Mindfulness Taster Sessions

I offer a taster into mindfulness practices to a small group of people who want to improve their wellbeing and explore what mindfulness is all about.

The programme consists of two short mediations to help you reconnect your senses through mindful eating, helping you to gauge a mindful awareness of routine. A body and breath mediation to help stabilize the mind to see what unfolds when you focus your full awareness on just one thing at a time.

These mediations and activities in the taster session help you to see the automatic pilot at work in your life and encourage you to explore what happens when you ‘wake up’.

What is Mindfulness?

Mindfulness simply means awareness. It is a way of paying attention, in the present moment without judgment. It enables us to have a direct knowledge of what we are doing, at the point at which we are doing it and to be aware of what is happening in our mind and body and in the external environment around us. It is a way of paying attention, of being deeply attuned to yourself.

You can’t stop the triggering of unhappy memories, negative thoughts and judgmental ways of thinking but you can stop the vicious cycle from feeding off itself and triggering the next spiral of negative thoughts. Mindfulness allows you to see how your mind distorts ‘reality’ and helps you to step out of your mind’s natural tendency to over-think, over-analyse and over-judge.

Rooted in the ancient art of meditation, mindfulness can be learned and practiced by anyone, no matter what their religious or cultural background. It offers a new approach to experience, from a problem solving and fixing approach to one in which we learn to relate to experience in a new and flexible way.

Mindfulness based Stress Reduction (MBSR) was developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn as a means of helping people suffering from chronic pain and stress. Zindel Segal, Mark Williams and John Teasdale more recently developed Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) specifically designed to help people who suffer from stress, anxiety or depression.

Mindfulness based interventions have been widely researched and many proven benefits to the psychological well being.

People who have learned mindfulness over an eight week period:

• Discover long-lasting physical and psychological stress reduction
• Experience positive changes in well-being;
• Are less likely to get depressed
• Are better able to control addictive behaviour.
• Improve awareness of self and others
• Enhancing concentration and the ability to focus
• Improve learning and performance