This workshop presupposes no prior experience of calligraphy and all materials will be supplied. We will approach the topic via mark making with a variety of tools. We will explore how 'line's' can be lived from their beginnings, through their development to their endings — working towards using freely flowing roman capital letters, this workshop is hands on. Calligraphy is a spontaneous engagement in making a moving line, a gestural art that cultivates focussed awareness, with a sense of location in a particular time and space and an embodied responsiveness to materials, movement and surfaces. At its simplest it is about taking a delight in life.
Mindfulness Based Cognitive Coaching is a powerful new development synthesizing what at first appear to be diametrically opposed philosophies (that of Cognitive–Behavioural Coaching and Buddhism). MBCC improves personal awareness, reduces stress, creates a sense of well-being and increases personal fulfillment. Research suggests that it also increases corporate profitability.
This workshop would summarize the neurology of attention, explain why stable mindfulness actually goes against tendencies that promoted survival during our evolutionary history, present a roadmap toward steadying the mind from the Buddhist contemplative tradition, and then show participants a variety of ways to translate that roadmap into practical methods for steadying their mind. This workshop would offer information useful for working with attention disorders as well as for deepening both everyday mindfulness and meditation.
This workshop would take mindfulness into relationships. It would begin with the evolution of capacities for cooperative caring toward “us” alongside capacities for fearful aggression toward “them,” and the importance of mindfulness of the often unconscious us/them distinction. Next, it would cover the importance of healthy boundaries and autonomy for emotionally close relationships, and on that foundation, it would describe the three neural systems that support empathy and how to strengthen each one. Participants would practice with each other, and there would be time to discuss how to be both appropriately assertive and empathically caring, as well as other issues.
‘Mirror neurons’, discovered by Giacomo Rizzolatti, enable us to feel the emotions, movements and intentions of others: they facilitate a kind of natural empathy, part of the social brain that connects us intimately in every human encounter (Kornfield, 2008).
Telling, sharing and hearing stories is another way of crossing the boundaries of consciousness, opening our hearts and cultivating compassion for all beings as if they were part of our family.
Most of us develop compassion one person and one situation at a time. Through sharing an authentic personal story, we may recognise ourselves and our own suffering in another’s story and begin to grow in compassion and understanding.
Sharing our stories often enables us to reclaim compassion and self-love; from this reclamation may come a shift in identity, a release from the shell that encloses us, a return to our original goodness, the realisation that our feelings of separation, loneliness and inadequacy are only a delusion and not who we really are.
The Patient Voices programme has been collecting stories of health, illness and healthcare since 2004. The programme aims not only to inform, educate and highlight gaps in the system, but also to promote healing, reconciliation and more compassionate care. As we work with storytellers to facilitate the creation of their unique ‘digital stories’, not only is a valuable learning resource created, but storytellers are often transformed, enabled to see themselves and their stories through different eyes. Our approach to digital storytelling is characterised by mindfulness and compassion and is closely aligned to four of the Buddhist precepts in relation to the preservation of life; respecting for others and what belongs to others; speaking truthfully and with good intention; ingesting items that are nourishing and promote good health.
Digital storytelling offers a wonderful opportunity to reflect on our experiences — and those of others. Delving deeply into the meaning of a story, refining it and distilling it to reveal its essence can help us to see it differently. As Thich Nhat Hanh (2008) points out:
‘According to the law of reflection, the perceiver and the perceived have a very close link. When the angle of incidence changes, the angle of reflection will change immediately.’
In digital storytelling workshops, storytellers realise that they are not alone in their suffering, and by seeing their own story outside themselves, are often released from their identification with it. One storyteller sums up this process thus:
‘When you’ve made your digital story, you don’t have to hold it in your head any more, you can put it behind you and it doesn’t take up any more space, so you can move on.’
This two-hour workshop will consider the role of stories in our lives and offer an opportunity to begin the distillation process of a story that is important to you.
This workshop will draw on the literature relevant to mindfulness training for psychological therapists, to consider the evidence for its benefits for therapists and their clients, and explore how these benefits might arise. There will also be an opportunity to practise bringing mindfulness to interpersonal interactions.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a unique empirically based psychological intervention that uses acceptance and mindfulness strategies, together with commitment and behaviour change strategies, to increase psychological flexibility. Psychological flexibility means contacting the present moment fully as a conscious human being, and based on what the situation affords, changing or persisting in behaviour in the service of chosen values. This short workshop will provide an overview of the core processes in ACT practice and will also contain an experiential component so that participants may glimpse experientially, how ACT can facilitate behaviour change in the service of living a richer more meaningful life.
What additional strategies for mindfulness therapy, can therapists draw from the TIR approach? Many clinicians may be aware of how ACT or MBCT employ differing mindfulness-informed practices to facilitate well being in clients. What are the main strategies and most prominent facets of mindfulness, employed in a TIR practice?
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