“If your mind isn’t clouded by
unnecessary things, this is
the best season of your life”

Wu-Men

The 8-Week Course for Stress and Well-Being


The 8-Week Course offers a safe and supportive space to help you to learn how to relate more skilfully to the stressors, challenges and difficulties in your life through the development of awareness and of living more fully in the present moment. The cultivation of awareness and the re-awakening of sensory experience through mindfulness practice help us to gain a greater sense of joy and satisfaction in our everyday activities, work and relationships.

  The training is experiential which means that you will learn through 'being' with your direct experience of the course, of life in between, and of the shared experience with other members in the group. A small element of theory will be offered as a means of underpinning your learning. Course participants often value the opportunity of returning each week to share their struggles, insights and celebrations with one another. This period of learning how to relate to our experience, in an often very different way to the norm, offers group members the space and time to internalize and integrate their learning with the support from the group and the teacher.

We will introduce you to four formal mindfulness meditation practices, together with a variety of ways of bringing shorter informal practices into your everyday life. Participants soon realize that life itself becomes an opportunity to practice mindfulness. You will have ample opportunity to explore and share your experience of these practices over the 8-week period and their significance to stress reduction. Additional experiential exercises will be introduced to support the theme explored each week, together with poetry and stories. We will work in pairs, small groups and the group as a whole to deepen experiential exploration.

The 1-hour daily home practice forms an important part of the programme and will enable you to gain most benefit from your experience. Please carefully consider your commitment to home practice before booking.

We will meet once a week for two hours for 9 weeks. This includes an orientation session at the beginning of the course, designed to settle you into the group and to better acquaint you with the structure of the course. An all-day class is held on the Saturday or Sunday following week 6, during which participants can experience a full day of mindfulness.

The experience of belonging to a group over a 9-week period, and the realization that we are not alone in our struggle, is often viewed as a gift of the course. This can offer a sense of self empowerment and a belief in our ability to cope with the stressors in our lives - a key to finding the healing from within.

         Bookings, Dates & Cost
    In Brief:

    Offering 8 weeks of sustained meditation practice and experiential learning with the gift of a shared group experience.

    An opportunity to explore:
  • New and skilful ways of relating to the challenges and stressors in work, life and relationships

  • Mindfulness as a way to living our lives in the present moment and the ease that comes with non-judgmental awareness

  • A weekly themed session that offers exploration and insight into our patterns of mind and stress reactions that cause blocks to potential, ease of being and happiness.

  • The foundational attitudes of mindfulness for presence, self esteem/compassion and well-being

  • Introduction to 4 formal mindfulness meditation practices that include: the body scan, sitting practice, mindfulness movement, walking practice

  • Formal practice as a means of developing focussed attention, presence, insight, emotional resilience, body and sensory awareness, acceptance and self compassion

  • Mindfulness in practice – practical tools to support the challenges in everyday life

  • One Day Retreat – offering a full day of Mindfulness Meditation to deepen your practice. Held in the beautiful setting of a monastery library surrounded by woodland.

    A £30 supplement is charged for attending the retreat day.


Development and Research


The 8-week course that we teach follows the course promoted by the Centre for Mindfulness Research and Practice at the University of Wales, Bangor. This follows the Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) programme developed by Williams, Teasdale and Segal, which was inspired by, and is an adaptation of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course developed in Massachusetts, USA by Dr Jon Kabat-Zinn in the 1970s. 

Considerable scientific evidence-based research has proven these mindfulness-based approaches to be highly effective in working with a wide range of physical and psychological problems.

    Mindfulness-based approaches are being used in the UK and the rest of the world in private courses, business, universities, clinics and the NHS.

    MBCT is now included in the guidelines of the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) for the treatment of depression. For further information on mindfulness and the research supporting it, please see the website for The Centre for Mindfulness Research and Practice: www.bangor.ac.uk

Back to courses

Tel: 01342 719975  -  Email: deborah@counsellingandrelationships.co.uk

Counselling, Mindfulness Courses, Relationships Coaching
Copthorne, Crawley, West Sussex and The Cornmill Healthcentre, East Grinstead

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