January 2022 SALE: Course Cost £180 reduced to £120. All proceeds go to the Samye Foundation Wales charity.

In these times of uncertainty, the practice of mindfulness can help you become calmer, more present, more focused and less reactive.

This course is suitable for beginners as well as those with mindfulness experience. The trainer is Lorraine Harris, a long term practitioner of mindfulness and meditation. Lorraine has over 30 years of experience teaching in numerous settings ranging from corporations to voluntary organisations and the wider public. She provides support in highly deprived areas and runs several charitable projects in Wales. She often trains teams and individuals experiencing the frontlines of stress in highly pressured work situations, guiding them through step by step programmes in mindfulness and meditation, and she has received outstanding feedback for her work.

Course participants will be taught progressive skills in mindfulness through presentation and guided practice. A strong emphasis is placed on experiential learning, and there will be home assignments each week that include regular mindfulness practice, daily exercises and some journal writing.

Mindfulness is a training that gives us greater authority over our thoughts and emotions. It includes learning to be present, fully knowing what is happening without preference. In the beginning we notice how our attention is like a butterfly flitting from one thought to the next. We start by slowing down and settling our mind through regulating our breathing. We then introduce practices that ground us, allowing our attention to drop out of our heads and into the sensory awareness of the body. We then learn to rest in the present moment, learning to disengage from our habits of compulsive doing. Then, when we notice our attention drifting away into thinking, we learn to work with a mindfulness support, to bring our attention back to the present. Next we work towards noticing our distraction, learning self-acceptance and understanding the undercurrent and observer aspects of the mind.