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About the Pre-Course Orientation
Once your deposit has been received Niamh will contact you to arrange a one on one orientation Zoom call. This is to give you a chance to meet each other, to inform you about what to expect from the course and to make sure this is a suitable time for you to participate. At the end of this conversation you can decide together whether or not to proceed. It is an intensive course and at times can be challenging, so it’s our ethical responsibility to set this time aside to link up and discuss this with you.
If you decide not to go ahead, your deposit will be refunded in full.
Click “Book Now” below to pay your €100 Deposit.
You will receive confirmation by email. Niamh will contact you before the course begins to to arrange the orientation .
“The challenge of mindfulness is to realise that “this is it.” Right now is my life. The question is, what is my relationship to it going to be? . . Is there any waking moment of your life that would not be richer and more alive for you if you were more fully awake while it was happening?”
- Jon Kabat Zinn
Practicing mindfulness helps us to develop inner resources such as clarity, stability and self-compassion, which we can then draw upon through the ups and downs of life. It can ‘wake us up’ to our everyday experience which we miss when we are perpetually caught up in our thoughts. Mindfulness enables us to be really present for the good times, and it makes us aware of what support or interventions might be needed when times are tough. Over time and with practice we become better equipped to be present to life as it is, and to respond with more kindness and wisdom to whatever it brings.
The eight- week programme of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction was developed by Dr Jon Kabat-Zinn at the University of Massachusetts Medical Centre in 1979. The course is suitable for those with prior meditation experience as well as those who have none. It introduces participants to different forms of mindfulness practice including sitting meditation, body awareness and gentle mindful movement. The classes also explore what we mean by the term ‘stress’, how it manifests in our lives and how mindfulness can support us in responding to it. As the emphasis is on bringing mindful awareness into everyday life, a commitment to daily home practice of thirty to forty minutes is required.
Research has shown that committed participation in an eight-week mindfulness course can have lasting positive effects on health and well-being.
Course Dates:
October 9, 16, 23
*No class on October 30
November 6, 13, 20, 27
December 4
*Day of mindfulness - Sunday, 26 November
The course includes 8 x 2-hr & 30 min classes, a half day retreat (Sunday, November 26, 10:00am - 3:30pm) , recordings of mindfulness practices and a hardcopy course workbook
BA, Grad Dip Journalism, Certification to teach MBSR (Institute for Mindfulness-Based Approaches)
Niamh began her training in teaching Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction in 2007 with a foundation year at the University of Bangor in North Wales, and completed her training with the Institute for Mindfulness-Based Approaches (Germany), graduating in 2010. Prior to this, her working life was in documentary film and television production.
In 2010 she began teaching the MBSR programme in Kilkenny and Waterford and since 2013 she's offered it in Wicklow, Dublin city and in 2021, online. She is also a mindfulness-teacher trainer and supervisor. Niamh has been a committed meditation practitioner for fifteen years and regularly attends silent retreats and further training, receives supervision while teaching and adheres to the Good Practice Guidelines.
Niamh's practice has brought her to explore the intersection of mindfulness and social engagement through her own practice, retreats and teaching. From summer 2019 she facilitated a group through a six-month, long-form mindfulness and social engagement project, showing up, which engaged with the ongoing housing and homelessness crisis in Ireland. Also in 2019, she facilitated a day-long retreat on the theme of bearing witness to gender-based violence and resilience. With the onset of the pandemic in March 2020, showing up moved online to offer mindfulness and 'connection circle' sessions to groups of foster carers, healthcare workers, school principals and members of the general public who wanted to connect in a mindful and meaningful way with others during the pandemic, and to build community. It continued with its socially-engaged focus online with anti-racism practice and study circles, which are ongoing.
Niamh receives ongoing training and mentoring in the facilitation of council circle practice with the Center for Council (U.S.). Council circle is a form of heart-based, mindful communication that greatly fosters community- and resilience-building. She is a member of the socially-engaged Buddhist and interfaith organisation, Zen Peacemakers International.
