How we teach mindfulness
Mindfulness courses
We teach meditation and mindfulness through structured courses that are designed to take you through the concepts and exercises and gently support your own developing practice. The courses are eight weeks long with two hours of tuition and guided practice per week, although the sessions can sometimes be taught over a different timescale.
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The courses are usually run as public courses in the evening or during the day. We can also provide the courses privately, offering you one-to-one teaching at a time and place to suit you.
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We can also do shorter talks and introductions to meditation and mindfulness.
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Please see our Testimonials page for comments from people who have taken one of our courses.
Course options
We teach two different meditation & mindfulness courses:
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Meditation & Mindfulness for Wellbeing. For most people this is the first course they do. It introduces the concepts of meditation and mindfulness and explains how the benefits can be achieved. Different meditation types are introduced throughout the course as you build up your experience and confidence.
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Meditation & Mindfulness for Insight. This course is still firmly focused on wellbeing but looks further at how we can use the skills we acquire in meditation to start to see ourselves in different ways.
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We are also able to deliver customised courses to meet specific needs.
A typical course session
This is what you will find in a typical session on one of our courses. We start by swapping stories on how our practice has gone in the past week. You only join in if you want to but it is a very nice way of sharing experiences and getting support from classmates and teachers. Remember that everyone finds it challenging to some extent to stay focused in meditation or even to find the time in the day to practise. There is no judgement here. When our week has gone well and we begin to notice a change in ourselves then it is lovely to share that experience with others who are on a similar path.
Next comes a talk on how meditation and mindfulness can help us in some practical way. The topics discussed here include how to face the challenge of stress, anxiety, depression or pain, or even how to use meditation to help us find the simple joy in everything we do.
After a short break we move on to the practical side of the session. Typically we practise a little Qigong. There is then a 25-minute meditation guided by one of the teachers. This meditation will be explained fully and will then be suggested as daily homework over the following week.
We then spend a few minutes with a cup of tea just chilling and talking about what we have been doing in the session, asking questions, or discussing anything else that arises.
How do I get the most out of the course?
The courses are planned to teach you what you need to know and to support you as your practice develops.
In order to get the most out of the course you will need to:
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Attend all the sessions. Each session contains something new and helps you steadily build confidence in your developing practice. We know that sometimes things happen and you might miss a session. In this case we will do our best to help you catch up on the missed session.
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Find thirty minutes each day to practice. This daily commitment, although sometimes challenging to achieve, is a vital part of establishing a regular practice. It is also a powerful way of quickly proving the benefits of such a practice. Often, by the third session of a course our students are beginning to talk about their own positive experiences of where their new practice is helping them; perhaps by feeling calmer in challenging circumstances.