Our MBSR and Community Living Retreat is perfect if you’d like to take some time for self-care, relaxation, and community life while discovering tools for finding balance in daily life in a mindfulness-based stress reduction course facilitated by experienced mindfulness teacher Rosalie Dores.

Retreat Information

Mindfulness-based stress reduction was devised by Jon Kabat-Zinn and his colleagues over 30 years ago in the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. It is an internationally recognised approach to stress and stress-related illness. It has been successfully employed by practitioners in hospitals, health, business, and educational settings, and in everyday life.

The retreat will support you to take charge of your own well being. You will learn skills and meditation practices that allow you to undertake the work that only you can do for yourself, to consciously and systematically work with your own life challenges, whether that is stress, anxiety, pain, compulsive behaviors, illness, or the demands of everyday life.

This is an eight-session course with one full day of practice, offered over a 11-night stay. It is highly experiential and student-centered in approach. Each session will include meditation practices and relevant course themes. Participants will be invited to integrate their learning into daily life. The advantage of undertaking this course at New Life is you will have the support of a mindfulness based community while doing this. The course has been thoroughly researched and is grounded in the wisdom of the meditative traditions.

Outside of course sessions, retreat participants join in our 06.30 morning activity (meditation or yoga), 08.30 morning meeting, and two hours of light community work each day. In the late afternoons and evenings, you are free to choose from a wide range of activities such as dance, body scans, steam bath, movie nights, support groups, men’s and women’s circles, speaker’s meetings, and more.

This retreat is suitable for both new and experienced practitioners. There are THREE available start dates: 16-27 October, 6-17 November, and 3-14 December

You will learn:

• A range of formal meditative practices to support you in developing your capacity to be mindful.

• A range of informal practices to support you in integrating mindfulness into daily life.

• How to identify the difference between primary stress (unavoidable stress) and secondary stress (our reactivity to stress), and skills to reduce stress.

• How to listen to and relate to yourself and your experience with kindness and curiosity.

• How to increase your ability to relax, improve self-confidence, and to strengthen emotional resilience.

  
  

  The course includes:

• Eight sessions plus one full day of practice.

• Instruction in mindfulness meditation and gentle movement meditation.

• Facilitated dialogue to develop and support understanding and learning.

• Guidance and support tailored to participants’ individual learning needs.

• Daily assignments to encourage the integration of mindfulness into daily life and a custom-made home practice guidebook to support learning.

• Three custom-made guided meditation MP3s to support home practice.

Retreat Instructor

Rosalie Dores

Rosalie Dores, M.A., is a mindfulness teacher, supervisor, and trainer. She teaches mindfulness and Interpersonal Mindfulness courses to the general public in London, and workshops and courses within organizations.

In 2010, she joined the Centre for Mindfulness Research and Practice at Bangor University as an associate teacher. She supervises teachers for the Mindfulness Network CIC, a not for profit organization, which works closely with Bangor and Exeter Universities. She regularly travels to Europe to train mindfulness teachers. She follows the UK Network for Mindfulness Teachers Guidelines for Good Practice.

Rosalie has sustained a meditation and yoga practice since 1992 and is keen to support others in experiencing the benefits of committed practice. She is in training in the US to teach retreats in Insight Dialogue, a relational meditation practice.

Rosalie is actively involved in the meditation community, in study and practice, and regularly attend solitary and interpersonal meditation retreats. She is a life-long student of living well.

Website – Optimal Living