With the lifting of lockdown restrictions, different pressures are emerging around decisions on socialising, working, going out in the community, school attendance. The stress and anxiety can feel intense, with many fears about health and an uncertain future. For those still shielding or caring for others, there’s an even greater sense of isolation.

Within our Summer Online programme during July and August, we’ve included two 30 minute live sessions a week for mindfulness practice. Breathing, noticing and concentration, are all different skills which are developed as part of simple mindful meditation exercises. Many people believe that breathing is something we do involuntarily, but by learning more about how we breathe we can begin to use it to help manage stress. In the short term breathing can help us access our ‘relaxation response’ so as to calm down more quickly. In the longer term we can use breathing to build our emotional resilience.

In mindful meditation practice, the breath is used as a focus of concentration and attention, which acts as an antidote to restlessness and anxiety. There are a wealth of mindfulness exercises which you can adapt to your own circumstances. 

The aim of mindfulness practice is to increase awareness, wisdom and choice about how you want to live your life. The difficulties of life remain to challenge us all, but we can choose how we want to respond.

Whether you’re experienced in mindfulness practice, or just want to find out more, join us for our mindfulness sessions over the next two months.