Introduction to mindfulness and meditation et cetera

A six week course. One session a week of 1.5hrs. Each week there will be a practice given to do that week, when we come back together, we'll explore together how that went.

Week One: Focusing attention. Exploring the breath and noticing how the body moves as we breathe. No right, no wrong. Exploring the senses, noticing sights, sounds, sensations, and taste. It is normal for the thoughts to be busy.

Week Two: Similar theme to week one and we will look at the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system and the stress response. We will explore a beautiful body scan and exercises that bring moments of mindfulness and meditation into our day.

Week Three: Once again we have a similar theme to week one. We will bring in some movement practice where we move how we feel like and release a bit of energy or do some slow soothing movement, whatever you feel like. We look at the et cetera part of mindfulness and meditation. We have a look at our lives and what they are made up of. What might be nourishing us in our lives like going for a walk, a swim at the beach, a chat with a friend. We also explore those parts of our lives that take effort, might be a bit challenging and finally what we might like to bring into our lives. This is included here because it is important to remember that meditation and mindfulness and having a practice is not a panacea that will magically create a wonderful life. Different ailments require different medicines and as powerful as mindfulness is sometimes I might need to sleep, eat an apple, move, walk, run, scream, punch a boxing bag rather than be still. This is self care.

Week Four: We will explore the breath, the body, the senses, as we have done in previous weeks, and then we look at turning to ourselves with kindness. Don't be scared by the word kindness, it will be okay. This week is about emotions and learning to be tender with ourselves and our feelings. It is quite simple, we are bringing our attention to our emotions, our feelings, just noticing, just as we have noticed our breath, the sensations of our body, and bought attention to what we hear, and what we see or taste. We bring our mindfulness to embrace what we feel. Learning this practice was a lifesaver for me. So simple. I never really knew what to do with my feelings before and now I do. We can notice the sensation of the emotion in the body, just bring attention to it, and this blessedly can help it move, be acknowledged, and dissipate. Though everyone's experience will be different, this is the general jist. We can disentangle, reduce the fight, even just a little bit.

Week Five: We explore again that theme, breath, body, senses and turning to ourselves with kindness. Then this week we will take a look at our thoughts. How might we disentangle a bit here and just notice thinking. Just thoughts, just thinking. Thoughts aren't gospel but they are a bit like the weather, sometimes stormy, sometimes a clear day where we can see forever. They aren't gospel so we will have a look at that together.

Week Six: And here we are the end and the beginning. Yes we will have a look at the themes we have covered. The breath, the body, the senses, emotions. We will look at how we can bring the practices we have learnt into our daily life as routine as a fixture if that is what we want. We will do some exercises that will help to create some change, something new in your life.

Guided Meditations

Join our guided meditation sessions to enhance your mindfulness practice and find inner peace today.

Introduction to mindfulness, meditation et cetera.

Enroll in this introductory mindfulness et cetera course to learn simple techniques as described above for relaxation and mental clarity.

making a change (short course)

How to create a change in your life that will last. This course is all about bringing a new routine or activity into your life that is going to improve your life. You choose. It could be making a regular meditation practice, or going for a walk each day, or introducing a change to your diet. This course gives you the structure and support of a variety of exercises and the trans theoretical theory of behaviour change to implement change in a really thorough, and solid way with a lot of exploration of you, what you want, what it will mean to you, what your barriers might be, and how you might manage those barriers. Change is not simple, it is not just having an idea and off you go. This course will give your change that you want a real fighting chance.

6 sessions weekly for the first 3 sessions and then fortnightly for the last 3 sessions. This gives time for some development of your change.

Short Courses ...