Mindfulness course

Welcome

The course materials can all be found below - there is a link to the practice for the week, a workbook and any slides used in the session. Sometimes there is a short video, and more written information. Please use what is helpful. The only thing you need to do is listen to the practice and some other short activity. The instructions will be in the individual session page.

How to use this course

  • Gaining benefits from mindfulness involves practicing between sessions and giving it some time so it does involve some patience and persistence. Do the best you can with the suggested practices. “I’ll give it a go” and seeing it as an experiment is probably the most useful attitude to have.

    It is challenging to carve out time but countless people have felt the benefit from the practices.

  • The Practices are taught in a systematic way, building in each other. It is worth “just doing them” for the time recommended before going on to the next one. By the end you will have an experience of a range of practices and can develop your own practice. The audio links are on SoundCloud, you can download from there.

  • As well as the formal practices we encourage you to choose an everyday activity to do mindfully. It could be a whole activity (e.g. brushing teeth) or part of an activity (first 3 mouthfuls of breakfast).

  • It can be helpful to make a note of what you are doing and what you made of it. You could keep a note in a journal or we have a page you can download with reflections to consider in each session.

    You can use this worksheet download

  • Mindfulness is often presented as a “calm” or “pleasant” thing to do, and indeed it is why many of us practice. However, the intention of mindfulness is to be aware and notice how things are as this allows us to act wisely and kindly to experience. Sometimes more time needs to be spent on cultivating steadiness and calmness as awareness of difficult things can be overwhelming.

    If you are finding it challenging then it can be useful to get some advice from a health professional, mindfulness teacher or therapist.

    Please do not continue alone if it is very hard, also if you are going through a very distressing time then this is not a good time to start to learn mindfulness.

    If I see you in the NHS then do contact me there. Otherwise if you are accessing this alone then I have limited capacity for private 1;1 support, please use a contact form to enquire and see updates but there will be monthly group sessions that people can access from 2024.

    In the UK the British association of mindfulness based approaches has a register of accredited mindfulness teachers https://bamba.org.uk/directory/

  • Please download this PowerPoint for more information.

    Download it here.

orientation for the live course

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This video is a recording of the induction of the live programme.  It goes through what is involved in the programme and what to expect and how to make the most of it. At the end there is a short reflection exercise and you may wish to use the worksheet.