A personal Journey – Training to become a mindfulness teacher

My personal mindfulness teacher training journey and becoming a mindfulness teacher.

My Story

 Kirsty shares her own personal journey into holistic healing

“It took time for me to come to terms with my need to leave the NHS, but once the decision was made, I knew the shackles were off in terms of limiting my scope to only cover nourishment of the body. I could learn to teach others how to also nourish their minds.”

 By – Kirsty Dobson

As a dietitian for 23 years, I was NHS ward-trained in the traditional hierarchical medical model of managing ill health. I’ve helped people with a myriad of health challenges, teaching them to self-manage their chronic illnesses, through a range of evidence-based dietary and lifestyle approaches. I enjoy supporting patients with complex digestive complaints so the irrefutable link between brain and gut meant that I fought for longer duration appointments to gain the full picture of overall health and wellbeing, previous medical or drug history, their work and family life, and degree of social support. The stark revelation that so many sufferers of Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) also had diagnoses of Anxiety or Depression and were frequently on anti-depressants, and yet were often still symptomatic, led me to research evidence of alternative ways to support wellbeing. On hearing that mindfulness could be valuable in IBS, I experimented myself by using Headspace and discovered after just 2-3 weeks of ten minutes daily my sleep quality improved, I felt more in control at work with greater clarity of thought and in spoken word. Likewise, my clients who embraced mindfulness achieved greater gut symptom control and weathered the storm of life without triggering relapse. Mindfulness improved confidence in managing their own chronic condition. The diagnosis was no longer impacting their quality of life.

Then covid hit. The demands placed upon me in my role leading an acute team of, frankly terrified, acute dietitians through a pandemic when the explosion in intensive care bed numbers required me to return to a frontline clinical role alongside leadership responsibilities, meant I totally abandoned self-care practices and just got on with the job at hand. Unsurprisingly 18 months in I had my own mental health breakdown. I had a period of sick leave and a 6-month spell on anti-depressants during which time I re-discovered the healing power of mindfulness. Daily meditation, positive intelligence practices and cultivating compassion enabled me to properly challenge self-harming automatic thoughts and negative behaviours. It has led to a deep emotional healing, somewhat akin to a ‘spring clean’ of the considerable detritus which had accumulated during the first four decades of my life.

It took time for me to come to terms with my need to leave the NHS, but once the decision was made, I knew the shackles were off in terms of limiting my scope to only cover nourishment of the body. I could learn to teach others how to also nourish their minds. The therapy-based, secular nature of the Mindfulness Now course and the thought of a week immersed mindfully in beautiful Devon without the role of boss, wife or mother was decision made. I felt so grateful to experience the magic of Tawstock Court as the summer turned into autumn this year with Nick and Maddy expertly guiding us through the program. Through daily practices we grew and bonded together in our teaching cohort. Integrating mindfulness as a tool alongside dietary / lifestyle measures and targeted supplementation seems to me to be a much more powerful and holistic approach to long-lasting healing than I was able to previously offer patients in my old role so I cannot wait to share it with the world!

 

About the author –

Kirsty Dobson is a holistic brain health & wellbeing educator/coach based in Brighton www.clarity-and.com / kirsty@clarity-and.com / https://www.instagram.com/clarity_and/

Article written for The Breathing Space Journal Winter 2024

 

 

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Training – ACT for Anxiety – FULLY BOOKED

By Nick Cooke

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) certified professional training with a key focus on assisting those with anxiety

"… irrespective of the number of symptoms we have, or how serious those are, provided that we respond to them in a mindful way we will feel happier and better able to function. Unwanted symptoms do ‘miraculously’ tend to reduce, even though this is not the primary aim!"

It was Sigmund Freud who famously described anxiety as ‘fear spread thinly. What a lot of sense this continues to make in our present day and age. However, Freud’s belief about the causes of anxiety and his method of treatment varies widely from present day understanding and treatment. Freud’s work was predicated on theories of how sufferers would have ‘repressed’ (hidden from conscious awareness) the causes of symptoms, including anxiety, and that repressed memories connected to the originating causes would be released and brought to conscious awareness, understanding and release through his famous ‘talking cure’, psychoanalysis. We discuss this approach in our Mindfulness Based Clinical Hypnosis (MBCH) training. www.mbch.org.uk

Scientific evidence since the 1980s has shown that many talking therapies including clinical hypnosis, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and mindfulness-based therapies, can be effective in dealing with the symptoms of anxiety. One of the most successful approaches is ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy), which is pronounced as the word ‘act’ for good reason. It’s about taking action. It was developed in the USA by psychologist Steve Hayes, along with his colleagues Kelly Wilson and Kirk Strosahl. The original body of work has been further developed and expanded by others, including Dr Russ Harris who has authored a number of well-respected books including the self-help guide ‘The Happiness Trap’.

Steve Hayes, describes ACT as an ‘oddly counterintuitive model of work’. It can be engaging and playful and teaches us skills to handle unwanted and painful thoughts and feelings in a way in which they have far less significance or negative affect. This is where mindfulness skills are brought into play. It also takes the view that, irrespective of the number of symptoms we have, or how serious those are, provided that we respond to them in a mindful way we will feel happier and better able to function. Unwanted symptoms do ‘miraculously’ tend to reduce, even though this is not the primary aim!

ACT has been scientifically researched and proven to be effective in helping people with a wide range of issues including: anxiety, depression and chronic pain. Even those with severe psychiatric disorders including schizophrenia have gained remarkable benefit. It has also produced similarly high levels of success with some of the less serious conditions which we may encounter in our day-to-day work, such as smoking cessation, weight reduction and reducing stress. The high level of supporting scientific evidence has ensured that ACT has grown in popularity as a form of psychological treatment around the world.

30 years in the making

It’s taken a while to get there. The original development of ACT was around 30 years ago and yet it was not until nearer to 10 years ago when it began to find its current high level of popularity. There are a number of reasons for this delayed enthusiasm:

• 30 years ago ACT seemed to fly in the face of conventional psychological theory in the sense that most approaches aimed to reduce unwanted symptoms. ACT takes a very different approach and one that is much more focussed on the idea that quality of life is primarily dependent upon mindful, values-guided action
• ACT is a mindfulness based intervention and 30 years ago these were in their infancy and seen as a little way out!
• The original writings on ACT were peer reviewed as being ‘overly complex’. Heavy on rather complicated theory but light on practicalities

The ACT acronym

ACT is sometimes seen as a rather large model but the real beauty of it is the way that it can be simplified and easily explainable to clients. I favour this very simple acronym which sums it up neatly.

A = Accept your thoughts and feelings and be present.

C = Choose a valued direction

D = Take action!

Key themes of ACT include developing psychological flexibility, encouraging self-awareness and examining beliefs and values. Here we encourage our clients, rather like we would in a coaching exercise, to explore their innermost beliefs and values. What would they live and die for? What would they say is their life purpose? Translating this into a behavioural context, what qualities of ongoing action matter? How do clients want to behave on an ongoing basis?

Clients are taught how to ‘defuse’, or separate from their unwanted thoughts, emotions and mental pictures. They learn how to observe them more passively or step back and view them from a distance, rather like clouds passing by in the sky. ACT employs a number of different styles of metaphor, which are often a great way of teaching clients in an indirect and more acceptable manner.

Nick Cooke is presenting a one-day CPD training on ACT for Anxiety on Saturday 24th May 2024. Being presented in a live, interactive format on Zoom, timings are 10.00 AM to 5.00 PM. The fee is £130 to NCH members and £160 to non-members. Places are strictly limited so please book early by contacting Rachel at Mindfulness Now (CEC) on 0121 444 1110 or emailing info@mindfulnessnow.org.uk

Mindful Yoga

Aston Colley

Mindful Yoga

What do I mean by Mindful Yoga? It is Yoga more concerned with perceiving sensation and our response to it. Very different from western type gym Yoga more concerned with striving and performance. This Yoga exotica may look good on Instagram but has little to do with discernment. Both performance and exercise have important places in our lives but what we call mindful yoga sets out to reduce suffering and to do that we have to be able to discriminate sensation and respond appropriately.

Aston Colley – Lead trainer Oxford

Aston Colley

To find out about upcoming CPD dates, please click the button below.

Keeping the brain in mind – or how to grow your own brain

Recent neuroscience, over the past 20 years has scientifically proven that it really is entirely possible to take steps to totally change the structure and function of your brain – in effect ‘re-wiring’ it so that we become happier, mentally healthier and are able to express love, kindness and compassion for yourself and others more readily. Furthermore, by taking deliberate steps to develop your brain in positive ways, the research actually suggests that you’ll be more successful in life and work generally too.

The concept is called “self-directed neuroplasticity” by the researcher Dr. Jeffrey M. Schwartz in his book, “The Mind & The Brain” (Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force). Schwartz puts forth a compelling argument that you aren’t at the mercy of genetically-predetermined brain activity. Rather, you are in the driving seat because you play a decisive role in influencing your own brain’s structure and function by deciding where and how to focus your attention.  You can do this by actively choosing what to think about.  In his book, Dr Schwartz uses brain scans to prove the efficacy of self-directed neuroplasticity and these show how OCD patients, stroke victims, musicians, and more have used this approach to change their brains for the better. Dr Rick Hanson and Dr Daniel Siegel have also made tremendous contributions in this field.

What is neuroplasticity?

It used to be the case that medical science considered that our brains were more or less ‘set’ by the time we reached adulthood. Neuroplasticity (Neuro = nerve, Plasticity = changeable or malleable) is a term that describes how your brain is capable of constantly changing its internal shape, connections and functions in response to your environment, thinking, emotions, behaviour, as well as injury.

What is self-directed neuroplasticity?

Since we know that the brain remains plastic and ‘re-wires’ itself for our entire lives, self-directed neuroplasticity is a tool that we can use to consciously control how we want our brains to work. So, for example, if you want to increase your ability to feel and express happiness you might start a gratitude journal.  You are ‘forcing’ your brain to behave in a certain way – for example in the case of keeping a gratitude journal your brain quickly adapts to experience and express a sense of gratitude more often and more readily. Similarly, anytime you learn a new skill (e.g. how to play a musical instrument), your brain structure and function changes and will adapt to whatever you challenge it with.

Using Self-Directed Neuroplasticity

Everything that your brain is exposed to will have an influence upon it; your behaviours, environment, social group, sleep cycle, supplements, drugs, etc. By becoming aware of what influences your brain will help you to consciously change those influences that may be causing more detriment than harm.  Here are some steps that you can take to harness the life changing power of self-directed neuroplasticity:

The baby-steps of awareness: You may be aware of a variety of things that you’re unhappy about and/or things in your life that you dislike. Choose one thing at a time and become aware of the particular habit, mood, etc. that you’d like to change. Don’t try to run before you can walk – only try to change one thing at a time.

Attention: When creating self directed changes, focus all of your attention on implementing a healthy thought pattern and behaviour. Of course, this will require effort, but remember that whatever you focus your attention on will become your reality. If you choose to focus on feeling down, angry or depressed, these feelings will amplify. If you choose to concentrate on gratitude, this attention magnifies your happiness.

Volition – you’ve got to want to do it: At the beginning of attempting to change your brain, it’s going to be uncomfortable. We are all set in our own ways and self-directed neuroplasticity is not an entirely comfortable process and you do need to make a little effort – but it is undoubtedly effective. Attempting anything new is often scary – imagine throwing yourself into water without knowing how to swim – your brain either adapts and figures something out or you drown. While the “sink or swim” example is pretty extreme, you may well face some degree of internal resistance near the beginning of your change. Although our brains are so adaptable, they do tend to want to keep repeating the patterns they’ve already learned. With plain old willpower and consistently focusing on gratitude instead of depression (for example), your brain will adapt, and you’ll soon find that your general mood ‘set point’ will be much higher on the happiness scale.

Just do it: Be consistent and engage your new neural pathways for at least 15 minutes each time any unwanted thoughts occur. This helps because it shifts your focus away from the bad, and onto the good, and this is what leads to permanent brain changes over time. Ultimately, feelings of depression will be overpowered (and more difficult to produce) due to the fact that it will be easier, mentally and physically to express and experience happiness.

The beauty of the changing brain: Over time, and with consistent focused effort, your brain changes become more solidified. However, there is one caveat: use it or lose it! Remember that your brain is constantly in a state of change and that you must keep ‘feeding’ it with the positive changes that you desire – the more you practice a healthy behaviour, the easier it is to maintain. It is well known that Buddhist monks who practice mindfulness or forms of meditation involving compassion tend to rarely experience depression – this is because their brains become “wired” to preferentially express positive emotions after years of practice.

As already mentioned, the practice of mindfulness is proven to have a profoundly positive effect in ‘growing’ our brains. One of the ‘golden’ rules of psychology is that we tend to get more of what ever we focus on. It’s a generalisation of course. So, if we find ourselves frequently focussing on what we don’t want then sadly, that’s the direction our brain may grow in. On the other hand of we instead focus on the direction of travel we aspire to, that’s in tune with our values, then almost miraculously, that’s the way our brain structure will be forged. All of the popular mindfulness meditations will be valuable, including the ‘Mountain’ a wonderful guided visualisation including a great metaphor for resilience, and especially ‘Loving Kindness’, otherwise known as ‘Metta’ meditation which teaches us to focus on compassion for others as well as for ourselves.

 

With many thanks to “Grow your own brain!” Self-Directed Neuroplasticity, article by Jayney Goddard MSc, FCMA, FRSM, FRSPH

 

Nick Cooke, for Mindfulness Now, is offering a full day online CPD training on the above title, interactive on Zoom on Saturday 5th February 2022. The cost of attending is £130 for Mindfulness Now /CEC students and graduates and £160 to all others. Training manual and CPD certificate for 7 points included. To book please call 0121 444 1110 or email info@cecch.com.

Nick Cooke
Nick Cooke

 

 

 

Why I Love Blue Monday

Yes, today is the, so called, ‘Blue Monday’, the third Monday of January, which in 2019 is the 21st of the month and I’m told by certain ‘experts’ that I’m likely to be miserable, worried and possibly depressed, for a number of reasons.

 

I will have failed my New Year resolutions by now. I’m maxed out on my credit cards after the big Christmas spend. The nights are long, the days are short. I’m not getting enough daylight. I’m feeling cold and I most likely have a cold that doesn’t seem to go away. My diet has failed and I put weight on over the past month. My holidays seem to be as long away as they could be. My clients are too ill to make the journey to come and see me. What else could possibly go wrong?

 

Hang on a mo!! – I’m sitting in the Bryant Room at the beautiful Midland’s Arts Centre in Birmingham, overlooking the lakes and the park. It’s very early and the sun is rising and the sky has a blueish tinge. The ducks and geese are tuning up their voices. This is the start of my ‘Blue Monday’. I’m setting up training manuals, pads and pens, looking at my list of participants and feeling a deep sense of gratitude – eagerly anticipating greeting my fellow trainers, Rachel and Aston and all of our new trainees.

 

Mindfulness is a way of life that I’m very privileged to enjoy, to teach, and to train others how to teach. Our training has come a very long way from a humble beginning, 6 years ago to now being internationally recognised, attracting students from 11 countries, externally accredited and probably the most successful training course in the UK, training in 7 different locations. Teachers who have graduated from the Mindfulness Now programme work in many diverse environments including within the NHS, who have funded many students places. Others work in the charity sector, in schools and in commercial organisations. Many are therapists who wish to increase their range of skills.

 

Not gloating or being complacent, or taking anything for granted. Just a sense of amazement really and an immense amount of gratitude. Mind you – I do have a cold!

 

Happy Blue Monday

 

Nick Cooke