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17 Participants have started our first 8 week programme. This evening is about getting to know the group, our reasons for wanting to learn these tools and an introduction to how it all works. We finish with a guided body scan meditation and the group have access to the recorded guided meditations for the whole 8 weeks which they do daily at home. 

Why does stress cause over 80% of illness??

The foundation of working with stress is about listening to your body and becoming aware of sensations. 

How the Autonomic Nervous System is the key to mitigating any harmful effects of stress.

Understanding the science of stress and the evolution of the autonomic nervous system - the ultimate survival machine.

Changing our reaction to response is a skill and takes practice. This is why the body scan is crucial. It helps us to become familiar with thats happening in the body - this sensitivity helps us to notice when we are slipping into stress reaction or getting activated. 

In our break everyone sampled some home made kefir - this probiotic drink offers stress related benefits. 

We discussed how we can work with pain in a similar way to how the 2 broad types of meditation work and how we need to pay attention to the mental commentary that takes place alongside it. This is a radical and counter intuitive approach that takes time and practice. We also discussed how body alignment and posture are so important for our overall health and function of the body. 

In the break everyone enjoyed some nettle and lemon balm water kefir that Dawn made with ingredients from her own back yard and foraged from the local park. 

Study from The university of Manchester-

 Meditation reduces the emotional impact of pain 

Meditation training to overcome pain

 The effects of brief mindfulness meditation training on experimentally induced pain - PubMed 

Key points we worked with are 

1- Deal with emotional pain by being present in the body when it arises.

2-Using the body as a tool to not get involved in the mental story line that is unravelling.

3- Training ourselves to feel all the emotions we experience with no judgement- YES THIS CAN BE DIFFICULT. It takes time. 

4-  We broke down the 3 elements of an emotion; The narrative, the physical reaction in the body and the mood/energy that creates.  How we get stuck in these loops and how to break free.

All of this takes practice, time and self compassion. The more we practice in the good times, the easier it will be in the challenging times.

And in our break time we shared some home made seasonal Rhubarb and Ginger kefir. 

Key points we worked with:

1- We can become imprisoned in a particular role because we have developed fixed views about whats appropiate.

2- Our indentification with them it what causes stress. We are more than our roles, sometimes we can use a role as a  mask.

3- Time pressure is a universal problem. 

4- Flow- "Flow is a state of consciousness in which a person is completely absorbed in their actions and experiences a unity of mind and body"

We now move onto a different type of breath meditation called following the breath. Each participant goes off and does their daily practice by listening to the guided audio.   Everyone was also asked to consciously be 100% mindful in at least one daily task- and then write down afterwards in their journal their experience.

Key points of this session are:

1- “ Your life is a creation of your mind”- Meditation & mindfulness helps you to develop awareness and resilience to life’s challenges and see more clearly those activities that nourish you and deplete you.

2- Meditation practice is an important part of your programme of taking care of yourself.

3- Very important to expand your mindfulness practice into other parts of your life.

4- Meditation is a tool to improve your relationships.

5- Do what makes you come alive.

As with every week we first start with a check in on how the weeks meditation practice has gone. This weeks has been following the breath.  We are not supressing thoughts and feelings in this we are just not investing them , we just keep returning to the breath. With practice and over time we are training our attention and the minds becomes less flighty and reactive in every day life. 

We had a break, drank  our home made kefir and caught up with what’s been happening in the week.

We finish with a group following the breath meditation and then the class continue with their daily practice through a guided meditation with dawn that they access on an audio clip. The class have also been asked to write down each day something they are grateful for on post it notes and stick them where they can see them each day. This is a proven method of creating a feeling of happiness in everyday life and modern day physics now tells us – What we think we become and what we feel we attract.

 Started the session off with an acknowledgment of how wonderful it was to see the daily expressions of gratitude coming through from the course particpants on the group’s whats app channel from the previous week. This practice of gratitude really is incredibly powerful. By writing it down it creates a mind- body coherence that when embodied creates a release of feel good chemicals and hormones that have a positive impact not only on mood but also the immune system. Energetically too we get back what we put out- think in terms of frequency, energy and vibration.

We covered some of the amazing research that’s coming out about the benefits of these practices including; Focus and concentration, psychological wellbeing, increased empathy and creativity and problem solving. For all those out there who want to delay the aging process ; There is research now that those practicing meditation for 5 years were physiologically 12 years younger than their non meditating counterparts!!!

So far on this course weve covered how the practice of mindfulness & meditation is good for our health on many different levels. But how can we go beyond this? How can we use these practices to boost or elevate the function of our body-mind.

In Japan theres a long tradition of people going to zen temples to learn and practice meditation to equip them for success in their life- many of these people are from politics, the arts, business leaders and sports. How can we in sunny Blackburn do the same we ask??!!!

We talked about how when people embark on this course they are generally feeling a bit off , theyre looking for solutions to help them feel better. Around about now or week 7 people often notice a difference in their mood and by the end of the course some can stop their practice because they think the are “fixed”. We talked about how to not let this happen for this to be part of daily life to maintain that sense of wellness but also to go beyond that

So we looked at areas of life we would like to excel in. Choose one and focus on that with awareness and intention.

Only one more week left now and we now also move onto the practice of presence meditation. 

  At the start of this course we talk about how habits are formed, taken from research from University College London and Dr Philippa Lally.  According to this research it takes on average 66 days to form a habit. Whats a habit? Something that’s weirder to not do? For mindfulness and meditation to work and  the benefits of this to manifest it must become a formed habit.

 How long does it take to form a habit? | UCL News - UCL – University College London 

If done daily, the mediations and daily mindful practices of this course takes people to 56 days. So we had a discussion about how each person would remain with their practice to take them to this point and beyond to 100 days and how the group can support each other moving forwards. 

Working in collaboration with the University of Oxford, Zenways embarked on a research project some years ago to collect results data for this 8 week course. As teachers we continue to use these these tools  to assess results.  At the start and at the end each participant is asked to complete 3 surveys and these are the results. This is the sixth course I have taught- 2 since I graduated as a teacher. I delivered 4 of these as part of my training.

Satisfaction with life scores

The average Increase in their scores was 63.22% - this is the biggest increase so far, I have seen in all the groups I have taught. 

This gives a general indication of how happy and fulfilled an individual is. It reflects their satisfaction with their work as well as home life.

Stress Scale

Students were 10 points more stressed than the national average at the start and finished 5 points less stressed than average. This equates to a positive change of 50%. The average for the group overall was a decrease in stress of 47%

This reduction is strongly linked to future stress proofing. This reduces the risk of negative consequences of stress and likelihood of future medical interventions or time off work due to stress.

Mindful Attention Awareness Scale

We saw a positive change of 28%.This is good obviously, but it’s the lowest increase in all the groups I have taught. I wonder why that is? Looking at the average data- and I’m not a data analyst of course, it was quite high to start with. Some people on this group were already meditators in different traditions and interestingly many of them were from creative backgrounds. 

An increase in present moment awareness is related to improved attention and creativity, reduced forgetfulness, carelessness and consequently accidents.

I am so grateful to be able to deliver these courses. It is truly a privilege to see such positive change in people over that 2 month period. I will be doing a follow up post on peoples feedback to go with this 8 week collection.