Tamsin Bishton shares her personal experience of the course “Deeper Mindfulness”, which she did at a time of change and personal struggle that tempted depression relapse. With the help of her regular practice and the course she found ways to explore her new reality.
What made me try this course?
I’ve been practising mindfulness for fifteen years and it has helped me in all kinds of ways. Perhaps the biggest help has been that I’ve successfully been able to manage depression and anxiety that used to have me on the back foot.
In the second half of 2024 my life erupted and knocked me off balance; I had a fall and suffered multiple fractures to both my hands and arms. In the months that followed, I found myself under significant stress as my work dried-up and my confidence took a nosedive. To stay afloat financially I was forced to move from Brighton (where I’d been living very happily for 25 years) to Sheffield. It was a perfect cocktail for a relapse into depression.
I tried to be kind to myself: I was going through a very rough time and any human being is going to find themselves struggling mentally in those circumstances. But it was not fun to be back in the grip of those particular negative thought spirals.
So I was ready and grateful to revisit the principles of Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) – and then go deeper – when I was offered the chance to join Sussex Mindfulness Centre’s “Deeper Mindfulness, Frame by Frame” course in May 2025.
Who is the course for?
It’s a course for people who have some mindfulness experience. As the name suggests, this is a course for deepening existing practice. So it’s aimed at people who have already done a course like MBCT or Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction or one of the adaptations of these foundational mindfulness interventions.
What happened on the course?
The course was led by Bridgette O’Neill and Taravajra, two of the most experienced and gentle teachers of mindfulness you’ll ever meet.
It was an online course with a group of us meeting for eight weekly sessions, lasting two hours, in the early evening. We generally did two practices in each session, sharing our reflections in small groups, then sharing in the wider group.
There was home practice and exercises to explore in between sessions. Each session had a theme. For example, in the first week we focused on how it feels to ground our attention with a particular focus. We looked for our steady ground – exploring possibilities in the body, with the breath and with sounds. Later in the course we were invited to slow-down our noticing even more, exploring frame by frame. We paid attention with kindness and interest to where the mind goes when it wanders. Later still we noticed our in-the-moment judgments about pleasant and unpleasant experiences, big and small.
Three things I took away from the course
Noticing experience in close detail brings me deep peace – even when things are hard. Half way through this course I moved away from the home that I love. I arrived in my new city feeling stressed, but the practices of slowing down and noticing things closely meant I was able to engage with my new environment with curiosity and loving fascination. I found joy as I explored unfamiliar streets, paving stone by paving stone, step by step. I even appreciated the weeds growing in the cracks. It gave me hope when things could have felt hopeless.
Every moment offers me a chance to treat myself more kindly. The invitation of mindfulness to be curious is actually a doorway to self-compassion. I hadn’t really properly understood this before this course. I used to hate the way my mind wanders during a practice. I would snap back to my “proper” focus with irritation or disappointment. Now I love it. Good old mind, doing its thing. That’’s a huge change.
My body is my home. When I did the MBCT course in 2010, I spent a lot of time running away from what my body had to tell me. This course confirmed for me what a positive journey I’ve been on, with my relationship with my body over the last 15 years. It’s fallible – as I learned the hard way when I fell over and injured myself – but it’s doing the best it can and I really appreciate that.
The next Deeper Mindfulness course starts soon. You can find out more here. Tamsin Bishton is a communications professional and the volunteer editor of our “My Journey with Mindfulness” series in which people tell their stories of mindfulness. You can read Tamsin’s original story here.