This 8-week Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy course will be taught on-line using the Zoom platform.  

The online group is every Wednesday from 5.30 - 7.30 pm. Prior to the course Fiona will arrange an orientation phone call with you.  As this is an intensive course in mindfulness and meditation it is important that you understand fully what will be involved.  This call will help you to ascertain if it is the right course for you, and if it is the right time for you to do it. There is a home practice commitment of at least 40 minutes a day for the duration of the course.  You will be given a handbook and guided audios to support you in your participation. Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy is based on Jon Kabat-Zinn’s ground-breaking Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, developed at the University of Massachusetts Medical Centre in 1979.  MBCT includes elements from Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and was initially designed to support people suffering from recurring depression from relapsing.  Research indicates that MBCT is highly effective in preventing relapse in depression in those with 3 or more episodes, and where there is relapse the symptoms are not so severe and the episodes don’t last as long. Over the last 20 years MBCT has been adapted to meet  a much broader range of needs – the ordinary stresses of everyday life, work, family and relationships (which can all be very stressful from time to time), anxiety, low mood, low self confidence, poor sleep, and so on.  Mindfulness helps us to wake up to our present moment experience instead of being lost in the past,  often in regret, or in the future, often in worry or obsessive planning.

Masters in Mindfulness Based Approaches from Bangor University, Wales, UK

Wednesday Evening Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT)

The online group is every Wednesday from 5.30 - 7.30 pm with a mini-retreat day, between Week 6 and 7 (date will be confirmed). Prior to the course Fiona will arrange an orientation phone call with you.  As this is an intensive course in mindfulness and meditation it is important that you understand fully what will be involved.  This call will help you to ascertain if it is the right course for you, and if it is the right time for you to do it. There is a home practice commitment of at least 40 minutes a day for the duration of the course.  You will be given a handbook and guided audios to support you in your participation. Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy is based on Jon Kabat-Zinn’s ground-breaking Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, developed at the University of Massachusetts Medical Centre in 1979.  MBCT includes elements from Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and was initially designed to support people suffering from recurring depression from relapsing.  Research indicates that MBCT is highly effective in preventing relapse in depression in those with 3 or more episodes, and where there is relapse the symptoms are not so severe and the episodes don’t last as long. Over the last 20 years MBCT has been adapted to meet  a much broader range of needs – the ordinary stresses of everyday life, work, family and relationships (which can all be very stressful from time to time), anxiety, low mood, low self confidence, poor sleep, and so on.  Mindfulness helps us to wake up to our present moment experience instead of being lost in the past,  often in regret, or in the future, often in worry or obsessive planning.

4 Week Course - starts Wednesday, 23rd March, Class begins at 5.30pm and ends at 7pm.  Cost €125.  A deposit of €50 on booking.

Fiona had the pleasure of training with Dr Rick Hanson in 2018. He argues that through what’s called “experience-dependent neuroplasticity”, the main way to develop inner strengths is to practice having experiences of them. He argues that repeated feelings of gratitude make a person more grateful. Hanson states that positive neural traits are built from positive mental states.

Neurons that fire together wire together!

Hanson has developed techniques to support people to turn everyday experiences into ‘a powerful sense of lasting well-being’. He suggests with these simple practices we can hardwire more love, gratitude and wisdom into our brains and into our lives. If we worry a lot, those neural connections in the brain will be well developed, so it may take time to fire up the neural pathways of love, gratitude and safety. You might like to think of this like different roads in the brain, if we don’t use particular roads much they are like thin lane-ways, whereas the roads we use a lot are like wide motorways, well-travelled and very easy to access! For some of us anxiety, feeling not good enough and feeling not loved are very easy feelings to access. And because of this we miss some of the good things we have in our everyday lives, like the ability to breathe, to walk, to talk, to have somewhere safe to sleep, to have clean drinking water… There are so many wonderful things happening in our days that we are often missing them because the pathways in our brains aren’t wired to notice these experiences. Hanson argues that developing inner strengths and positive emotions of gratitude, compassion and joy helps reduce stress in our lives. So how can we develop these neural pathways and networks?

The Negativity Bias: Our Stone Age Brain in the 21st Century!

It is useful to know that we learn faster from pain than from pleasure. Hanson says that our brain is like Velcro for the bad and Teflon for the good! If you think back to your last work appraisal, your manager may have mentioned 10 areas that you are working really well in and 1 area where there is some room for development, what do you think we end up thinking about afterwards? It’s usually the negative feedback right? Rick Hanson has developed a technique called ‘Taking in the Good’ and the ‘HEAL’ process to balance out this Negativity Bias.  Basically noticing a good experience and savouring it, allowing it to be absorbed for 5-20 seconds, 2-3 times a day, which is outlined in more details below. He is very clear that this is not positive thinking, it is opening up to pleasant experiences that are already here, but often we don’t notice them due to autopilot and the negativity bias. To survive in the past, it was more important ‘

, so being on high alert for danger was a helpful survival technique for our ancestors.  Hanson argues that this is a ‘bug’ in the Stone Age brain: most of the time we are relatively safe, however our brain and body often doesn’t feel like this!

The 3 Parts of the Brain! ‘Pet the Lizard, Feed the Mouse and Hug the Monkey’

Hanson states that the brain is crudely divided into three sections: the oldest part of the brain is the Brain Stem, the Reptilian part of the brain to do with feelings of Safety, the middle part of the brain the Limbic/Mammalian part is to do with feelings of Satisfaction, and the Neo Cortex, the most recently developed, is to do with our feelings of Connection. He uses some phrases to remember each section: we need to ‘Pet the Lizard (Reptilian), Feed the Mouse (Mammalian) and Hug the Monkey (Neo Cortex)’. He suggests we need to know what our ‘Vitamin C’ is? For example, if we feel a lack of connection in our lives, our ‘Vitamin C’ will be practicing experiencing feelings of connection. If we feel anxious or fearful a lot of the time, we need to spend some time letting the Reptilian part of the brain know we are safe, this might mean practicing phrases such as ‘I am safe and protected right now’ and really spending time feeling and absorbing this feeling of safety. He says if we are not sure which part of our brain needs most support, the good news is that practicing Love, connection and compassion is the multivitamin that supports all of these 3 systems of the brain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpuDyGgIeh0

Listen to one of these short meditations each day or do the 5 minute 10 Finger Gratitude each night before bed. As well as the HEAL technique a few times each day (5-20 seconds)!

Throughout your day see how it is to stop and during the day 2-3 times and notice something good that is part of your experience in that moment. It could be the really small things like listening to the birds, breathing in fresh air, someone smiling at you or said something nice. And then practice the HEAL technique 2-3 times a day for 2-20 seconds each time:

. Notice a positive experience that’s already present in the foreground or background of your awareness, such as physical pleasure, a sense of determination, or feeling close to someone. Or create a positive experience for yourself, for example you could think about things for which you are grateful, bring a friend to mind, or recognise a task you’ve completed. As much as you can help ideas like these become emotionally rewarding experiences, otherwise it’s merely positive thinking.

. Stay with the positive experience for 5, 10 or 20 seconds or longer, open to the feeling in it and try to sense it in your body, let it fill your mind. Enjoy it. Gently encourage the experience to be more intense. Find something fresh or novel about it. Recognise how it’s personally relevant, how it could nourish or help you. Get these neurons really firing together, so they’ll really wire together.

. Feel and sense the experience really sinking into you as you sink into it. Let it really land in your mind. Perhaps visualise it shifting down through your body, or feel it easing you like a soothing balm. Know that the experience is becoming part of you, a resource inside that you can take with you wherever you go.

Positive Neuroplasticity with Fiona O Donnell - 4 Week Course

Tuesday Evening Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT)

“Love creates a communion with life. Love expands us, connects us, sweetens us, ennobles us”                         

When we start to practice mindfulness and notice where the mind is going, we can be surprised to hear how harsh our inner critic can be.  If we spoke to our friends the way we speak to ourselves sometimes, we probably wouldn’t have many friends!  Loving Kindness and Self-Compassion are ways to start befriending ourselves and treating ourselves a little more kindly, the way we might treat a good friend – with care, trust, respect, loyalty, kindness and love!  Sometimes people think if I’m self-compassionate, then maybe I will be lazy and self-indulgent or feel sorry for myself all of the time, however according to Dr Kristin Neff (2015) this isn’t self-compassion. She explains if we pity ourselves we tend to think of ourselves on our own; ‘poor me’! Whereas in self-compassion we are opening up to the ‘common humanity’ of suffering, that we are not alone and that we all suffer. This awareness that we are all in this together can be very supportive at times of difficult. Neff explains that we can start to motivate ourselves from a place of self-compassion rather than just the inner critic. From this place of self-compassion, we are more likely to be less critical of ourselves when we make mistakes and actually have more successful outcomes by learning from them.

According to Professor Paul Gilbert (2009), when we criticise ourselves we are connecting into the body’s threat-defence system (our reptilian brain). This is our fight, flight or freeze system that helped us evolve and allowed us to escape quickly when there was danger approaching. When this system is activated, the Amygdala gets triggered and there is a release of cortisol and adrenaline in the body as we get ready for the threat. This system was very useful when there was a real threat to our selves, however now a days the threat of being eaten by a tiger is pretty unlikely unless we are on safari and get a little lost! According to Gilbert, nowadays our threat is to our self-concept and identity, when we feel inadequate our self-concept is threatened, so we attack the problem – ourselves. (Germer & Neff, 2015)

The Loving Kindness meditation practice is a befriending practice which can be a strong practice and sometimes when we open to this and realise how unkind and unfriendly we have been to ourselves, we can feel some sadness and hurt. This may allow for opening and allowing some of these befriending well wishes to be felt in the body. Even if we don’t feel these well wishes to start with, we are setting the intention to offer ourselves the well wishes, which is the start of forming a habit. Some phrases we use in this practice are ‘May I be safe and well’…’May I be healthy’… ‘May I be peaceful’ or whatever phrases feel most authentic for ourselves when we sit to offer ourselves these well wishes. Opening up and allowing whatever is already here, can be one of the most self-compassionate things we do for ourselves.  We also have the Compassionate Body Scan which is a great practice for bringing some gratitude to this wonderful body of ours that we often give such a hard time for not being a certain way! The Affectionate Breathing practice allows us to connect in with this precious gift of the breath, which is keeping us alive and connecting us to each moment!

We may also want to place the hand over the heart or belly when we do these practices too which has an effect on the bodies response to feeling comforted – it is part of our biological mammalian care giving system (Neff, 2013).  This means this placing the hand on the body actually allows us to soothe ourselves, the way a baby is soothed by a parent, because in a psysiological design for us as mammals to respond to touch, gentle voice and warmth.

Health Benefits of Befriending, Loving Kindness Practices

There has been a huge increase in self-compassion research linked to Wellbeing (Zessin, Dickhauser & Garbadee, 2015) showing reductions in negative mind states: anxiety, depression, stress, rumination, shame, perfectionism and thought suppression. As well as, increases in positive mind states such as life satisfaction, self-confidence, optimism, curiousity, happiness, connectedness and gratitude. Other health benefits include better coping with chronic health conditions (Sirois, 2015), Improved Motivation linked to a desire to learn and grow (Neff, Hseih & Dejitthirat, 2005), Less likely to develop PTSD after combat trauma (Hiraoka et al, 2015), Less fear of failure, more likely to try again and persist in efforts after failure (Breines & Chen , 2012) and healthier behaviours such as helps smokers quit, less alcohol use, more exercise (terry & Leary, 2011).

Introduction to Mindful Self Compassion with Fiona O Donnell

This 8-week Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy course will be taught on-line using the Zoom platform.  The group will meet every Tuesday from 22nd Feb - 12h Apr and there will be a half day of practice on 3rd April. Prior to the course Fiona will arrange an orientation phone call with you.  As this is an intensive course in mindfulness and meditation it is important that you understand fully what will be involved.  This call will help you to ascertain if it is the right course for you, and if it is the right time for you to do it. There is a home practice commitment of at least 40 minutes a day for the duration of the course.  You will be given a handbook and guided audios to support you in your participation. Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy is based on Jon Kabat-Zinn’s ground-breaking Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, developed at the University of Massachusetts Medical Centre in 1979.  MBCT includes elements from Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and was initially designed to support people suffering from recurring depression from relapsing.  Research indicates that MBCT is highly effective in preventing relapse in depression in those with 3 or more episodes, and where there is relapse the symptoms are not so severe and the episodes don’t last as long. Over the last 20 years MBCT has been adapted to meet  a much broader range of needs – the ordinary stresses of everyday life, work, family and relationships (which can all be very stressful from time to time), anxiety, low mood, low self confidence, poor sleep, and so on.  Mindfulness helps us to wake up to our present moment experience instead of being lost in the past,  often in regret, or in the future, often in worry or obsessive planning.

Fiona O’Donnell has completed a 3 year Master’s degree in Mindfulness Based Approaches at Bangor University, Wales.  She has also completed Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Teacher Training Levels 1 & 2 at Bangor University and is a trained teacher in Mindful Self Compassion (MSC) with The Centre for Mindful Self Compassion, California.  Fiona has attended training in Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) at the Oxford Mindfulness Centre, Oxford University.  She has also completed the .b with the Mindfulness in Schools Project (MISP), Positive Neuroplasticity Professional Training with Dr Rick Hanson and Google’s ‘Search Inside Yourself’ Mindfulness, Emotional Intelligence and Leadership Training with SIYLI.  Fiona is a member of the Mindfulness Teachers Association of Ireland (MTAI), the professional body for mindfulness teachers in Ireland.

Fiona has completed Level 1 training in Sensorimotor Psychotherapy with the Sensorimotor Institute, Colorado, USA and is registered as an MBCT Therapist on the International Access MBCT register.

Fiona is a Lecturer on the University College Dublin’s (UCD) M.Sc. in Mindfulness Based Interventions and a Teacher Trainer on The Mindfulness Centre’s Professional Diploma in Mindfulness (MBSR).  She has a Masters in Applied Social Research from Trinity College Dublin and a Bachelor of Social Science from Queen’s University Belfast. Fiona is a qualified Reflexologist (ITEC/AOR) and is trained in Occupational First Aid.

Fiona offers mindfulness courses to people with low mood and anxiety, young people in addiction, alcohol and drug dependency and specializes in mindfulness in the work place and mindful self-compassion. She also teaches mindfulness 1-to-1. Fiona adheres to the Irish Good Practice Guidelines for Mindfulness Teachers and has participated in a number of intensive mindfulness retreats worldwide.

Fiona’s previous work experience includes several years in Children’s Services in Dublin’s North West Inner City, prior to working for The Atlantic Philanthropies which developed strategies and funding for Children & Youth, Education and Mental Health throughout Ireland.

“Rather than reducing my anxiety levels, this course taught me how to change the way I relate to anxiety… This course has turned my life around.”

Members of the Mindfulness Teachers Association Ireland

Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy with Fiona O Donnell

This 8-week Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy course will be taught on-line using the Zoom platform.  The group will meet every Wednesday from 5.30 -7.45pm and there will be a half day of practice on Saturday 27th February. Prior to the course Fiona will arrange an orientation phone call with you.  As this is an intensive course in mindfulness and meditation it is important that you understand fully what will be involved.  This call will help you to ascertain if it is the right course for you, and if it is the right time for you to do it. There is a home practice commitment of at least 40 minutes a day for the duration of the course.  You will be given a handbook and guided audios to support you in your participation. Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy is based on Jon Kabat-Zinn’s ground-breaking Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, developed at the University of Massachusetts Medical Centre in 1979.  MBCT includes elements from Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and was initially designed to support people suffering from recurring depression from relapsing.  Research indicates that MBCT is highly effective in preventing relapse in depression in those with 3 or more episodes, and where there is relapse the symptoms are not so severe and the episodes don’t last as long. Over the last 20 years MBCT has been adapted to meet  a much broader range of needs – the ordinary stresses of everyday life, work, family and relationships (which can all be very stressful from time to time), anxiety, low mood, low self confidence, poor sleep, and so on.  Mindfulness helps us to wake up to our present moment experience instead of being lost in the past,  often in regret, or in the future, often in worry or obsessive planning.

FIona O'Donnell