How it Helps

How it Helps

Mindfulness can help you see your life differently, get to grips with unhelpful long-standing patterns and experience greater choice. The MBSR programme can help whether you are grappling with acute difficulties or just want a more satisfying life

Most people find that they feel

  • more able to respond creatively to stressful situations  and difficulties
  • more energetic, enthusiastic and self-confident
  • more able to relax

Learn more about the particular benefits of mindfulness for working with stress; depression; anxiety, PTSD & OCD; and pain, chronic illness & ME

Participants in Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) courses learn several meditation and mindfulness practices that help you let go of compulsive thoughts and develop a spacious awareness of what’s happening in the present moment without judging it. That lets you explore the things you find difficult (including difficult thoughts and feelings) rather than pushing them away. This brings a greater capacity to make conscious and creative choices in how you respond to what is happening, regaining the initiative in your life.

“I have a better outlook about the present and I’m more able to relax about everyday work and life”

Over the last 30 years many thousands of people have taken the MBSR course and a large body of scentific research has shown that meditation, mindfulness and MBSR in particular bring measurable changes in the brain that are associated with greater happiness and creativity. They have found:

  • dramatic reductions in pain levels and an enhanced ability to cope with pain that may not go away
  • dramatic decreases of anxiety, depression and hostility
  • more effective skills in managing stress
  • an increased ability to relax
  • greater energy and enthusiasm for life
  • improved self-esteem
  • an ability to cope more effectively with both short and long-term stressful situations

Mindfulness is now becoming widely accepted in mainstream psychology and medicine: for example, Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT: a variant of MBSR) is recommended in the UK National Health Service as a treatment for avoiding depression relapse. At the same time, mindfulness practices are the product of ancient spiritual wisdom. It’s probably a unique combination of spiritual depth and scientific validation!

“I have been reminded of the still, strong, ever-present part of me which is such a source of wisdom and support”