About the training

Our mindfulness training includes the essential elements of both courses which are considered the gold-standard in mindfulness training: Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT). Participants will develop insight into their emotions, thoughts and sensations, becoming less caught up in habitual response patterns. Simple techniques like sitting meditation and gentle movement help us to become more focussed, aware, relaxed and present.

We adapt our training to the particular context, recognizing that while mindfulness is a universal human skill, people of different work environments, ages and backgrounds will connect to it more easily through relevant language, information and examples.

Researchers and participants have reported the following as benefits of mindfulness training:

• greater insight and self-awareness
• more useful responses to stressful situations and unpleasant experiences
• better concentration and creativity
• improved self-confidence
• greater friendliness to oneself and others
• improved physical health
• a fresher relationship to our experience and the world around us

Participants will get the most from the training if they are able to make a commitment to some 'home practice'. They will also be encouraged to bring mindfulness into their daily life, whether walking, eating breakfast, talking with friends and family, or dealing with emails. This will help to embed the practices so they can continue to develop mindfulness skills once the course has ended, leading to lasting change.

Mindfulness coaching - one to one sessions

Debbie is offering mindfulness coaching, drawing on her experience of training and teaching mindfulness for over 25 years; working with the inner self critic, stress, anxiety, disappointment and feelings of depression. Debbie brings insight and clarity to our difficult life situations and helps us see clearly to work with strategies and find a way to make our life more workable and less overwhelming. Based on the contents of the eight week Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy course, and her own training with Tony Robbins and her lifelong journey; Debbie provides the perfect space to take time to unpack our difficulties and be introduced to the benefits of mindfulness training. Debbie talks through the outcomes that you may want, and puts together a programme specifically developed for you.

Mindful Parenting

Mindful parenting is based on an adaptation of MBSR and MBCT. We introduce the formal meditation practices such as the body scan, mindfulness of breath, mindful movement etc in roughly the same progression as the MBSR/ MBCT courses. We introduce ‘mindfulness of everyday activities’ to help with various situations that come up in family settings with our children and family relationships and to help clarify and enhance how we respond in difficult circumstances. We focus on day-to-day parenting and family activities. In addition we weave short self- compassion practices throughout the 8 weeks.

Training in compassion and learning to open and soften to the difficulties of parenting via a group is extraordinarily helpful as we are often holding so much for the family and it can be a relief to be able to share and investigate our challenges with support, and in this way alleviate and transform our parental suffering. Simply by relating differently to the difficulties in a compassionate way, our attitude towards them may change for the better.

We also help parents recognize patterns arising in their relationship with their child that may originate from their own childhood, using techniques adapted from schema therapy (recognising patterns of behaviours). The course includes exercises to help parents become aware of their own personal limits, to help them set limits with their child. Finally we include exercises to help parents reconnect emotionally with their child after a difficult conflict, finding ways to hold any situation with courage and kindness.

Clinical trials indicate that Mindful Parenting helps in the following ways:

• Reduces parents’ behaviour and emotional problems
• Reduces child behaviour and emotional problems
• Reduces parenting stress and parental reactivity to stress
• Improves parenting and co-parenting
• Increases general mindfulness
• Reduces parental experiential avoidance
• Increases mindfulness with children

Mindfulness Supervision

Debbie is now fully trained as a Mindfulness Supervisor, qualified to provide ongoing support for mindfulness teachers.

Definition of Mindfulness Supervision: “A regular space that is contracted between supervisor and supervisee that enables them to reflect together on the supervisee’s mindfulness practice and explore how it impacts and integrates with their work and life. This process is dedicated to developing and deepening the growth, understanding and effectiveness of the supervisee’s application of mindfulness, both personally and in their working life'.

All mindfulness teachers are required to have a supervisor as part of the UK Network’s Good Practice Guidelines, Debbie has been teaching Mindfulness for the last ten years and studied at Bangor University Centre for Mindfulness Research and Practice for five years to MA standard and is fully equipped to assist and guide new teachers in the field of teaching mindfulness courses.