Mindfulness
Mindfulness has been at the heart of Buddhist meditation practice for over two thousand years, cultivating calm, tranquillity, awareness and insight. It has recently been rediscovered by Western science and medicine as an effective way to reduce stress, manage chronic pain, address addictive patterns, or simply improve wellbeing.
Mindfulness means staying in the moment, becoming more aware of our present experience and more engaged with life. It's not about forcing change, but seeing and accepting things as they are, then changing our responses. This helps us meet life's difficulties with greater resilience, equanimity and joy.
How does mindfulness help with stress and anxiety?
When you're stressed, it's easy to get stuck in cycles of worry and overthinking, where even small things feel like too much. Modern life piles on the pressure to do more, work harder, and be better - it's no wonder so many of us feel stretched to breaking point.
79% of UK adults feel stressed at least once a month, and 1 in 9 feel stressed daily. Mindfulness offers a way to break free from these cycles and better cope with daily stress.
Our accredited Breathworks Mindfulness for Stress eight-week courses help by:
Breaking the cycle of overthinking. Our minds easily get stuck in negative thinking patterns - an endless spiral of "what ifs" and worries about matters outside our control. Mindfulness helps us recognise that we don't need to be ruled by every thought, and brings us back to what's actually happening right now.
Giving you the ability to choose. Mindfulness helps us catch our emotional reactions before they take over - for example, pausing during a heated argument to choose a more considered response rather than letting things escalate. Over time, this builds emotional resilience, buffering us from the effects of unpleasant situations.
Balancing your nervous system. With stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol flowing constantly, it's hard to stop until we "crash" at the end of the day. Mindfulness helps us step off life's hamster wheel more regularly, allowing our nervous system to move from fight-or-flight into rest and relaxation - lowering stress hormones and promoting wellbeing.
Breathworks Centre of Excellence
The West London Buddhist Centre and Breathworks CIC have offered secular mindfulness courses for people with long-term health conditions, chronic pain and stress since 2016, and in 2019 became the first Breathworks 'Centre of Excellence'. The Centre was recently named one of the 'best mindfulness courses in London' by the Evening Standard.
The Breathworks approach combines body awareness and breathing meditations with kindness, compassion and connection, alongside experiential exercises, current clinical evidence, mindful movement, and led practices followed by enquiry.
Breathworks Centre of Excellence
The West London Buddhist Centre and Breathworks CIC have been working in partnership to offer secular mindfulness courses for people with long-term health conditions, chronic pain, and stress in London since 2016. In 2019, the Centre was recognised as the first Breathworks ‘Centre of Excellence’. The Centre was recently listed in the Evening Standard as offering one of the ‘best mindfulness courses in London’ to boost happiness.
The Breathworks approach includes body awareness and breathing meditations with an emphasis on kindness, compassion and connection. It also incorporates experiential exercises, theory based on recent clinical evidence, mindful movement, mindfulness in daily life, and led practices followed by enquiry. The course is designed to support participants to better understand their experience and feel empowered to make choices that can improve their day to day lives.
The Breathworks Foundation
The Breathworks Foundation was established to ensure the benefits of mindfulness and compassion training are available to everyone, regardless of their circumstances, as it is very often the people who are most in need of mindfulness training or courses are the least able to pay for and access it.
