Breathworks Mindfulness for Stress Course

Short course

In Wolverhampton

£ 250 VAT inc.

Description

  • Type

    Short course

  • Level

    Beginner

  • Location

    Wolverhampton

  • Class hours

    16h

  • Duration

    8 Weeks

Breathworks are a founding member of The UK Network for Mindfulness-Based Teacher Training Organisations representing the leading mindfulness teacher training organisations in the UK. Other member organisations include Bangor University, Exeter University and Oxford University.

Our Breathworks Mindfulness for Stress programme is an internationally recognised course that consists of 8 x 2-hour group sessions, where there will be guided mindfulness practice and theoretical teachings. Each week participants are taught a number of different mindfulness meditation practices that can be incorporated into daily life to reduce stress and aid general wellbeing. Between sessions you will practice at home by using the guided meditation MP3's that will be given at week one, we estimate that the home practice will take approximately 30 minutes per day.

All course participants will receive:

- The Little Mindfulness Workbook By Gary Hennesey (Crimson Publishing)
- The Little Mindfulness Practice Book by Gary Hennessey (Published by Breathworks)
- MP3 with 18 different guided meditations
- Lewis Psychology certificate of attendance
- 16 hours face to face mindfulness training with Brearhworks Accredited mindfulness teacher, Teresa Lewis

The course is for anyone who simply wants to take time out for themselves and find out more about mindfulness.

Although this course is aimed at the general public it is also has the added benefit of being a prerequisite for anybody wanting to train to become a mindfulness teacher.

Facilities

Location

Start date

Wolverhampton (West Midlands)
See map
BERRINGTON LODGE, 93 TETTENHALL ROAD

Start date

On request

About this course

- Understand the importance of direct sensory awareness as a way of getting out of the head.
- Investigate how autopilot leads to stress and how mindfulness gives some choice in how we respond to stressful situations.
- Distinguish between primary and secondary experience.
- Understand the reasons for developing sensory awareness as an antidote to stress.
- Recognise and explore Doing and Being modes.
- Understand and practice how to look at thoughts rather than from them and how to let go of (unhelpful) thoughts.
- Identify and explore how turning towards, and being with, the stressful aspects of life is a better strategy than trying to escape from or ignore them.
- Understand the difference between reacting and responding.
- Reflect on how our built in “negativity bias” shapes the way we see and respond to the world around us.
- Learn the science behind suffering; how our survival instincts have led to our own suffering and how we can change this.
- Understand how meditation can rewire neural pathways in your brain
- Understand how seeking out the pleasant can help one to open up to the beauty of pleasant experience as a way to balance our inherent negative bias.
- Explore the 3 major emotion systems and understand how stress occurs when they are out of balance.
- Recognise that constant self-criticism doesn’t help us to change.
- Explore how to ‘turn up’ the contentment / soothing system, which lowers levels of stress.
- Recognise and assess the danger of the exhaustion funnel and the importance of doing those things that nourish ourselves.

The course is for anyone who simply wants to take time out for themselves and find out more about mindfulness.

Although this course is aimed at the general public it is also has the added benefit of being a prerequisite for anybody wanting to train to become a mindfulness teacher.

Age 18 and over.

A Lewis Psychology certificate of attendance will be provided.

This is a Breathworks Accredited course. Breathworks are a founding member of The UK Network for Mindfulness-Based Teacher Training Organisations representing the leading mindfulness teacher training organisations in the UK. Other member organisations include Bangor University, Exeter University and Oxford University.

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Reviews

Subjects

  • Mindfulness
  • Meditation
  • Breathworks

Teachers and trainers (1)

Teresa  Lewis

Teresa Lewis

DIRECTOR

Teresa is a trained adult educator and has lectured extensively in the field of counselling and psychotherapy. She is also an Accredited mindfulness teacher and currently divides her time between clinical practice and teaching. Teresa meets the requirements of the Good Practice Guidance for Teaching Mindfulness-Based Courses, which is published by the UK Network of Mindfulness Teacher Training Organisations. Her work is deeply informed by her own mindfulness practice and her knowledge of the contemporary research – including cutting-edge neuroscience research.

Course programme

Week One: Learning to Choose. Much of our stress is exacerbated by our resistance to unpleasant experience, and what we resist tends to persist. So we are caught in a trap: the more we resist the more it persists! Mindfulness allows us to accept experience rather than reacting to it, which - paradoxically - allows us to let go of it. This lightens our load considerably, allowing us to get on with our life quite happily, even though it’s not completely sorted.

Week Two: Coming to Our Senses. When we’re stressed we naturally try to do something about it, and this usually entails thinking - problem-solving. The trouble with this strategy is that it doesn’t work very well! In fact it’s more often than not counterproductive. Thinking about our stress keeps us stressed! An important aspect of mindfulness practice is to pay more attention to our senses - body sensations, sounds, sights, tastes - which brings us back to our actual experience in the moment. This greatly reduces stress.

Week Three: Working With Thoughts. Thoughts are one of the main causes of stress, trapping us in a loop in which we try to solve our problems, while the very act of trying to solve the problem keeps us tied to the problem. But what to do? We can’t just stop thinking! One of the skills you’ll learn is to notice thoughts as they arise in your mind and let them go. This is a liberating insight for people who attend the course.

Week Four: Working with Difficult Experiences. Life, as you know, isn’t easy. Financial worries, issues around the way we earn our living and with work colleagues, difficulties in our relationships with family and friends - who doesn’t have them? Mindfulness doesn’t make everything nice and smooth and easy. Rather, it enables us to develop skills and inner resources to cope better - in fact to flourish - in the midst of the sometimes difficult and messy aspects of life. Learning how to be with unpleasant, difficult experiences without allowing them to ‘press our buttons’ is a key skill that you’ll learn.

Week Five: Noticing the Good Things. When we experience some difficulty in life we have a tendency to focus on it, often to the exclusion of all else, and especially the good things that are happening. On this week of the course we encourage you to widen your gaze a little and notice the small pleasures of life, which often go unremarked - the sun coming from behind a cloud and warming your face, a vase of yellow and blue flowers, a compliment from a friend, a job well done. We’re not trying to ‘think positive’, just trying to level the playing field. By noticing the good things and letting them affect us we’re working against what neuroscientists call the inbuilt ’negativity bias’ in the brain.

Week Six: Kindness. In a way the word mindfulness gives a wrong impression. People often associate the mind with the head, with the brain, with cool, analytical thought. Mindfulness certainly isn’t that. It’s simply awareness, and not a cool and detached awareness either - it’s warm, gentle, and kind. We emphasise this all the way through the course but in this week we bring it right into centre stage and introduce a kindness meditation.

Week Seven: The Social Dimension of Mindfulness. When we’re having a hard time it’s easy to become preoccupied with our suffering, and this can become a trap. In the last part of the course we take the kindness meditation further, bringing others to mind and cultivating a warm, gentle, kindly awareness towards them too. This can be difficult, especially if some of them are the causes of your current stress. However, research has shown that developing a more kindly attitude towards others has a very beneficial effect on the state of our mind and body, including the reduction of stress.

Week Eight: The Rest of Your Life. On the final week of the course we review everything we’ve learned and practiced, and we look to the future. The course only works to the extent that we practice. Now that we’ve come to the end of the course, how will you continue to practice and continue to benefit from it? We discuss ways of keeping inspired and reviving our inspiration when it flags. And we encourage you to look after yourself in the future. This isn’t ‘selfish’, it’s sensible. After all, if you’re going to be any help to others, you have to be in pretty good shape yourself!

Additional information

All course participants will receive:  The Little Mindfulness Workbook By Gary Hennesey (Crimson Publishing) The Little Mindfulness Practice Book by Gary Hennessey (Published by Breathworks) MP3 with 18 different guided meditations Lewis Psychology certificate of attendance 16 hours face to face mindfulness training with Brearhworks Accredited mindfulness teacher, Teresa Lewis

Breathworks Mindfulness for Stress Course

£ 250 VAT inc.