by Karen Atkinson | Feb 2, 2022 | All Blog Posts
Where Did The Idea For The Event Start?
The global pandemic hit us individually and as a society, hard. Some have unfortunately experienced greater levels of suffering than others but we have all suffered in so many ways, ways that will take a long time to recover from.
For me, the word that rose to the surface during this time was ‘kindness’; a word that has previously been associated by some as being ‘sickly sweet’ or for ‘do gooders’. It rose to the surface as kindness to ourselves and others is inherent within us, the human body is geared up to ‘tend and befriend’. It’s natural but as a society there are so many barriers to allowing it to manifest in wholesome and nourishing ways.
As we started to come out of the lockdowns, I observed a segregation between those who wanted to stay aligned with this newly-felt association with kindness and others who couldn’t wait for life to return to normal, losing the lessons learnt about how to practice self-care and kindness to others at a deeper level.
How Did This Idea Then Develop?
Kindness is fundamental to everything and I felt compelled to support the flourishing of kindness as we transition to the next stage of the pandemic, whatever that may look like. I was out walking one morning and it came to me in a flash, we should hold an event which could be the start of many to come, showing everyone who is interested how it’s the little acts of kindness that make such a difference and ripple out to wholesale changes within one’s own life, and those we connect with.
In the spirit of connection and feeling congruent with my core values, my next thought was to ask two of the kindest people I know to join me on this adventure, Dawn Lister and Daniel Groom from Anahata Yoga Centre.
We have all known each other for many years and I’ve always resonated with them on a number of levels, especially in their clarity about the power of kindness which they model in everything they say and do, both personally and professionally.
I was delighted and extraordinarily grateful that when I put the suggestion to them that there was no hesitation in partnering with me on the Living Well with Kindness Online Event.
How Can I Join The Event?
This new and unique event brings together a wide range of experienced mindfulness and yoga therapy teachers and inspiring speakers, providing a number of insightful and supportive talks, practices, expert panel discussions and Q&A sessions throughout the day.
Everyone is welcome and our intention is to make it accessible to all. To reflect this, we have a range of prices for you to choose from, depending on your own personal circumstances.
Your ticket not only includes entry for the whole day but also lifetime access to a recording of the event, and ongoing support in the form of a regular newsletter with extra practices, blogs, and articles post event, supplied by our team of experts.
There has never been a time that necessitated kindness on a deeper internal and external level, in all areas of life. Kindness to ourselves, to those around us who perhaps share different views and values, and to the whole world.
Visit our website to find out more and purchase ticket. I really hope to see you there!
by Karen Atkinson | Dec 9, 2021 | All Blog Posts
‘Compassionate Mindful Inquiry in Therapeutic Practice: A Practical Guide for Mindfulness Teachers, Yoga Teachers and Allied Health Professionals’ (Atkinson, K 2020. Singing Dragon).
The impetus to write my book is multifaceted. Personally, inquiry has enabled me to explore deeply ingrained and unhealthy patterns from my upbringing, giving me the opportunity to find ways to change them, to such a degree that I have completely changed my life.
Having honed this self-reflective skill with my mindfulness and other meditative practices, my diagnosis and treatment for cancer enabled me to shine a light more brightly on self-compassion. It became extensively apparent that this was vehemently discouraged in my childhood and had resulted in some resistance to it in adulthood, though I had always been compassionate to others.
Inquiry continues to help me profoundly in developing new ways of relating to myself with kindness, ensuring that the connectivity I feel for myself is extended authentically to others and the choices I make in my life. Offering the opportunity to explore these skills, when I worked for the NHS, to my patients who suffered with chronic pain, trauma, anxiety, and depression resulted in significant shifts within their lives.
Then once I founded MindfulnessUK, offering mindfulness teacher training, it became apparent that this skill could be developed both through theoretical understanding alongside practical application. I therefore decided to focus on how mindfulness and compassion teachers, with no clinical background, could develop these skills in a whole range of sectors to support the health and well-being of their patients, clients, and course participants.
With this knowledge and understanding I introduced a foundational underpinning of the theory of inquiry into our teacher training programmes and developed a one-day masterclass to focus on the Process of Inquiry in more detail.
Becoming aware of the benefits of this approach I realised that a book that focuses on this subject would be extremely beneficial for committed meditators, and mindfulness students and teachers.
As there wasn’t another book dedicated solely to this subject, I decided to write one as an offering to the mindfulness and compassion field. I also recognised the need for information about inquiry to be placed in the secular context and to provide a clear framework from which to guide it.
Initially inquiry can appear scary due to misunderstandings, seeing it as random and boundary-less. This is absolutely not the case, as I explore fully in the book, and to help explain I developed the Iceberg Model, showing the relationship between mindfulness and compassion. Granted, we all need more kindness to ourselves and others but there seems to be a shift towards compassion at present without the recognition of the need for the wisdom and equanimity that mindfulness can bring.
Only yesterday I was talking about this with Heather from the Mindfulness Association, saying how if we open our hearts to our vulnerability without something to steady us, we will become overwhelmed. As with anything in life, balance is key.
I am thrilled that the booked has been so well received with students often saying how informative, helpful and confidence-boosting it has been. In fact one former student, Lena Shah, found the model to be such a pivotal moment in her experience of her meditation practice and life that she included it in her book of poems, “Impetus” (Shah, L. 2021. Austin Macauley Publishers).
It’s appreciated as a guide to the terrain of inquiry, offering pathways and familiar territory, which supports the development of exploration of patterns and new ways of being, through trust, intimacy, patience, and safety.
Joyously my book is being well received in America too, as compassion centres spring up everywhere and the word “kindness” is on the lips of many.
It seems that the subject matter has resonated during this period of the global pandemic. Rather ironically, I launched the book in February 2020, having an incredible launch party at the MindfulnessUK’s Centre, only for the pandemic to take hold in March. I knew the compassion surge was coming but it has been energised by Covid-19 and it’s needed even more than I ever imagined it would be.
It excites me to consider all the teaching of practices and the skillful inquiry that is being offered as a result of people reading my book and putting all that is learnt into practice. The ripple effect of enabling others to gain insights and make sustainable changes warms my heart every single day and I encourage you to try it for yourselves and reap the rich, deep rewards that it yields.
To get your copy click here.
by Karen Atkinson | Nov 26, 2021 | All Blog Posts
Wining the silver award in the Southern England Business Woman of the Year category at the National Business Woman’s Awards is recognition for all the work that we have been doing at MindfulnessUK. This award is for the whole team and everyone that supports us.
MindfulnessUK started when I decided to leave the NHS as I really wanted to set up a centre for mindfulness and yoga. With encouragement and support I found a property in Taunton. When I viewed it, I could feel the positive energy in the property as it had been home to several charities since the 1970’s so there was something really special about it and I knew it was the right place.
This all happened during a recession, but I was determined the carry on, take my business plan and bring it all to life.
It was a remarkably busy for the first 3 years, building the organisation, letting people know what we were doing, offering different therapies with a variety of therapists, and building the reputation of the business.
Then in 2013, I was diagnosed with cancer. This was a really pivotal time for me, a cross-roads really, and after which I came back to work having discovered on a deep level the value of self-compassion.
I knew about self-compassion before, but it then became so important to me because of the compassion I was shown by other people. I knew that I wanted to move forward and focus the MindfulnessUK offer on mindfulness and compassion, and this is when I wrote the Integrating Mindfulness and Compassion (IMC) Qualification.
We have worked with 1000’s of students over the past 10 years, creating a unique teacher training organisation, educating, and empowering students and showing how mindfulness can support mental health and help people to thrive in their personal and professional lives.
The best thing about being the Senior Partner at MindfulnessUK, is that every day I work with a great team who share my vision; building a mindfulness community of practitioners and qualified teachers, sharing the transformational potential of mindfulness and compassion with others.
I cannot imagine my life without a mindfulness practice. It empowers me to make choices on a moment-by-moment basis. It helps me to keep everything in perspective and to be more compassionate to myself and others, always.
The Covid-19 pandemic has been a stressful and extraordinary time for the team and the business. In the beginning, everyone cancelled everything, and it looked like that was the end of the road for us, almost overnight. But, instead of giving up, we realised how people would need mindfulness and compassion even more during and after the distress and grief caused by the impacts of the virus.
Therefore, we rolled up our sleeves and took all our courses and training online, as well as developing e-courses for CPD and offering free classes in meditation, movement, and compassion. Our free classes had a donation option, and all proceeds went to the NHS.
We have been able to support thousands of people during this time, both directly and also through training others to teach mindfulness and compassion to their colleagues in the NHS, teachers, fire and police staff, carers and many more besides.
We’re incredibly proud of what we have achieved in 2020, being in a position to utilise our skills for the benefit of the mental health of those not only in the UK but internationally. Specialising in teaching people suffering with pain, anxiety, and trauma I use my expertise to train others to deliver mindfulness and compassion in a trauma-informed way.
I am so passionate about what I do, and all of our teaching and training has my book, Compassionate Mindful Inquiry In Therapeutic Practice. A Practical Guide for Mindfulness Teachers, Yoga Teachers and Allied Health Professionals, and iceberg model at its core.
I am incredibly lucky with all the support that I have, and I could not have created MindfulnessUK, and won this award, without the support of my wonderful team. I am immensely proud of what we have achieved.
by Karen Atkinson | May 20, 2021 | All Blog Posts
Easing out of Lockdown with Compassion and Kindness.
As we all ease out of lockdown, we believe that mindfulness is one of the greatest tools to help everyone stay connected. All of us at MindfulnessUK have been reflecting on this change with lots of people telling us that they are feeling fear, even a trembling of the heart and don’t really know what that is about.
Karen Atkinson, Senior Partner at MindfulnessUK, has been reflecting on her own experience:
“Coming out of lockdown, after all that we have experienced in the last year reminded me of the time that I had cancer, a few years ago. After my treatment and when I started to get back to being ‘ok’ it was then that I really hit a difficult time.
I can only describe it like when you watch an animation or a cartoon as a child and one of the characters has to run really fast and they leave something behind, like a shadow or a puff of dust or air. That is what it felt like, going back to work, and everything around me looking normal but me feeling completely disconnected and that half of me had been left behind.
I recognised that I hadn’t had a chance to process my feelings and as we come out of lockdown, I know that some people are experiencing this same feeling. During lockdown we experienced collective trauma and some of us connected with things we maybe had either not connected with before or had forgotten. Some of us woke up and realised the importance of kindness and compassion and how nature can fill our hearts with joy. Now we are going back into the vortex of life but haven’t yet caught up with it which causes this feeling of disconnect.”
With so many people not aware of this feeling or emotion or not truly being able to understand it everything can feel so much more challenging. The collective emotional trauma that we have experienced hasn’t yet been processed and we are all really keen to reconnect with loved ones, work, and society.
Mindfulness and Compassion.
Awareness is really key to ensure that we can move forward, as well as a deep sense of compassion, and the need to look after ourselves. This process takes time, catching up with the present-day experiences, will take time and we need to be very kind to ourselves.
Self-compassion, giving ourselves time, remembering and reconnecting in whichever way we can. The importance of family, community and nature and keeping those resources close to hand. Share those collective experiences, it is ok to talk about it. To be kind to yourself and others around you and experience this vulnerability, takes courage. As the process of lockdown took bravery this next phase also takes nerve. We need to pace ourselves and try not to do just go with the expectations of people or society around us, and instead do what is right for you.
Go well and take care of yourself, take your time and use all of the resources around you to help you flourish and blossom.
www.mindfulnessuk.com / info@mindfulnessuk.com / 01823 697890
#lockdown #compassion #kindness #awareness #reconnect #connect #mindfulness
