Wednesdays
WEBSITE Email : Ansa.Khan@bucksmind.org
Windsor, Ascot and Maidenhead:
Tel: 07496 874882 or mike.workman@bucksmind.org.uk Tel: 07944 896353 (Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays)
MIND Buckinghamshire, Friends in Need , is running Mindful Meditation at Lynwood Retirement Village, Sunninghill, Ascot, each Wednesday.
New! Mindfulness Meditation Guided Practice and Discussion Classes in Ascot | You are warmly invited to join Friends in Need, in association with Bucks MIND, for guided mindfulness meditation and discussion sessions , at "Woody's", Woodland View, Lynwood Retirement Village, Rise Road, Sunninghill, Ascot SL5 0AJ, every Wednesday afternoon from 2.30 to 4pm. These sessions are offered by MIND free of charge, on a drop-in basis, so you can attend as many or as few sessions as you wish. Please note the guided practice will start at 3pm. Mindfulness practice is a skill that can be learnt, like any other skill. Practising mindfulness involves cultivating the ability to be aware of your present-moment thoughts and feelings with a non-judgmental attitude of kindness towards yourself and whatever it is that you are experiencing. Practising mindfulness can improve your capacity to cope with whatever life throws at you – we cannot always control what happens to us but with mindfulness we can develop the capacity to choose how to respond to it, rather than just reacting to it. Mindfulness helps us to realise that thoughts are just thoughts - we do not have to "believe" our own thoughts any more than we have to believe some else's thoughts! The guided practice is done seated in a chair and will begin with a progressive muscle relaxation exercise, followed by whole body deep relaxation, designed to help you develop greater capacity for present-moment self-awareness, and with that the capacity to free yourself from being controlled by unhelpful and habitual negative thought patterns and their concommitant behaviours.
There will also be time for questions, discussion and friendly chat over tea and biscuits too. Please note that it's best to wear comfortable clothing. Also, there is free parking available at Lynwood Village. We hope to see you there! These classes are offered free of charge by the national mental health charity MIND, via Friends in Need, a local peer-to-peer support charity which offers an extensive programme of activities, mostly provided by volunteers, free of charge, to support people who struggle with mental health issues such as anxiety and depression, issues which often result from difficult life circumstances such as illness and disability, loneliness, social isolation and bereavement. Any donations to Friends in Need to support our work will be gratefully accepted. For further information about Friends in Need, if you would like to join us or volunteer for us, please contact Ansa Khan on 07496 874882 or Ansa.Khan@bucksmind.org.uk. If you would like any more information about the mindfulness meditation sessions themselves please don't hesitate to ask me here, or send me a private message. Please note that we also run these sessions on Fridays at Dedworth Medical Centre, 80 Vale Road, Windsor from 2pm to 3.30pm (guided practice starts at 2.30pm) The sessions in Windsor are growing in poplularity and many people are finding great benefit in learning this practice - it is the success of the Windsor group that has inspired us to set up this second group in Ascot. Please come along and give it a try - you have nothing to lose and much to gain. In the words of one regular attendee at our Windsor Mindfulness group "Discovering this Mindfulness group and then finding out about everything else Friends in Need does has opened up a whole new world to me! It's like having found out about this wonderful secret - it's amazing!"
