Sadly that’s how we often feel in our busy 21st century lives. Just surviving. However there is an antidote to this – mindfulness.
Mindfulness meditation originated 2500 years ago as a fundamental part of the Eastern spiritual tradition of Buddhism, but it encompasses practical techniques that everyone can use and benefit from, regardless of your background or religious affiliation. Put simply, mindfulness...
In a nutshell, mindfulness can help you uncover a greater sense of calm, contentment and well-being. Moment by moment and breath by breath.
We provide Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) courses with certain elements of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) included.
Both MBSR and MBCT are 8-week group-based programmes which engage participants in a variety of mindfulness meditation practices. Experiential learning is at the heart of each programme with daily home practice being strongly encouraged. Essentially, course participants are guided through their own personal learning journeys with the help and support of the instructor.
However we fully recognise not everyone is ready or able to commit to an 8-week programme, so we also offer shorter courses and taster sessions. For example, we regularly run a popular “Mindful Movement, Mindful Living” course which allows people to sample a combination of both Tai Chi Easy and mindfulness practices over a 4-week period. This programme provides participants with a variety of easy, effective, enjoyable techniques which can be incorporated in to daily life during the 4 weeks and beyond.
Mindfulness meditation practices were first distilled into the secularised MBSR training programme by Jon Kabat-Zinn at the University of Massachusetts (UMASS) Medical School in 1979, to help those patients whom the conventional healthcare system was failing. Since then over 18,000 people have completed the MBSR programme at the UMASS Stress Reduction Clinic, coming with conditions as diverse as coronary artery disease, psoriasis, depression, anxiety, chronic pain, sleep problems, general life stress and many more. Worldwide, hundreds of thousands of people have participated in MBSR programmes based on the model used at UMASS.
In the 1990s Professor Mark Williams, Dr John Teasdale and Professor Zindel Segal further developed the MBSR programme by including aspects of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. The resulting Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) programme was targeted towards people in remission from depression, to reduce the risk of depressive relapse. MBCT is now recommended as a treatment of choice by The National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) for people who have suffered 3 or more episodes of depression, and is also being used in an expanded range of settings to help a greater variety of people.
There is an impressive body of research that proves mindfulness-based approaches to be highly effective for a wide range of physical and psychological problems including chronic pain and illness, anxiety, depression and other psychological problems. Many participants experience long-lasting improvements in both physical and psychological symptoms, as well as major positive changes in health attitudes and behaviours and in perception of self.
"The present is the only time that any of us have to be alive -
to know anything - to perceive - to learn - to act - to change - to
heal." Jon Kabat-Zinn