In a Mindfulness course, participants meet together as a class with an instructor for 8 weekly 2 – 2 1/2 hour classes, plus one all-day session between weeks 5 and 7.

The skill of mindfulness is taught through formal and informal mindfulness practices. Formal mindfulness meditation practices include the body scan meditation, mindful movement, sitting meditation and the 3-minute breathing space. Informal mindfulness meditation practice involves integrating mindfulness into every day life.

In each class, participants have an opportunity to talk about their experience of the home practices, the obstacles that inevitably arise, and how to deal with them skillfully. Each class is organized around a theme that is explored through mindfulness practice, group inquiry and other relevant exercises.

As mindfulness training is primarily experiential in nature, the main ‘work’ of the course is done at home between classes, using CDs with guided meditations that support participants developing practice outside of class. This requires devoting approximately 40 minutes per day to home practice. In many ways this commitment to daily practice is the most important aspect of the course. It is through personal experiencing of mindfulness that we come to understand the possibilities it opens for us in our daily lives.

Over the eight weeks of the program, the practices help you to:

• become familiar with the workings of your mind.
• notice the times when you are at risk of getting caught in old habits of mind that re-activate downward mood spirals.
• explore ways of releasing yourself from those old habits and, if you choose, enter a different way of being.
• get in touch with a different way of knowing yourself and the world.
• notice small beauties and pleasures in the world around you instead of living in your head.
• be kind to yourself instead of wishing things were different all the time, or driving yourself to meet impossible goals.
• find a way so you don’t have to battle with yourself all the time.
• accept yourself as you are, rather than judging yourself all the time.
• be able to exercise greater choice in life.

Effects of developing mindfulness include;

• Lasting decreases in physical and psychological symptoms
• An increased ability to relax
• Reductions in pain levels and an enhanced ability to cope with pain that may not go away
• Greater energy and enthusiasm for life
• Improved self-esteem
• An ability to cope more effectively with both short and long-term stressful situations.
• Enhanced interpersonal relationships
• Increased ability to manage anxiety and depression and/or low mood
• Reduced tension
• Better sleep
• Greater sense of meaning and purpose in life