Category — Mindfulness

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Mindfulness-Based Pain and Illness Management

8-week Course in Living Well with Pain and Illness – Next course beginning Tuesday, 16th February 2010

This course is for anyone who experiences chronic pain or a long-term health condition.

You will be introduced to Mindfulness, a life-long skill that enhances your quality of life and helps you regain a sense of initiative, confidence and control around your pain or illness.

What is Mindfulness?

Mindfulness is a special kind of awareness that is attentive and warmly engaged with each moment of life, enabling you to be honest and objective about what is happening. This means you can be creative with your experience rather than stuck in the familiar groove of reactive habits. Anyone can learn and practice mindfulness and participants generally find they feel much happier and more in control through incorporating mindfulness into their lives.

Background

The course is devised by Breathworks, a not-for-profit organisation based in the UK that offers mindfulness courses for the management of pain and illness. It draws on aspects of the MBSR (Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction) courses devised by Jon Kabat-Zinn and from a variety of approaches to pain management.

Over the past 20 years, the use of mindfulness to help people with stress and/or physical pain or illness has been adapted and integrated in a range of medical environments around the world, where it has been widely proven to help in the promotion of mental and physical well-being.

For more information on Breathworks, see www.breathworks-mindfulness.org.uk.

Living well with Pain & Illness

The aim of the course is for participants to learn how to change their relationship to their experience of pain and illness.

This course teaches skills and strategies that help reduce the stress and tension that often arise as a consequence of experiencing chronic pain or illness. By the end of the course, you will have a tool-kit of resources to draw on to help you manage the pain or illness. Mindfulness will, over time, allow you to draw on your own inner resources and find ways of living creatively with pain or illness, thus greatly enhancing your quality of life.

Some of the benefits experienced are:

· an increased ability to relax and experience calm

· greater confidence in ability to undertake activities

· increased ability to cope effectively with flare-ups or set-backs

· an increased ability to cope more effectively with short and long-term stress

· a decreased tendency to catastrophise (i.e. imagine the worst)

What does the Course involve?

The course is carefully structured to support participants’ learning:

· a two-hour & 15 min. class once a week for 8 weeks

· about 40 minutes of home practice on all non-class days during the course

· one experiential all-day workshop during the course

Within this structure, the skill of mindfulness will be taught principally through sitting and lying meditation practices.  There will be presentations on mindful ways of approaching pain and illness, and very gentle physical stretches (mindful movement).  Group discussions are an important part of the course, allowing participants to explore their experience of mindfulness as the course progresses.

For maximum benefit, the course requires of participants a strong commitment to work on themselves through a gentle but rigorous discipline of daily meditation and relaxation.  While this commitment may make the course seem challenging at times, this deep engagement allows participants to get the maximum benefit from the course.

Some testimonials from previous course participants:

‘I cannot believe the change in me…Initially I was totally sceptical, angry and frustrated…but now I feel more at peace with the world…’

(H.H., Multiple Sclerosis)

‘End of being overwhelmed by pain…strategy for dealing with pain when it comes back…hope for the future….’

(L.G., back pain)
‘I’ve learned…the tools to live a more meaningful life.’

(L.K., fibromyalgia)

Who is Running the Course?

Fidelma Farley, MA, PhD

Fidelma worked as a lecturer for fifteen years before undergoing training with Breathworks, a not-for-profit organisation which offers mindfulness-based courses for those experiencing pain, illness or stress. Fidelma has led mindfulness-based courses for MS Ireland, for community groups, for carers and for people experiencing pain, illness or stress.

Fidelma’s own mindfulness practice has both enhanced and transformed her life, and her teaching stems from a desire for others to have the opportunity to experience similar benefits. Her courses place a particular emphasis on kindness to oneself and others, and on creating a warm, friendly and supportive atmosphere.

Breathworks Ireland was established in 2009 by Fidelma and her colleague Aksobhin Tracy to expand the range of Breathworks Mindfulness courses available in Ireland.

See www.breathworks.ie for more information on Breathworks Ireland.

Where:  Oscailt Integrative Health Centre, 8 Pembroke Road, Dublin 4

How Much?

€350 (includes CDs, Course handbook, weekly classes and an experiential day-long workshop)

When?

Tuesdays 6.00pm – 8.15pm for 8 weeks, starting 16th February to 6th April 2010.  There is a day-long workshop on 27th March.

Booking & Information: Contact Fiona at Oscailt on (01) 660 3872 or email info@oscailt.com