FREE: Counsellors/Community
Caregivers working with voluntary agencies.
VENUE: The Wisdom Centre,
Cork Street, Dublin 8
DATES: Fridays, 6, 13, 20, 27 July and 3, 10, 17, 24 August
Participants
are requested to attend at least six out of the eight weeks and to choose which
session they wish to attend, either 10.30am-1pm or 2pm-4.30pm.
GROUP: Small group 10-12 participants
TIMES: 10.30am to
1pm or 2.00pm to 4.30pm
HOURS: 20 contact hours, Certificate issued on completion of course
FEE: Free to voluntary staff in community mental health
projects
CONTACT: Gerry Cunningham,
MIAHIP, Member of Oxford University
Mindful Psychology in association with Oxford University: please
note that the facilitator will be recorded during this training for supervision
and research purposes. Participants will
not be identified on recordings and these recordings will be viewed by the
clinical team at OMC Oxford.
Tel: 087 7989 301
| E: info@mindfulpsychology.or
Programme Overview
This
course combines the essential elements of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction
and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy and is designed to support mental
health professionals and carers to manage client impact, enhance self-care,
prevent burnout and compassionate fatigue.
Mindfulness
is about learning to pay attention to our thoughts, emotions, physical
sensations, the body and the world around us – an awareness of “present
experience with acceptance” (Germer et al, 2005). Participants are taught to observe their
habitual automatic and unhelpful cognitive reactions while at the same time
learning to interact with their thoughts and emotions in a less judgemental and
more compassionate way. Mindfulness
reveals a set of simple yet powerful practices that you can incorporate into
daily living to help break the cycle of anxiety, stress, unhappiness and
exhaustion. In MBCT programmes, participants meet together as a class (10-12 participants) 2.5 hours per week for eight weeks, plus one all day session between weeks 5 and 7. We start by developing an awareness of what is happening in our experience. We do this through mindfulness practices such as the body scan, mindful yoga, sitting meditation and being mindful of other activities such as walking or eating. We learn how to be with our experience as it is, instead of pushing away unwanted thoughts, emotions or other experiences. The main “work” is done at home between classes. There is a set of CDs to accompany the programme and notes. In the classes, there is an opportunity to talk about your experiences with the home practices, the obstacles that inevitably arise and how to deal with them skillfully.
Over the
eight weeks of the program, the practices help you:
- to become familiar with the workings of your mind
- to notice the times when you are at risk of getting caught in old habits of mind that re-activate downward mood spirals, rumination and self-destructive thoughts
- to explore ways of releasing yourself from those old habits and, if you choose, enter a different way of being.
- to lower levels of emotional distress and reduce levels of stress
- to put you in touch with a different way of knowing yourself and the world
- to notice small beauties and pleasures in the world around you instead of living in your head
- to be kind to yourself instead of wishing things were different all the time, or driving yourself to meet impossible goals.
- to find a way so you don’t have to battle with yourself all the time
- to accept yourself as you are, rather than judging yourself all the time
- to notice the impact of client work and to develop the skills of attention and awareness to support effective self-care
Participants are required to make a commitment to attend at least
six of the sessions and to choose which session they wish to attend, either
10.30am to 1pm or 2pm to 4.30pm.
Application
forms and further details are available from Gerry Cunningham
Mindful Psychology in association with Oxford University: please
note that the facilitator will be recorded during this training for the purpose
of supervision and research.
Participants will not be identified on recordings and these recordings
will be viewed by the OMC Oxford.
Gerry Cunningham has been extensively trained in
mindfulness-based approaches and studied for two years at Department of
Psychiatry, Oxford University under the direction of Professor Mark Williams
(MSt in Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy). He has attended training in
mindfulness and cognitive therapy with Dr. Zindel Segal, Dr. John Teasdale, Dr.
Aaron Beck and mindfulness training retreats with Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, Dr. Jack
Kornfield, Dr. Daniel Siegel, Christina Feldman and the Centre for Mindfulness
Research and Practice at Bangor University.
