Mindfulness-informed Cancer Care – 4 half-days
2 Day Workshop over 4 half days
Description
This experiential training is for those currently working with people with cancer, who have some experience / interest in mindfulness, and would like to explore what this might offer them and their work.
Working with people with cancer is demanding on many levels. Whilst new treatments offer the potential of improved outcomes, the nature of the disease unavoidably brings anxiety and uncertainty for patients and their families – which impacts on those who work with them.
The impact of the Covid pandemic and ongoing strained resources, inevitably adds pressure to those who work with people with cancer, whatever role or context they are in.
Mindfulness has been found to offer support to people experiencing stress and pressure. Much depends on the intention of those learning the approach. It is early days, however there is promising research that mindfulness practice may contribute to improving the wellbeing of healthcare professionals (Lomas et al, 2018, Kriakous et al, 2021).
This training offers the chance not only to influence self-care positively – but also to learn ways of bringing mindfulness to inform the practice of the healthcare practitioner in their work with the patient / client. This in turn may offer potential benefits to both the staff member, their team, and the patient / client.
The workshop will be delivered over four half-days 09:30am – 13:30pm UK Time
Dates:
Friday 18th, Saturday 19th August, Saturday 26th August and Saturday 2nd September from 9:30 – 1:30pm All BST / UK time
What will I do on this course?
The training is predominantly experiential in nature and there will also be some didactic teaching included in the mix. Both course leaders are very experienced in the field of mindfulness and cancer – through their years of teaching people.- There will be opportunities to learn alongside peers in discussion, reflection, and mindfulness practice in small breakout groups and the large group process
- We will discuss, explore and learn when it might be helpful to choose to respond with a mindfulness practice and how we might do this
- Brief practices will be introduced that are simple, portable and very accessible to include in many contexts and situations at home and at work
- We have chosen to arrange the sessions to include two gaps of a week each. This is to enable participants to put what they are learning into practice at home and at work – so that they can reflect and learn from others in the group as mindfulness informed practice is embedding in context. There will also be an optional opportunity to meet with 2 or 3 others on the training in a small group to practice their guiding of one of the brief practices to each other
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the programme, participants will have had the opportunity to explore:- Grounding practice - and when and how this might be used
- How to bring (silent) internal awareness into responses to self and others
- An understanding and experience of ‘coming back’ to a personal choice of anchor in the body and/or the breath
- The role of intention in relation to sustaining a connection to mindfulness practice at home and at work
- The approach of ‘turning towards’ what is happening – whether pleasant or challenging – and learning how this might be helpful
- The practice of cultivating a friendly approach to experience
- Reconnecting to what matters to you and exploring the role this has in day-to-day life and work
- A number of very brief straightforward mindful practices and how to weave them into their day – including learning how to share these safely with their patients/clients if it is appropriate
About the Teachers
Trish Bartley
I am a mindfulness teacher trainer and author - and have been involved in mindfulness since 1999 and the beginning of MBCT. I have two special interests within the mindfulness field – one is in relation to work with people with cancer – and the other is concerned with groupwork practice. I adapted a specialist MBCT programme for people with cancer (MBCT-Ca) and published two books on the subject in 2012 and 2017 – the first for teachers and second for people with cancer themselves. I have recently co-authored Teaching Mindfulness-Based Groups. I am one of the founder members of the CMRP core training team and train for the Mindfulness Network. I have a background in community development and have worked in rural development with local people in an ex-‘homeland’ area in South Africa. From 2001 - 2020, I taught regular 8-week MBCT programmes to people with cancer, within a North Wales oncology unit. I now work with a few people with advanced cancer one to one online. I train on the Mindfulness Network (MN) teacher’s training pathway and taught for 15 years on the Bangor University Mindfulness Masters programme until 2020. I supervise teachers from different parts of the world, lead workshops and train mindfulness teachers in Europe and occasionally further afield, and I offer brief mindfulness interventions to UK health professionals through Mayfly https://mayfly.org.uk I am also grandmother to 4 fast-growing young, gardener, border collie companion, and keen listener to music.
Christina Shennan
I am a psychotherapist, mindfulness teacher, trainer and supervisor. I have a special interest in mindfulness in cancer care. I work as a psychotherapist in a cancer charity, providing 1:1 therapeutic interventions across the cancer pathway and teach MBCT-Ca. I also teach MBCT in a NHS IAPT service in the north west of England. I am a member of the Centre for Mindfulness Research and Practice (CMRP) core training team and am Module Organiser and Tutor on the Teaching One Module of the Masters in Mindfulness at Bangor University. In 2009 I was awarded a Cancer Experiences Collaborative (CECo) Scholarship which was taken at the Division of Health Research, International Observatory on End of Life Care, Lancaster University, where I co-authored Shennan, C., Payne, S. and Fenlon, D. (2011), What is the evidence for the use of mindfulness-based interventions in cancer care? A review. Psycho-Oncology, 20: 681–697. doi: 10.1002/pon.1819.
