Change your mind.

Openground has 20 years of experience in helping people with serious mental and physical health challenges. and our programs spring from a long tradition of preventative and behavioural medicine which has been researched over decades. Much of the more recent mindfulness stuff has been watered down:
- using videos V being supported by a dedicated teacher
- just using an app, rather than a detailed exploration of your patterns and how to interrupt them
- focussing on "well-being" rather than acknowledging just how tough mental health problems can be.

Our 8 week programs involve a real life interaction with your teacher and the group, lots of practice and applications to you life.
- an individual phone interview with your teacher
- a 2.5 hour class, once a week for eight weeks, plus one full retreat day
- body awareness training
- an exploration of your own patterns of thinking, feeling and action, and how to transform them
- brief lectures and discussions
- individual feedback and support
- good conversations about things that matter
- scientific rationale for the practice
- your commitment to daily homework practice using audio tracks and a course book.

Mindfulness meditation is not just a good idea – it’s a practice! As with any new skill – like learning to swim, do Pilates or play golf – just hearing or reading about mindfulness can only take you so far. Experience and practice are the two things that will lead to lasting and profound changes.

For the meditation training to make a real difference to your mental health, ask yourself if you are willing to make a commitment to undertake some formal meditation practice each day over the eight weeks of your course. This will make all the difference to your satisfaction with the course, the benefits you experience, and your life.

Training in mindfulness will equip you with a very portable set of skills that you can practice anywhere, anytime. Give it a go and let's see what happens!

We may not like it, but real change takes time. This is why your training for stress and burnout, anxiety, depression and trauma unfolds over eight weeks plus a whole day retreat – a total of 27 hours of training, as well as your home practice.

Promises of a quick fix are always tempting. There are many apps and pre-recorded short courses about recently, that don't have the clinical evidence behind them. If you have tried these and only had minimal benefit, that makes sense.
We encourage you to do some research of your own. If you are quite stressed, or you’re facing some big challenges, you may find greater benefit in an in-depth, evidence-based program.

Change happens through practice, and evidence suggests that for clinical conditions eight weeks is an optimum time for new cognitive, emotional, neurological and behavioural changes to become embedded. Our experience is that practice develops most effectively and sustainably when there is an ongoing personal relationship with a teacher who really knows their stuff.

The eight week mindfulness training can assist with your capacity for listening, empathy, compassion and genuine curiosity. It can also help you see into our own patterns that can get in the way of being truly helpful.
However these programs are not a professional training program for using mindfulness with clients. We welcome you to join the course as a participant, leave your professional hat at the door, and immerse yourself in mindfulness practice. Our courses present an opportunity to learn about mindfulness from the inside out, by engaging in the group process and learning from your fellow participants.

There are good ethical and professional reasons to develop an in-depth understanding of your own personal mindfulness practice before teaching others. A sustained mindfulness practice, including completing an MBSR course and a teacher-led silent mindfulness retreat, is a pre-requisite for training to teach

In some locations, there are a few courses happening simultaneously, so you could arrange to attend one of the other locations for that week. If that is not possible in your area, the course book is quite detailed in terms of covering the material each week, and you will be able to keep practicing and arrange to check in with your teacher by phone or email about your process that week.

Missing the Day of Mindfulness is also sometimes inevitable. However, this day-long meditation retreat is held every quarter, so you can always attend next time.

Established in 1979, Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is an eight week program generated Jon Kabat- Zinn at the Massachusetts Medical Center for people suffering chronic and acute stress, chronic pain and illness, and associated anxiety and depression. MBSR uses a range of mindfulness practices to teach participants to cultivate an observant, accepting and compassionate stance towards their own internal experiences including cognitions, emotional states, body sensations and impulses. The research literature shows good support for the efficacy of MBSR for a wide range of problems.
Closely based on MBSR, Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) was developed by Segal, Williams and Teasdale as an intervention designed to prevent recurrences of major depression. It integrates the main elements of MBSR with some cognitive therapy components. Although originally designed to prevent depression relapse, applications of MBCT to other problems and disorders are being explored and the research literature shows promising results.
At the moment we only offer MBSR - which can have good benefit for those suffering anxiety and depression, as the same mechanisms of mindfulness are engaged.