8 week mindfulness course

The gold-standards of mindfulness training are the eight week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn and his colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center and the eight week Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) course, developed by Segal, Williams and Teasdale. These two courses between them account for the largest portion of the considerable research data that has grown up around mindfulness in recent years.  The programme we typically teach is an amalgamation of these. It is designed to help participants learn new ways of handling difficult physical sensations, feelings and moods.

The training enables participants to see things differently, undoing mental and physical knots and tensions. It can increase their sense of personal confidence, of having more options and more strength to face the different challenges in their lives.

Most people completing eight week mindfulness courses report that they gain lasting benefits, such as:

• more energy and enthusiasm
• a greater capacity for relaxation
• enhanced self-confidence
• an increased ability to handle stressful situations
• more focus
• greater sensitivity to others

We deliver these courses in a variety of formats:

• In groups of up to 25 people meeting once a week for eight weeks, each session lasting between 90 minutes to two hours.
• In groups of up to 25 meeting once a fortnight for three hours at a time.
• In virtual classrooms with groups of up to five people, meeting once a week for 8 weeks for 90 minutes per session over a video link.
• One-to-one by telephone, over eight 45 minute sessions.

We are open to exploring other formats as well.

Whatever format one chooses, it is essential that participants undertake to do between 20 and 30 minutes of homepractice each day for six days of each week that the course runs.