Mindfulness

Mary Nugent, MBACP

I qualified to teach yoga almost ten years ago. I began because of health problems and found it a life changing experience. I was trained as a Yoga Teacher and as a Stress Management Tutor by the Northern Ireland Yoga Fellowship, a non-profit organisation run by teachers to train teachers.  I have taught yoga to people from all walks of life, and found most people become changed by it in some way.

I was influenced very early on in my yoga teaching by Jon Kabat-Zinn, who developed a Mindfulness Based Stress Management programme in a Boston Hospital, for people suffering terminal illnesses and chronic pain. He defines Mindfulness as paying attention to the present moment, on purpose, with intent. Mindfulness allows us to develop a relationship with ourselves, to begin to become more self aware. By knowing ourselves and how we work we may make lasting change in our lives. This is now being backed up by Brain Research and practicing mindfulness may allow us to open up new pathways in the brain to regulate our emotions. Instead of living in the past or being overwhelmed by what might happen in the future, we remain centred in the present.

I qualified as a counsellor last year and am a member of the British Association of Counsellors and Psychotherapists. I trained in Integrated Humanistic Counselling, which included Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). I found many things in the counselling course struck a chord with me because I could relate it back to my yoga background. I also completed the NLP Practitioners, Timeline and Hypnotherapy Practitioners courses with NLP Northern Ireland and look forward to doing the Master Practitioner course this year. I see links here too to my yoga and counselling background. Everything adds to my knowledge and skills. This means I can see clients as unique individuals and that one size will not fit all. I feel that everyone has the potential to fulfil their purpose and I am passionate about helping people to do and be the best they can.

I have developed a programme incorporating my skill sets of yoga, counselling and NLP, for Stress Management. My hope is by running Stress Management courses incorporating Mindfulness, CBT and NLP, I will be able to reach people who don't feel the need to go for stress counselling, but would really benefit from learning some of the skills they might be introduced to in counselling. These skills can be life changing. I personally benefitted enormously from them and would like to pass that on to others.