A bit late for a February Roundup but, better late than never – well, perhaps.  Anyway, life has been busy in February and even with a half term inserted in between work, it has still been a full-on month.  The current Mindfulness course with the Mindfulness Association is drawing to a close with just one more weekend to complete.  It’s been an interesting time and one where I have learnt a lot of useful stuff.  What has occurred to me is the question, ‘what sort of Mindfulness course do I want to deliver?’  My original 8 week participant’s course was a little stilted and the others have been, well, very serious.  I am looking to gather a range of styles so that I can tailor-make the course to fit the participants.  It’s time-consuming but I am working hard on it and hope to be able to come up with a versatile style.

That said, the Lepton course is well under way now.  Session three finished last night and it was, I think, a time when the topic was appreciated by everybody.  Next week is the half-way point where people can offer anonymous feedback so I should have an idea of whether I am on track with this group or if I need to change the approach.  Whatever, it seems to be OK for now.

The schools work is going well and, all being well I am hoping to deliver some Mindfulness courses to teaching staff.  The work at the FE college is also picking up momentum, so opportunities are opening for the work.

The Mindfulness course at Mirfield is about to come to an end.  After 8 weeks the MBCT course is almost done!  I will ask the participants to give me some (anonymous) feedback on Tuesday so I can gauge what needs to change but so far people are telling me that it’s been a good course that has been very useful.

I am also about to announce some dates for a course in Shepley (I will post them when I know them) but I’ve found it difficult to find a suitable venue on the days I want.  This will be the first course where I’ve had to charge and I have to say I’m not sure how I feel about that.  All of my life I have offered my services to people for nothing but now with hiring a venue, travel and printing etc. I am finding that I can’t ask the church to fund the courses.  It’s a big mental departure.  However, as was pointed out to me, if you don’t charge people don’t think it will be any good – and they won’t come.  Watch this space…

The Spiritual element to the project is going along nicely too.  The spiritual accompanier’s course is now in its fifth session.  Two weeks ago I had a great weekend at Parceval Hall – in silence!!!  As you know, I haven’t been a great fan of silence. After all, there are so many interesting people to talk to and so much to learn from others that it has always felt like an abuse to keep quiet.  But on this occasion I began to understand the beauty of silence.  Nobody spoke from 8pm on Friday night except to check in with the spiritual director; no eye contact made and no pleasant looks exchanged.  I was just able to be me – alone with my thoughts and slowly but surely getting to know who I truly am.  In the past that has been a scary prospect but on this occasion it was a genuine pleasure.

​Time to catch up on the project’s progress…

Woodys Roundup

Early January saw me venture into darkest South Wales with Bangor University for the Mindfulness Teacher Training Retreat.  There were 34 students being led by 4 lecturers.

It was an excellent eight days with much thought-provoking material presented to us all.  I learnt far more than I had expected and it has set me up well to present future courses.

There were several periods of silence across the retreat which I wasn’t looking forward to – and on one occasion we had a 24 hour silence.  Actually it had a significant impact on me.  That meant we didn’t have to look at anyone if we didn’t want to; we didn’t have to be polite over the meal table (you know, offering to pour someone a glass of water when they were just as capable as I was of lifting their arm but you have to do it to ‘show manners’ as my Mum used to say).  It was a time to just be me. From dreading it, I ended up loving it.  After 5 days of meditation my heart rate dropped from 60 beats per minute to 46!!  As you can see I was very relaxed.

During the first part of the day we were taken through different sessions of a stress reduction course followed in the afternoon by all of us leading meditations (and being assessed on them).

But the surprise of the week was the number of NHS staff who were on the course, who were there to learn how to run a Mindfulness course as a part of their work.  It seems the NHS in Wales is taking Mindfulness courses very seriously as a part of treatment for ‘service users’.