West London Buddhist Centre

Wake up knowing that you have the tools to manage whatever your body throws at you.

This 8-week course runs Thursdays, 23rd October-11th December. 1.00-3.30pm. NOTE: The first session runs 1.30-4.00pm.
All sessions include a tea break.

Living with pain or a health condition is challenging. However, much of the suffering caused by ill-health can be overcome. This programme contains the best mindfulness and compassion techniques from 30 years of managing severe chronic pain, and its effectiveness has been demonstrated in a number of scientific trials. This simple 8-week course gives you the tools and skills to live well with your chronic pain or health condition.

The Mindfulness for Health course was developed by Vidyamala Burch, founder of Breathworks, drawing on her personal experience of using mindfulness and meditation to manage her own chronic pain and to enjoy a better quality of life. It was the first Mindfulness-based Pain & Illness Management Programme (MBPM) and is a highly effective combination of mindfulness and compassion practices, meditation, mindful movement, pacing and group work. Since then, the Mindfulness for Health course has reached over 100,000 people from all around the world and Vidyamala was recently awarded an OBE for Services to Wellbeing and Pain Management.

Who is the course for?
This course is for anyone suffering from chronic pain, illness or fatigue and associated anxiety and stress who would like help with managing pain or a health condition and wishes to find ways to improve the quality of their life.

Hear more about who this course is for.

About the course
The weekly course sessions will include guided meditations and in-depth teaching on mindfulness principles, practices and techniques. There will also be some gentle mindful movements and exploration of pacing in order to carry out activities over time without increasing pain or other symptoms. Although the course can be very helpful in learning new ways to manage pain and illness, people attend the course with a wide range of health conditions and some may not experience any pain.

The approach will be experiential, with opportunities for questions and group discussions within a kind and supportive space. The course is led by an experienced and accredited mindfulness teacher with many years of experience teaching the Breathwork’s Mindfulness for Health course, both in person and online.

One of the benefits of the Mindfulness for Health course is having a supportive and friendly peer group with a shared experience of living with pain or ill health. During the 8-week course, there are many opportunities to connect with and to learn from each other as well as the course leader as everyone takes part in a mindful journey together. In order to create a supportive learning space, we keep the number of course participants to 12.

The course includes home practice with the recommendation to do 10 minutes of meditation or mindful movement twice each day and a weekly mindful activity in daily life. (However, there is an emphasis on self-care and pacing throughout the course and participants are encouraged to bring this to their home practice). You will have access to recordings of guided meditations and other resources linked to the course material which you can download. The course leader will also send a weekly email after each session with key learning points and any additional resources which you can access online. At the end of the course you will have free lifetime access to the Breathworks community of practice.

Your Teacher
The course will be led by Sophie Matthew, an accredited Breathworks teacher since 2015. Listed on the UK Network of Mindfulness Teachers and adhering to  their standards of good practice in terms of CPD, Supervision and regular retreats, Sophie is a member of the Breathworks Associate Training Team for the Workplace and for Health Professionals and a member of the Breathworks Workplace Advisory group.

Sophie lives with a chronic and painful illness (ankylosing spondylitis) and mindfulness continues to help her in dealing with her physical pain and restricted movement as well as her thoughts and emotions in relation to this, as well with life in general. She is the mother of three teenagers.

Booking
To book a place on the course, please do so via TicketTailor (Book online link below).

Once you have booked on the course, final confirmation will be subject to completion of a short questionnaire and an informal discussion with the course leader about what you might need in order to participate fully in the course and about the course’s suitability for you at this time. This will help you and the course leader explore how best to support your process over the 8 weeks.