About the course
This course is based on the best selling book: Finding Peace in a Frantic World by Mark Williams and Danny Penman. The course runs over 8 sessions with guided group meditations and exercises that introduce you to the foundations of mindfulness. Each week you will be invited to undertake some home practise which helps you to build a mindfulness practice and build resilience in everyday life. Participants will need to buy the book which is available at bookstores and online.
This course is for the general public and is based on the Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) course developed by Dr Mark Williams and colleagues at the University of Oxford.
On the course, you will learn practices such as the Body Scan, Mindful Movement and Sitting Meditations with the aim of taking what you learn in these practices and applying them in your everyday life.
The course focuses on eight key themes outlined in the best selling book Finding Peace in a Frantic World, all interlinking and building each week through home practice.
Home practise is an integral part of the course, as it enables you to establish the skills that you are learning and apply them and see the benefits in your daily life. Each participant is encouraged to undertake approximately 10-20 minutes daily practice, six days per week, between each class. This at times can be a challenge to fit in and participants are encouraged to be kind with themselves in finding a way to make mindfulness practise work for them. The longer time given to practise the greater the benefits!
The course is most effective if you can try to attend all sessions as each session builds on the previous session. Attendance certificates are given to those that attend 7 or more sessions.
For those interested in training as a mindfulness teacher in schools, this course fulfils one of the prerequisites.
For me being close to nature and getting outdoors is more than just physical exercise. It feeds me- both in terms of inspiration for my art work but also just as importantly it gives me much needed moments of mindfulness. It is also proven that getting outdoors or green exercise is incredibly good for our wellbeing
Hear more about what I have to say about walking in this short podcast I recently recorded.
Interested in building the outdoors-creatively and mindfully, into your learning and development programs? Do get in touch.
I sometimes include walking in my coaching work with clients (this can be in cities too, indoors and outdoors) so please do contact me to find out more at hello@mindtrip.co.uk or ring me on 07801 246113
As well as a Coach and a Facilitator, I am also an Artist. You can see more of my work at www.heatherrachel.co.uk
I am particularly interested in the link between the arts and creativity and their link in developing meaningfulness within people’s lives, innovation, helping people’s wellbeing and dealing with stress. The arts are a useful way of helping people process emotions and work with complex issues in a non verbal way. They can be playful and fun! (and hard work…)
In this way they can be used both by individual’s in their daily lives to give pleasure and joy and can also be used within teams and in organisations to build connections, develop creativity and innovation and determine future goals and direction. As they say a picture paints a 1000 words….
Lets use the ‘other side’ of our brains!
Mindtrip’s approach is performance and life focused, creative and flexible. Our aim is to help you find your inner navigator and ensure you have the tools to ride the waves of change. This is achieved through a range of people and organisational development interventions- find out more on my what we do page.
To deliver this we work through a number of perspectives:
positive neuroplasticity and psychology: There is currently a burgeoning amount of research in positive psychology that is practically helpful for working with individuals, teams and organisations to explore
- How you can become more fulfilled day to day, to increases happiness and a sense of wellbeing
- Understanding what your strengths are and how these can be put to best use
- How managers within organisations can create flourishing environments that facilitate individuals wellbeing while at the same time prospering economically
- Start to train to your minds to take in the good
developmental psychology: This approach explores the way that individuals make sense of the world and themselves in it. It explores how we make meaning and is particularly useful in helping Leaders look at their development to date in both a horizontal and a vertical change context. To find out more about this perspective and how it relates to leadership development there is an interesting Harvard Business Review article by David Rooke and Bill Torbert who Heather trained with.
Creativity: we are all creative, although many of us will deny this! By finding ways to build a creative outlook in life we can boost our performance and our wellbeing. Ever wondered why we have our best ideas when we are most relaxed?
compassion and self compassion: many of us, particularly those that work within the helping professions don’t spend enough time looking after ourselves. To use the metaphor of the aircraft safety briefing- do you put your own oxygen mask on first before helping others? By spending time exploring the areas of kindness and compassion we can start to build an internal safety jacket to keep ourselves afloat in times of stress and change and nourish ourselves so as to ward off burnout. See more in a blog i wrote about compassion
mindfulness: mindfulness is a way of paying attention, of being deeply attuned to yourself, your environment and those around you. The key benefits of taking a more mindful approach to work and life are that it enables an individual over time to:
- become more aware of the present moment and to be more acceptant and resourceful in time of stress
- to help people to focus and concentrate, giving people greater attention and allowing for greater creativity
- become more socially and emotionally aware, building more understanding in our relationships with others
mindtrip use’s the principles of these techniques to help us deal with constant change, ambiguity and complexity in the modern life. At an individual level, mindfulness practices can help people develop greater awareness, acceptance and choice within their lives. Interested to find out more about mindfulness? Please take a look at my mindfulness pages.
cognitive behavioural coaching (CBC) : This is a foundation to my work. Cognitive behavioural coaching (CBC) uses solutions focused and problem solving techniques to help clients to get clearer about their intentions and start to realign their life and work based on these. The CBC philosophy centres on the fact that ‘the way we react to events is largely determined by our view of them, not by the events themselves’. CB coaching does not seek to give people the answers to their problems or difficulties, rather, through a collaborative process called guided discovery, helps people to reach their own conclusions and solutions. (Neenan & Palmer, Stress News, July 2001) CBC is particularly useful in helping clients to overcome blocks, improve performance, reduce stress, build confidence and increase emotional resilience. To find out more about CBC please read the following article by Michael Neenan and Stephen Palmer at the Centre for Coaching where Heather trained.
To find out more about what we can do for you please do drop me a line at hello@mindtrip.co.uk
Heather’s inspirations, which are continually evolving, are currently being influenced by the work that is ongoing within behavioural science, creativity, mindfulness and compassion based interventions, Positive Psychology and in particular strengths based development; integrity, ethics and authenticity in Leadership Development and dealing with emotional challenges through Cognitive Behavioural Coaching. She is passionate about helping others to be the best they can be while at the same time not doing damage to others and the wider environment. Heather also has a particular interest in bringing research based psychology tools and creativity techniques to mindtrip’s work. You can find out more about some of the latest thinking that is catching her attention through subscribing to mindtrip’s blog.
Having a first degree in Economics and working within the field of occupational psychology, Heather has a particular interest in the work that spans both disciplines- behavioural sciences- and in particular the work of Paul Dolan, Richard Layard, and the team at action for happiness and NEF.
Wellbeing at a personal, organisational and societal level is also key to her work and she has kept up to date with the work of the Government commissioned foresight project around developing mental capital and wellbeing as well as a raft of releases from the BPS and Government and others around wellbeing.
Heather is particularly interested in working with those that help others to prevent burnout. She is particularly influenced and inspired by the work being undertaken into love, empathy and compassion by Paul Gilbert, Tania Singer, Barbara Fredrickson, Matthieu Ricard, Kristin Neff and Sharon Salzberg.
Organisation Development- People, Values and wellbeing
I have been working for 18 months with Perrywood and award winning family run garden centre based in Essex and Suffolk . They have grown considerably with their success and needed help in crystallising their people strategy, finalising their values and implementing an approach to support staff wellbeing. The work started with running a happiness at work survey to establish key areas of focus and then writing and implementing a people strategy as well as a wellbeing strategy. We have taken an iterative holistic approach that looks at both the structure, policies and processes as well as culture, L&D, staff feedback and involvement as well as establishing partnerships with occupational health and EAP providers.
As part of this process we also wanted to hear staff’s views on what they thought made Perrywood special. I designed and facilitated a short workshop for all staff working more than a certain number of hours. These values have now been integrated into day to day desision making at Perrywood.
L&D
An essential part of any wellbeing strategy for an organisation is the abilities and awareness of its managers. As part of the roll out of the work staff requested more feedback on their performance and so we re-introduced 1:1 chats with a coaching approach and I trained all managers on how to have these conversations. This was rolled out to all staff.
Also designed are a series of workshops that can be delivered digitally or face to face on resilience, mental flourishing, healthy management, employee wellbeing, feedback & difficult conversations and Development & Wellbeing.
Learning & Development Faciltation
I worked for over ten years delivering the counsellor and advanced counsellor training within EY as part of an associate team. We were one of only a couple of providers that the organisation had used for that length of time in the UK. This work involved performance management, relationship building, coaching and difficult conversations training. The advanced programme including greater complexity including neurodiversity, careers and mental health.
We worked at senior levels in the organisation and I have facilitated Partner, Director, Senior Manager and Manager groups as well as some more junior staff just starting out in people management. Many of these audiences were globally diverse but based in the UK. I was particularly actively involved with the Advisory business when it was re-starting within the firm, facilitating the partner group around Firm process and their decisions on people management.
I specialise in people development and particularly training in behavioural change, strengths based wellbeing and ‘soft skills’. I can design or design and deliver courses for you that can be either delivered in person or remotely through your digital learning strategy facilitating just in time or real time learning for your employees.
I have a particular expertise in designing and delivering training in the following areas:
- Coaching & advanced listening and questioning skills
- Strengths based careers development
- Integrated wellbeing, development and performance conversations
- Performance development conversations including positive and constructive feedback
- Dealing with challenging, conflict and difficult conversations
- Mindfulness and compassion
- Dealing with change and transitions
- Leading change and transitions
- Resilience and mental flourishing
- Employee wellbeing training- incl stress management,
- Healthy manager and healthy workplace
- Happiness and wellbeing (incl PERMA)
Case studies
I worked collaboratively with a specialist in procurement to design a modular programme focused around strategic category management. The course was designed so that attendees learnt the key technical skills while being interwoven with key soft skills.
As part of the wider change programme I ran for Herbert Smith I designed five 90-120 minute skills booster sessions focused around increasing key soft skills that the support population were particularly requesting 
I worked for over ten years delivering the counsellor and advanced counsellor training within EY. We were one of only a couple of providers that the organisation had used for that length of time in the UK. This work involved perfomance management, relationship building, coaching and difficult conversations training. The advanced programme including greater complexity including neurodiversity, careers and mental health.
We worked with London TravelWatch at a time of large change helping both the staff and managers process and deal with the impact of a large downsize. We worked with them to deliver two all staff workshops around understanding and dealing with change and ensuring consistency of approach in the new organisation going forward. This latter piece of work focusing on developing the organisations values and understanding how they are lived day to day.
Thanks for delivering such a light touch but powerful workshop yesterday. It did just what I hoped
Chief Executive London TravelWatch
Change management
Over a 12-18 month month period I designed and assembled a team of 5 consultants, to deliver a large cross departmental change programme “Good to Excellent’ across support services with the focus on building a sense of community and customer service for internal and external clients. The design had 4 phases including workshops and skills boosters.
To read more about the programme and its design please click : Herbert Smith Good to excellent Programme This was written by the OD department at Herbert Smith for an award submission.
Top Team Development
Prior to Herbert Smith’s merger, I worked over a period of seven years with the Information and Systems department. During that time I worked with them to build a sense of team within the Leadership team, each sub team within the department, across the overall department and also inter relationships between the department and other departments they worked closely with. Work included
- Consulting, designing and facilitating tailored nine yearly top team leadership offsites and 1:1 coaching
- Designing and facilitating intra departmental team events
- Designing and facilitating a series of tailored department wide team leader management development
- Designing and facilitating an all department conference
We needed a facilitator to help us in the critical task of coalescing the senior management team. Heather did exactly that and lived up to out high expectations.
Group Chief Information Officer, Herbert Smith LLP (now retired)
Learning & Development design and facilitation
As part of the wider change programme I ran for Herbert Smith I designed five 90-120 minute skills booster sessions focused around increasing key soft skills that the support population were particularly requesting