HOW COMPASSIONATE MINDFULNESS CAN HELP
Most interventions to enhance team dynamics fail because they are unable to translate the concept of ‘positive team dynamics’ into a living experience.
Compassionate Mindfulness succeeds in this because it gives effective tools to each individual that also benefit the team.
Our applied compassionate mindfulness approach has been tested and focuses on seeking a way in which being more mindful and compassionate becomes a way of being and working, not just a concept or idea.
Effective for both employees and employers alike, it helps cultivate a positive environment and happier workplace.
This directly impacts working practices and workplace mindfulness and can help lead to fewer sick days, happier staff and a more engaged workforce.
It also helps us to have a deeper awareness of how we function and what makes us tick, and allows us to uproot the more unconscious elements which would otherwise remain hidden. This way individuals can play to their strengths.
THE IMPACT OF EMBEDDING COMPASSIONATE MINDFULNESS PRINCIPLES INTO A TEAM
Teams who embed Compassionate Mindfulness Principles
commonly experience the following benefits:
Each individual feels valued and part of the team.
Individuals feel able to speak up in the knowledge they will be listened to
Individuals are happier and more likely to collaborate with others
More creative and innovative ideas will be created by both individuals working alone and as part of multiple teams
Attendance levels rise with individuals being happier in the workplace
Employees are more engaged and behind the organisation’s goals
Problems that arise are more likely to be communicated and resolved in a more harmonious way
Customer satisfaction will rise as they experience the benefits of happier staff.
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"The learning was fun, and felt effortless. A number of insights of my habitual patterns and how they keep upending me, and a desire to explore more"
Keith, Director
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"These tools are life changing. They should be rolled out to all staff in health and social care.
Steve, Leicestershire County Council
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"Suryacitta and Gaynor understand how to really access the depths of your psyche. They make you aware of the problem at a deeper level."
John, MD - Eatmorefish
HOW WE CAN HELP
Having worked with teams in organisations in Health & Social Care for over 10 years, we understand the dynamics involved and the consequences if teams do not fulfill their potential. We offer the following training and learning to help you create a better working environment with enhanced results:
8 SESSION COURSE
Get to grips with compassionate mindfulness on our Gold standard course
TEAM AWAY DAYS
Experience deep relaxation whilst learning tools and techniques that can benefit your team
VIRTUAL DROP-IN SESSIONS
Drop into our weekly online sessions to help deepen your Compassionate Mindfulness Practice.
THEMED WORKSHOPS
Our one-off workshops allow us to focus down and give specific tools to help individuals and teams to grow
CUSTOM BESPOKE PACKAGES
Contact us about tailor made packages - allow us to directly meet the individual and team needs of your organisation
MINDFUL WELLBEING COACHING
Get personal one-to-one coaching to help improve your wellbeing and engage more positively with life.
VOICE DIALOGUE FACILITATION
Uncover deep rooted emotions and conflicts that may be holding you back through this direct form of Compassionate Mindfulness
Teacher Training GROWING A SUSTAINABLE CULTURE
Establish people within your organisation who can exemplify and teach compassionate mindfulness
Begin the transformation of your organisation today.
Simply click the button below.
SOME COMPANIES WE HAVE WORKED WITH
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“I think you are excellent teachers. The Meditation space was delightful
and quiet and what a great way to spend a day with my team."
Kim, Leicester University
THE ADVANTAGES OF POSITIVE TEAM DYNAMICS By working with us, you can access the transforming benefits of compassionate mindfulness
A common trait of high performing teams within all industries is that they actively strive to create positive internal dynamics.
By doing this they allow their employees to feel supported, listened to, safe, cared for, and valued.
This means that team members will be happier at work, work more effectively together, and be more engaged with the organisations’s goals.
Ultimately this pays off with a happier workforce providing a better service and creating enhanced customer satisfaction - a win-win for all involved.
Typical advantages of positive team dynamics include:
Happier, healthier individuals within the team
Reduced sickness levels
Greater engagement with more creative ideas
Enhanced collaboration
A more passionate, foucsed and energetic team
“No matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if you’re playing a solo game, you’ll
always lose out to a team.”
Reid Hoffman
8 SESSION MINDFULNESS AND COMPASSION COURSE
GOLD STANDARD COMPASSIONATE MINDFULNESS TRAINING
In this 8 session course you will learn the very simple and beautiful art of Mindfulness and Compassion meditation.
We will share techniques for everyday life to remain mindful and observant when you start to feel negative emotions. You will learn to be kind with yourself and others.
Mindfulness meditation involves sitting quietly and paying attention to thoughts, sounds, the sensations of breathing or parts of the body, bringing your attention back to the present.
Sessions are normally weekly and include meditations, stories that illustrate how to apply the practice to your everyday life. Supported by open discussions, the chance to ask questions, a workbook and many more tools that support you to understand yourself and find greater calm in your life.
The Jewel in the Ice: You will learn what mindfulness is and is not and how to set up and establish a regular meditation practice
How to live in your body, not your head: You will learn how to come out of your head and into your body
Living in the present: You will be shown how to stop living in the past and future and to live more in the present moment, which brings more contentment and ease.
Calming the chattering mind: You will be shown why you have a busy mind and how to calm it. You will explore the nature of thoughts themselves.
Dancing with dragons – working with difficult emotions: You will learn how to work with stress and anxiety and all other difficult experiences. This builds more resilience to support the challenges of daily living.
The ABC of mindfulness - the secret to a happy life: We will show you the secret to a happy live. It's not what you think it is!
Compassion meditation for self and others: We share the beautiful practice of compassion (loving kindness) meditation and how to apply it to yourself and others.
Everyday mindfulness and what's next: We will show you how to maintain your practice, addressing the common obstacles and pitfalls. We talk about what’s available and on offer after the course.
There is research and a growing evidence base on the health and wellbeing benefits of Compassionate Mindfulness.
These benefits include:
A clearer perception of our world
Being more present with the world as it is here and now
Increased regulation of our mind, body, emotions and impulses
Enhanced cognition and clarity of thinking
Calmer more measured responses to the world
Choosing our responses over reacting
Wiser behavioural actions and responses
The impact of meditation at work has also led to reduced sick leave, improved performance and happier, more productive staff.
As well as a Mindfulness and Compassion workbook to use alongside the live course, we will give you FREE access to our Resource Library for 4 months. This includes guided meditations, wisdom stories, observations and teachings from Suryacitta.
There is also amonthly in-person and online drop-in meditation evening that you can attend. And at the end of the course, we can issue you with a CPD accredited certificate for your
TEAM AWAY DAYS WITH A DIFFERENCE
Our team away days are not just deeply relaxing and a chance to leave the pressures of work behind. You will also learn Compassionate Mindfulness techniques that can TRULY transform your life.
An opportunity to spend time with your team in a safe, supportive and nourishing space.
Relax, Learn, Practice, Reflect (whilst having some fun too!)
Our team away days provide an opportunity to explore how staff may be able to use mindfulness and compassion in their professional and personal life.
The away day is experiential and provides some practical tools and techniques to deal with the stress and pressure of working life. We use humour and metaphors in the teaching of themes to support the recall of the materials.
The away day gives the team time to pause, reflect on work-life integration, and be together in a safe, beautiful and nourishing space.
You will be given access to our Resource Library of guided meditations, wisdom stories, observations and teachings.
You will be given a certificate of attendance for your CPD records.
THEMED & BESPOKE WORKSHOPS JUST FOR YOU
We run a variety of themed workshops for specific problems for both individuals and teams. These are highly popular and in great demand. Speak to us about what you need to change, and we’ll create a bespoke package just for you.
Our most popular workshops are Mindful Menopause, Retreats for professionals and how to be more creative
Empty your mind, don’t fill it! Retreat for Professionals
A one day retreat in persons and online for Psychotherapists, Psychologists and Counsellors - blending short teachings and guided meditations in an atmosphere of silence and stillness (with a nourishing lunch!).
Therapists spend long periods using their mind, often to the neglect of engaging with their senses. Increased workloads are resulting in pressures to ‘do’ rather than to be’ . This inevitably moves them away from the intuitive and creative essence of therapeutic work that was once enjoyable and fulfilling, resulting in tiredness, frustration, and reduced motivation and enthusiasm.
You will learn how to move away from the chattering overactive mind, to connect with yourself and the beautiful environment in silence and wonder. The intention is to begin to notice and experience the restorative nature of meditative contemplation and reflection, and to access your natural intelligence and intuition.
This day is for your own personal development rather than it being focused on techniques to take back to your clients. However, you will find that regular meditation practice will inevitably be beneficial in your clinical work by enabling you to be more present and engaged.
A certificate of attendance can be requested for your CPD records.
The short teachings will include the underpinnings of meditation and ways to put these into practice, including:
• Coming to your senses
• The four truths of life
• The observing self
• How to work with your busy over active mind
‘The Mindful Menopause’ Workshop
Exploring our relationship to the menopause from a compassionate and mindful perspective.
The menopause is a great time of transition both physically, emotionally and spiritually, and for many women it can be a struggle. This workshop provides women support during this difficult time.
We will introduce the use of mindfulness practices to help you be with your symptoms, rather than battling against them. And we walk you through different meditations for the menopause you can practice to support and guide you through this transition.
This is not a one size fits all approach to the menopause. You will have an opportunity to share your individual experiences with other people on their own menopause journey, and to gain new tools to support you as life continues to change.
This workshop is led by the experiences arising in the space, and focuses on the needs of those attending.
Gaynor will share with you what has kept her well during the menopause. She will facilitate discussion on symptoms such as:
Physical responses: poor sleep; hot flushes, lack of energy, loss of libido, loss of our youthful body.
Emotional responses: changing relationship with our physical body, partners, parents, children.
Behavioural responses: eating; drinking, technology, health seeking behaviour.
Pharmacological responses: HRT, herbal remedies
Spiritual responses: Who am I?, loss of roles, deeper values.
There will be time for discussion along with experiencing mindfulness meditation practices to aid wellness. At the end of the workshop we will present you with a CPD certificate of attendance for your records.
Teacher Training - Growing a Sustainable Culture
We are here to support your organisation to grow a culture of compassionate mindfulness.
This involves having staff and managers who practice and know from their own experience the impact it has in their everyday lives - so that they can share their experience and knowledge through supporting other staff.
We train your staff practitioners and provide ongoing supervision to support their on going learning and growth and that of your organisation .
Practice - Practice - Practice - is how you guarantee the benefits of Compassionate Mindfulness
Mindfulness Teacher Training is ideal for Mindfulness and well-being champions in the workplace.
All our facilitation training arises from the three pillars of good teaching - simplicity, elegance and practicality.
The facilitation training supports existing practitioners in knowing:
How to run short workshops in the workplace
How to run longer courses in the workplace
How to run mindfulness and well-being away days for your company
How to create a culture of mindfulness in the workplace
How to use mindful tools and techniques at work and home
The materials are from Suryacitta's fourth book, A Mindfulness Teachers Handbook- How to surprise your students, not just with what you teach, but by how you teach.
We run a 12 month Mindfulness and Compassion teacher training pathway.
CPD accredited. See our sister site Mindfulness Unleashed for more details
MINDFULNESS AND WELLBEING COACHING SKILLS
MINDFULNESS CAN HELP YOU BE A BETTER COACH
Compassionate Mindfulness allows you to be more present and to have access to more spaciousness as you coach others. This means you can take yourself ‘out of the equations’ and focus directly on the person who has asked you for help.
MINDFUL AND WELLBEING COACH TRAINING
This five-session training gives coaches (and managers) more initiative and creativity in the coaching process.
We use the four well-being principles developed by Richie Davidson of Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin - Madison:
Being present;
Being connected to yourself and others;
Being curious and
Being your purpose
HOW WE CULTIVATE OUR COACHING QUALITIES
In the five sessions in addition to the well-being principles, we use the 7 pillars of coaching to explore, practice, reflect and play with the concepts and the experiential reality of the experience.
Building a mindfulness practice to support a bigger container of spaciousness in our coaching for ourselves and our clients
Staying connected to your own and your clients /supervisee's strengths and gifts
Use the coaching skill of listening deeply and building somatic awareness
Stay curious, understand the narrative to access intuition to offer more insight
Gratitude and appreciation for an infinite mindset
Understand purpose, your own and the client/supervisee to access meaning, values and motivation to achieve goals and commit to action
Set an intention to self-care rituals of pre and post coaching
“ Amazing course. I have used the ‘mantra’ technique and it is sinking in. I have a lot more clarity, not only in my work life but also personally. I feel there has been a shift in the way I am acting and thinking and therfore how iam coaching."
Virgina, Victim Support
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“I will certainly remember the 4 key pillars of wellbeing forward with me – both in life and work.
It was great to be able to practice some of the coaching techniques, at first they felt a bit formulaic – but when put into practice it felt a lot more free-flowing."
Bec, Devon Women Centre
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“The course gave me the confidience to have a go. When I was not in my head there was flow. I enjoyed using the heart-based practices and just how practical they are. I feel like I have increased my capacity to be with my own uncertainty"
Isha, Reaching People
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Mindfulness based Voice Dialogue Facilitation Training Get to know yourself at a deeper level
HOW TO LIVE A HAPPIER, MORE INTEGRATED LIFE
Too often our lives are determined by the various unconscious aspects of ourselves, all pulling in different directions.
Through Voice Dialogue Facilitation, we can uncover and
bring these aspects together so that they start to pull in the same direction.
This means we will lead a happier life with less conflict and greater effectiveness and direction.
Make the commitment to knowing yourself more deeply and have some fun getting to know your many selves.
Choose to live a life that has all of you in it! Rather than being managed by a few dominate selves. Gain more energy and access and use your intuitive self. This is the voice of wisdom that gives you depth and a unique perspective on your life.
Are you in a role where self awareness and how you respond in the moment is crucial to your performance, you might be a manager or leader?
Or a coach, counsellor, mindfulness teacher, this facilitation training will give you new insight and is packed with practical tools and techniques for you to practice and apply.
“We have created our own internal security system, we have built habits that police our boundaries, yet we know that there is much more to us than this. We will create the safety for you to get creative, open to your own unique gifts and end up a wiser self as you learn to unlock your own doors and windows and enjoy the space and freedom this brings” Gaynor Quilter
WHAT YOU"LL LEARN FROM THE COURSE On this mindfulness and voice dialogue course, you will get:
To know yourself more deeply - Building the capacity of your observer
To use your mindfulness and kindness practice and tools and techniques to bring more ease, choice, and freedom to your everyday life
To access the energy hidden in banished selves
To grow your confidence in your intuitive self, to influence your decisions for living
VOICE DIALOGUE COURSE
It's a seven day course and will be held in 3 blocks over 3 months.
Who is living your life? - Getting to know more of who you are and why you do what you do, without needing to apply a judgment label.
"Hello dominate selves, how well do I know you?"
Do I know you ? -With kindness exploring hidden or banished selves., Noticing them sooner through practice to access their strength and wisdom. and recognise recognise we are being hijacked
Lets get practical: We will acknowledge and celebrate our many selves and set an intention to
The course is limited to 9 people
Gaynor and Suryacitta are very skilled. The training is gentle, suble and safe. The simple use of voice dialogue to explore blocks opens up untapped energy to redirect. Its also lots of fun! Dr Marnie Ashton
WHAT WILL HAPPEN
We will be using meditation practice to grow the power of your observer to support integration of your many selves and build your capacity to consciously access what you need in your daily life.
There is no preparation needed (as you can tell from our photo!) for Voice Dialogue, just a willingness to engage and to be open and curious with yourself and the group to embrace your playfulness.
Through Voice Dialogue and individual practice exercises you will get a sense of how your dominant selves appear in your life, how and why they function, the gifts they bring and the tyranny they can create. You will also access the opposite energy, the hidden selves, banished but available, these can bring more ease, freedom, and balance to your life.
WHY BE MINDFUL NOW?
This facilitation course has been designed by Gaynor and Suryacitta based on over 18 years of using voice dialogue in their personal relationship. “We used it as a fun, safe and insightful way of learning about each other and making a commitment to work through our responses to each other and the people in our lives from an aware place”.
Gaynor trained in Voice Dialogue 2016-19 with John Kent; Suryacitta’s latest book the Happiness and Contentment workbook contains many of the exercises used in this training programme.
Suryacitta Malcolm Smith, is one of the most experienced mindfulness teachers in the UK, starting his practice in 1989. He is the author of five books that are available for purchase below.
“A perfect beginner's handbook. Absolutely spot-on and beautifully designed.”
Emma Thompson – Oscar-winning actress