EVENTS
Click here to enquire about booking
Click here to enquire about booking
A few past events..
Recovering Mindfully
- Focus Centre, Galashiels, TD1 1DQ
- From Wednesday 3rd July 2024 (introductory session)
- 11am – 12.30pm
A free 8-week Mindfulness Course for people in the Borders who are in recovery from substance use and/or mental health issues.
The course aims to help you develop an in-depth personal experience of mindfulness and to lay the foundations for a sustained practice that can support you for the rest of your life.
Perhaps your addiction related struggle has been / drug related, food related, or perhaps more about clinging to negative behaviours and habits that are not serving you well? The practice of mindfulness encourages an attitude of curiosity and open-mindedness as your present experience arises and changes moment by moment.
Recovering Mindfully gives you the opportunity to suspend judgment as to whether you think these approaches work for you, at least until the end of the course. You will benefit most by approaching the course with open curiosity and with the spirit of patience and commitment. It means not knowing what the outcome will be or what will unfold, but trusting in the guided practices you are engaging in.
Mindfulness is a state of being which is accessible to everyone. Everyone can ‘do mindfulness’ and when you are in touch with the qualities of mindfulness you will begin to feel a sense of coming home to yourself, developing a more optimistic outlook and a sense of courage that can enable you to work with life’s inevitable challenges rather than avoid them.
Session dates:
10th, 17th, 24th, 31st July then 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th August
“Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way, on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally. This kind of awareness nurtures greater awareness, clarity and acceptance of present moment reality. It wakes us up to the fact that our lives unfold only in moments. If we are not fully present, we may not only miss what is most valuable, but also fail to realise the richness and the depth of our possibilities for growth and transformation.” Jon Kabat Zinn.
This course is run with the support of Borders in Recovery and kindly funded by The Everyone Project
Mindful Workout: 1 x 3-hour Sunday Session
- Think Fitness 4 Less, 3 O’Connel Street, Hawick, TD9 9HT
- Sunday 28th April, 2024
- 10.00am – 1.00pm (includes tea / coffee break)
A SCATTERED MIND IS AN UNHEALTHY MIND
It’s great to feel fit and healthy! A good workout at the gym can do wonders to boost our physical strength, our mobility, and our attitude to our lives in general. But where are our minds when we’re pounding the treadmill, cycling or rowing all these miles – or when we arrive home afterwards? Do we notice?
Is your mind ‘in your body’ or do you notice yourself getting ‘lost in thought’ constantly striving, planning, problem-solving, remembering, ruminating about the past or perhaps worrying endlessly about the future? Whether we pay close attention to our physical fitness or not, it’s still easy to spend most of our lives ‘in our heads!’ For many, this can be stress inducing and anxiety provoking. It can become a serious obstacle to achieving a truly healthy and balanced life.
SIMPLE BUT NOT EASY
The above is simple to understand but it’s not quite so easy to do! Join mindfulness trainer Carol Carr in this 3-hour experiential workshop – an introduction to the 3 key elements of mindfulness that you can use to support you in your day to day lives.
Find out how to:
- Pay attention on purpose with curiosity and care
- Explore different ways of knowing and being, as ground for wisdom and self-care
- Respond skilfully to life’s challenges
- Begin to live in the present – life’s greatest gift
To book:
[email protected] / 07766 754 877 or [email protected]
An Introduction to Mindfulness: 3 x 1hour sessions
- Woodside Plant Centre & Birdhouse Tearoom, Jedburgh TD8 6TU
- Thursday 18th Jan, Thursday 25th January and Thurs 1st February
- 4.30pm for 5pm start
Join Carol Carr in exploring the 3 key themes of mindfulness training and how they can best support you in your day-to-day life.
Paying attention on purpose with curiosity and care – a gateway to experience
Different ways of knowing / being as ground for wisdom and self-care
Responding skilfully – a practice for all aspects of your life – quite literally for life.
Cost: £50, includes 3 sessions, teas and coffees, course manual and recorded practices
To book:
- Email [email protected] or
- Call 07766 754 877
Mindfulness for Life – New 8-week Course
- MBCT- L
- Online, using the Zoom platform
- Thursday 7th December 2023 to Thursday 1st February 2024
Mindfulness for Life
- Session 1: Thurs 7 Dec 2023
- Session 2: Thurs 14 Dec
- Session 3: Thurs 21 Dec
- Session4: Thurs 4 Jan 2024
- Session 5: Thurs 11 Jan
- Session 6: Thurs 18 Jan
- Session 7: Thurs 25 Jan
- Session 8: Thurs 1 Feb
- Plus, Day of Practice – date tbc
Mindfulness for Life (sometimes referred to as MBCT-L), is a course designed to cultivate mindful awareness of our body, emotions and mind so that we can live our lives with a greater sense of wellbeing, kindness and resilience. It is an evidence-based course, developed in the light of research at Oxford University and other leading research centres.
It has two main intentions: to offer you some skills to meet life’s challenges and difficulties, both internal and external; as well as skills to develop more awareness and appreciation of the pleasant moments in life that we can often overlook. In other words, to respond more skilfully to all of life’s inevitable ups and downs.
This course is not being offered as a treatment for any specific physical or psychological conditions. Please do not sign up for this training if you are currently experiencing severe problems in these areas.
The course includes a longer Day of Practice, usually held on Saturday or Sunday at a date to be agreed. This is an opportunity to deepen practice and, whilst an invaluable learning experience, does not form part of the core teaching.
What will I do on this course?
On this course you will:
- Attend 8 weekly sessions lasting 2 hours and 15 minutes.
- There is also a ‘Day of Practice ‘– usually 5 hours – which revisits practices introduced in the course an introduces some new practices
- This is a structured course where each session builds upon what has been introduced before. This is why it is important to attend all the sessions
- You will be in a group of up to 20 people, co-led by Oxford Mindfulness Foundation trained mindfulness teacher Carol Carr of This Kind Space, who is based in Scotland, and Shalini Grover who lives in Delhi.
- Each session will have guided and structured meditation practices. Many sessions also have exercises drawn from modern psychology
- Each practice or exercise is followed by a review of what you and/or other participants experienced or discovered in that practice/exercise. This review does not include a discussion of participants’ past history
- Each session is followed by suggestions for personal practice of up to 45 minutes. This includes both recommended guided practices, and also ways to cultivate new habits of mindfulness in everyday life
- Each session (except the first) includes a review of the previous week’s personal practice
- You will have access to a web resource which gives you guided practices and written material to support each session
Learning Outcomes
On this course you will learn the following skills:
- How to ‘stabilise the attention’: to recognise mind wandering and ‘autopilot’, and how to bring the attention back to where we want it to be – with interest, patience, and care
- Learning more about two different ways of being and knowing: through direct experience and through thinking. Understanding more about how the mind creates meaning
- Learning to recognise our patterns of reactivity and how trying to get rid of distress may actually keep us stuck
- Bringing a sense of care and kindness to ourselves in those moments of distress and reactivity
MBCT- L – Technicalities: You will need:
- A PC/Laptop/Macbook or Tablet. You can check the operating requirements of Zoom here, but contact Carol if you are unsure or have any questions: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/201362023-System-Requirements-for-PC-Mac-and-Linux,
- A webcam and microphone
- A stable internet connection, and
A private space where you can be undisturbed
To apply for a place on this course, please email [email protected] or telephone 07766 754 877
N.B: The sessions will be recorded, purely for your teachers’ continuous professional development purposes. The recordings will be sent to an OMF Mindfulness supervisor and no-one else, purely for training purposes. The recordings will then be deleted.
Cost: There is no formal charge for this course, but donations will be gratefully received. Bank details will be supplied, should you wish them, once your place has been confirmed.
Being Who You Are – with Mindfulness
- FREE 8 week Course for the Scottish Borders Transgender Community
- Upstairs at the Galashiels Geek Retreat, 41 – 43 Channel Street, TD1 1BJ
- Begins Thursday 17th November
- 10am – 12pm
For people who identify as transgender, living in a so-called cis-normative society can be extremely challenging at times. For some, it can also feel lonely and isolating. This can be especially so if you’re contemplating transition, have transitioned, or have wanted to, but have felt unable to transition, perhaps for decades.
Transition means something different for everyone. For some, it can involve a whole range of possible steps, including social, medical, and/or legal changes, or maybe none of these things.
Whatever your current situation, you are welcome to our new 8-week Mindfulness course for the Borders transgender community, starting with an introductory session on Thursday 17th November 10am – 12pm – and every Thursday morning until the course ends. This course is being offered free of charge. You do not have to register for the course until after the introductory session where all will be explained to you. If you do register, from that point, an 8-week commitment is expected for you to achieve maximum benefit.
The course is experiential with gently guided meditation exercises, talks, listening, and sharing – only for those who wish. We look at our habitual reactions and responses to some of the challenges we may all face in our lives, merely through wanting to be who we are and go about our normal daily business. We’ll explore the importance of cultivating kindness and compassion for ourselves – and perhaps others too. This is not always easy.
Developing kindness towards oneself can however be key to transforming any suffering you may experience, perhaps through internalising transphobia. Interested in finding out how you can learn to flourish in your life, by better supporting yourself, especially in times of difficulty or distress? Want to know more or book your space?
It is important that you contact us before the Introductory Session. Please either drop a quick email to Carol on [email protected] or call her on 07766 754 877. Or have a word with Charlie if you’re in The Geek Retreat itself. We’d love you to get in touch and do hope you’ll come along.
Being Who You Are – with mindfulness
- 8 week Mindfulness Based Living Course (MBLC)
- Denholm Church Hall
- Begins Mon 5 Sept, then weekly, Sept. 12, 19,26,Oct. 3, 10, 17, 24, 31
- 7pm – 8.45pm
Does your physical fitness receive a lot of attention? What about your mental fitness?
Perhaps you’ve never thought about it that way, but rather like physical fitness can enhance your life, so mental ‘fitness’, achieved through practising mindfulness can also substantially relieve your stress, help you to feel more relaxed, increase your self-awareness, your confidence and your sense of wellbeing too.
Weekly 1 hour evening sessions – open to all
Essentially, these weekly sessions are experiential, so that you naturally become more mindful over time. Guided mindfulness meditations follow a short talk. Togther these will equip you to better understand and to handle the usual stresses and strains of daily life, in a way that will greatly benefit yourself – and those around you.
There are many other proven benefits to practising mindfulness.
Mindfulness improves your immune system, reduces the risk of developing cancer, heart disease and numerous infectious diseases, teaches you how to sooth the parts of your brain that produce stress hormones and improves your emotional intelligence. It also improves heart and circulatory health by reducing blood pressure and lowering the risk of hypertension.
Furthermore, mindfulness reduces addictive and self-destructive behaviour and is at least as good as drugs or counselling for the treatment of clinical-level depression. It often works very well as a complement to other forms of mental health support.
If you’d like to experience the positive effects of mindfulness for the first time, or build on any practice you may already have then do come along to these weekly sessions.
Cost per session: £8
Further details and booking here by emailing [email protected]
Live Joyfully! – an invitation
- Online: 8 week Mindfulness Based Living Course – MBLC
- Online via Zoom
- Begins Wed 7 Sept, 7pm-9pm then weekly: Sept. 14, 21, 25; Oct. 5, 12, 19, 26; Nov. 2
- 7pm – 9pm
Enjoy first-hand, experiential mindfulness training to enhance your daily life and the lives of those around you too. This course is open to all – regardless of location.
This sounds simple – but of course it’s not easy. Mindfulness is not a ‘quick fix’. It’s not about ‘getting rid’ of thoughts, feelings and emotions or about ‘chilling out’ – all common misperceptions. Practising mindfulness on a regular basis, can be challenging at times, and it takes a certain courage and motivation to engage, even with this foundational training. But don’t be discouraged… The many positive effects of mindfulness, and the long-term benefits of practising it, have been clinically and scientifically proven for many years as now widely documented on many platforms. And yes – in time – practising mindfulness can indeed bring moments of deep joy and inner happiness!
It is normal in life, to find ourselves repeating negative thought or behaviour patterns that may not have served us well for many years. We may be aware of this, or we may have a vague idea that this is the case, and yet have never had the undertanding, the will, the resources or been able to create the conditions, to give these the attention they perhaps merit. Sound familiar?
Practising specific mindfulness exercises including mindfulness meditation, enables us to experience how by approaching our ‘difficulties’ with kindness and compassion, we can learn to better support ourselves through the rough and the smooth – for our own benefit and that of others too.
This certificated Mindfulness course enables you to do this by increasing your self-awareness and equipping you with the training and the skills you may need to make better choices as your life unfolds.
8 x 2hr weekly sessions, including online meditation day retreat ( 2hrs – break – 2 hrs), and follow-up session. Course fee: £200