Mindfulness for Health & Wellbeing
This course is aimed specifically at promoting your overall health and wellbeing. We will cover some simple but surprisingly effective techniques drawn from the Zen tradition to help you manage your everyday life, deal with stress and pain, improve your concentration and focussing skills, and boost your general health and wellbeing. This course is suitable if you're looking for an introduction to mindfulness and meditation, and/or if you're looking for a way of dealing with stress-related problems, depression, chronic-fatigue, or pain.
For more information, see my course FAQs. Next course dates:
Over the course we will explore a variety of topics including:
The meditation techniques that we cover include:
Payment
You will need to pay a £40 deposit at the time of booking, and full payment should be made before the start of the course. Payments can be made by cash, cheque, or online bank transfer. Contact me for more information. Mindfulness for Grounding and Insight
This 8-week course is aimed at looking a little deeper into mindfulness and meditation. I will introduce you to some Zen meditation techniques and practices designed to explore what it means to develop a sense of grounding, and to have an understanding of yourself and the nature of reality. You don't need to have any previous meditation experience - only a keen desire or intention to know more about who you really are!
Over the 8 weeks we will explore a variety of topics including:
The meditation techniques that we cover include:
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What people are saying: 
"The course was excellent. Inspiring, reassuring, reaffirming. Made me realise this is exactly what I need, and that it's fundamental principles are in line with my own core values an beliefs.
Mark is a great teacher, very calm, humorous, patient, and enthusiastic"
"The tuition was good, direct, practical, and informal."
"We were given a lot of information and handouts and there was good discussion. I am both excited and a little nervous about continuing the practice alone, but I'm going to be mindful about this and take it one day at a time."
"It was a great mix of theory and practice. A light touch with the more spiritual aspects. Not formal, not intimidating – calm and fun!"
"Before the course I was lacking confidence, with a very weak immune system; highly stressed and unhappy in a lot of aspects of my life. Since doing Mark's course I have grown in my confidence, my memory, my understanding of myself - leading to an inner calm. I have become more patient and able to take a step back and not be anxious at work. I am enjoying being me."
"Great! Intelligent, thorough, but very human."
"I liked the fact that the emphasis was on scientific theory underpinning it all... I definitely think I will return to mindfulness in the future."
"Mark is a really good teacher, I never felt as through I didn't understand a concept. I really liked the use of scientific studies and thought the combination of Mark's scientific background and Zen Buddhist was really useful and interesting"
A moment of stillness in the park, with the sun dappling through the tree
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You will need to pay a £40 deposit at the time of booking, and full payment should be made before the start of the course. Payments can be made by cash, cheque, or online bank transfer. Contact me for more information.
These mindfulness courses were put together by Zen Master Daizan Skinner, and as such draw on the centuries of experience and understanding passed down in the Zen school. As I have emphasised above, the courses that I teach are not Buddhist or religious, nor require you to be anything but inquisitive and interested in your own development. It is true that there is less medical evidence regarding their effectiveness than, for example, the well-known Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) courses developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn and his colleagues, but the proof is in the Zen-flavoured pudding. The techniques taught have been devised and refined by centuries of Zen masters.