Coming to our senses

A new creative Mindfulness course

“It helped me reflect on all the issues affecting my personal and professional life and helped me prioritise what is most important.”

NHS Consultant

This course is for anyone wishing to develop or deepen a mindfulness practice for their own wellbeing. And wishes to do so in a fun and creative way among colleagues.

This course combines –

• applied theatre as a process of dynamic enquiry

• mindfulness as a process of personal insight

• group dynamics as a process of sharing and compassion and

• journaling for flow to help integrate soul and purpose

to create a synergy of joyful and profound journeying into the heart of the matter.

The course is taught over 8 x 120 minute sessions with guided meditations and handy hacks to practice between sessions, supported by handouts and online resources.

“I discovered the benefits of mindfulness, which enabled me to feel calmer, in both my body and mind enabling me to view the world differently.”

NHS Complex Care Nurse

Course Structure

  • We’re all playing keepy-uppy with our mind and our lives. Let’s learn how to drop the balloon and notice how it feels.

    In this first session we notice just how much of our day we are on automatic pilot just trying to get things done; or distracting ourselves from getting things done; or simply elsewhere in our mind.

    Becoming present here and now is usually taught by focusing on the body and the breath. In this course we start out on a different tack. We learn how to simply sit and be and notice the impulse to do by practicing dropping the balloon.

    Practice: Grounding

    Noticing the obstacles to simply being

    Fight – Resistance

    Flight – Restlessness

    Freeze – Numbness

    Flop – Torpor

    Fix – Positive thinking!

    Hack: Dropping the Balloon

    Gratitude Practcice

  • Our body and memory keep the score of the journey taken to survive and arrive here. Yet to thrive there can only be now.

    We map the terrain travelled and explore what it means to be here now.

    Practice: The Seven Stations of the Spine: A body scan that lingers on the seven energy centres along the spine.

    Hack: Hip, hip hooray!

    Gratitude Practice

  • There are more than the five senses, there is the monitoring of intra-states (body sensations), there are emotions and feelings, and there are thoughts. But hidden beneath them all is our sense of being alive.

    Through working with blindfolds, we sensitise ourselves to the fluctuating states, and beneath them all a stillness, a silence and a spaciousness that is always there. The place from where we are sensing.

    Practice: The Sense of Being Alive: Our attention moves from sense to sense, emotion and thoughts and rests in that elusive sense – aliveness.

    Hack: Three precious pills

    Gratitude Practice

  • Mind in body, body in movement, movement in mind; flow occurs when we offer no resistance to what is happening.

    We explore where there is resistance in our bodies to flow through a series of exercises that triangulate and locate the blocks to presence.

    Practice: Mind, Body, Movement

    We take the three precious pills: stillness, silence, space and allow whatever needs to arise to arise.

    Hack: It’s OK to feel this.

    Gratitude Practice

    One High Value Priority

    One High Flow Priority

  • ‘Forget your perfect offering. There’s a crack in everything, that’s where the light gets in’

    We lean into the tender parts of ourselves. Inviting the difficult in with radical acceptance and the support of the circle of solidarity forged in the group over the previous sessions.

    Practice: Working with Emotions:

    Five elements practice to release stagnant energy in the organs of the body, stuck from suppressed emotions.

    Hack: Leaning in, moving forward

    Gratitude Practice

    One HVP and one HFP

  • We turn attention towards the space between - the loops that drive transactional behaviour and create a sense of separation.

    Practice: What if all there is is this?

    Hack: 50:50 Listening.

    Gratitude Practice

    One HVP and one HFP

  • We lay out the whole Journaling for Flow methodology that will help support mindfulness throughout the day. And introduce a mental health ‘crossfit’ practice to help maintain mental wellbeing.

    Practice: Four Pillars Practice

    Journaling for Flow

  • We look at the journey taken over the 8 weeks using the journey to now exercise and end with one last practice to take forward.

    Practice: Great Smile Practice

    Journaling for Flow

Evaluation Report for PhasE 1

Evaluation of Coming to Our Senses Phase 1