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Mindfulness for people living with dementia – Thursday mornings
26 March at 10:30 to 12:30
This eight-week course enables people living with dementia to improve their quality of life. The course is designed to help improve wellbeing and give you the tools to respond to the stresses and strains of everyday life. It is based on the original Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction course, which has a solid base of evidence that demonstrate it’s effectiveness.
Overview
Living with dementia can be challenging at times. Dementia affects everybody differently, but it may increase the likelihood of anxiety, stress, and low-mood for some. You might have concerns about the future, about memory issues and about your relationships.
This eight-week mindfulness course has been adapted to make it more relevant for people living with dementia. It offers skills-based learning and tools to help you manage and respond to the day-to-day challenges you face in a more compassionate way. You may like to invite a loved one or someone who supports you to join you on this course. That way they can benefit from the course too, and you can do the home practice together. It’s always helpful to practice with someone else.
Who is it for?
This eight-week course has been adapted for people living with early-stage dementia. And you don’t need a diagnosis to sign up. You may invite a loved one or carer to attend with you, if that would be helpful and they would like to. Both of you will need to apply separately by filling in the form below.
This course is offered free. We only ask that you help us with a pre- and post evaluation so we can assess the impact of the course on your wellbeing. This will involve a pre- and post evaluation form, and we will be happy to provide support as needed.
When?
On Thursday mornings from 10.30am to 12.30pm from 26 March 2026 until 21 May 2026. This includes a pre-course orientation session on 26 March for you to decide if mindfulness is right for you. And the eight-week course starts the following weekon 2 April and runs until 21 May.
Where?
Wayfield Avenue Resource Centre, 2 Wayfield Avenue, BN3 7LD. We will provide transport details, maps and photos to you once your place on the course is confirmed.
The format of the course?
The course involves:
- Optional online pre-course meeting with a course facilitator.
- Pre-course orientation on 26 March at 10.30am to decide if mindfulness is for you.
- Eight weekly two hour in-person sessions including mindfulness practices, discussion and exercises.
- Daily home practice of up to 20 minutes.
The course involves mindfulness meditation practices in each group session, and recommended daily home practice. These practices will be guided by the mindfulness teacher in each session, and via audio recordings for home practice. Links to the audio guidance will be shared by email. Please note CD’s won’t be avilable.
Everything is optional, and you are encouraged only to do what feels safe and comfortable for you. The practices may involve lying down, sitting, walking and other forms of movement. In the sessions, the mindfulness teachers will invite group members to share their experiences of practice. Again, this is completely optional, and you are encouraged to share only what you are comfortable with. The sessions will include smaller-group discussions, typically with two to four people.
Before applying for this course it’s important to consider if this is the right time for you. And also that you are free to attend the pre-course orientation and all eight sessions. There will be some suggested daily home practice too. Many of us will need to carve out this time from the busyness of our daily routines, the various roles we play, as well as our habitual tendencies. For our own self-care it’s important to prioritise this time.
Facilitators
Lynn Ley
Lynn completed her training in Mindfulness Based interventions at Bangor University in 2010. She has been facilitating Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy Groups (MBCT) within Sussex Partnership Foundation Trust since 2008.
Currently Lynn works with Sussex Mindfulness Centre providing supervision to trainee and trained mindfulness teachers, supporting the training team and providing competency assessments for trainees at the end of their training. Lynn has a long-standing personal meditation practice which she has found life-enhancing.
Julia Powell
Julia Powell is a mindfulness teacher and coach. She leads mindfulness courses to help people find more balance in their lives, improve their wellbeing and flourish. While caring for her mother who lived with dementia, Julia used her mindfulness practice to support both of them. She wrote a blog to share her experiences. She now draws on that experience in the training she offers to both carers of people living with dementia and people with mild to moderate dementia.
Having trained to teach with Oxford Mindfulness Centre, and taught with Sussex Mindfulness Centre, Julia is registered with BAMBA, the British Association of Mindfulness Based Approaches.
How to apply
To apply you will need to fill in this application form. If you would like help filling in the form, or have any queries at all please contact us at spft.smc@nhs.net.
