more and more interested in how people experienced mental distress and did a Master’s in Psychology and trained as a Mindfulness teacher and set about building a new life.

However, in 2015, having been diagnosed with heart failure and an inoperable aneurysm in my heart with. terminal 2 year prognosis, and feeling more and more fatigued and ill, I decided to research my own medical conditions to see whether there was anything I could do to help myself. What I discovered about how the mind influences the body and heart, and how techniques that use these interactions could help me heal my heart leading me to use them in my own daily routines. As my heart stabilised and the aneurysm stopped expanding I began to formulate what I had been doing into a training program so others too could heal. The Heartfulness Project was born in 2016 in collaboration with colleagues Dr Tamara Russell and after a pilot study by Kings College, London I run the course in London and Colchester.

After covid had subsided and travel was starting to open up again, I decided to address the underlying cause of my illnesses which was intergenerational and childhood traumas. Although I had done a lot of work on this already there were still unresolved issues which I was determined to address. I journeyed through the USA to talk with family members about my ancestors. During my visit I was invited to partake in a workshop with Peter Levine, the founder of Somantic Experiencing^TM where the trauma of my cardiac arrest was addressed.

My grandmother was indigenous Mayan and I travelled to Guatemala to learn about the healing techniques used in that community. During my trip I learnt how traumas have been dealt with for thousands of years by the healers and shamans of the Maya communities and undertook training in these indigenous methods.

What People Say

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Psychology

Campbell, M., Bendijk, A. & Russell, T. (2019). Introducing the Heartfulness Project. Transpersonal Psychology Review, 21, 47 – 57.

Campbell, M. (2017). On teaching mindful self-compassion. Transpersonal Psychology Review, 19(1).

Campbell, M. & A. Bendijk. (2016). Post-traumatic growth and spirituality: Insights and experiences in and after high dependency intensive care stay and the role of mindfulness in recovery. Transpersonal Psychology Review, 18(2).

Physics

Campbell, M., Sharp, M, Harrison, D. N., Denning, R. G., & Turberfield, A. J. (2000). Fabrication of photonic crystals for the visible spectrum by holographic lithography. Nature, 404(6773), 53.