Tag: compassion

Compassionate Leadership Training course for health and social care leaders -Thursday afternoon
8 October 2026 at 15:00 to 17:00

Compassionate Leadership Training for health and social care leaders. Compassionate leadership is linked with improved learning and innovation, and reduced staff stress, injuries and absenteeism, and even reduced patient mortality.

Six online weekly two-hour sessions from 8 October until 19 November (no session on 29 October). Following this, there will be monthly follow-up sessions to review our learning and practice. The dates for these are currently being organised.

Overview

At the heart of compassion is the notion that everyone experiences difficulty, and that we can all play a role in alleviating our own difficulties and those of others. Whether this is compassion for ourselves or the people we lead, people who lead us, colleagues or service users. We won’t always feel like helping and will sometimes be tired or overwhelmed or unable to connect.

Although it helps to have positive feelings, we do not have to feel compassion to be compassionate. We can recognise our physical and mental state, resource ourselves as best we can, and respond from our firm compassionate intention, rather than from impulse or intense emotion.

How does this translate into compassion in health, social care and other organisations? How might we think about compassionate leadership, working with colleagues, service users and their friends and families? Prof Michael West has spent his career answering this question, pointing to research that shows how compassionate leadership is linked with improved learning and innovation, and reduced staff stress, injuries and absenteeism, and even reduced patient mortality. In short, compassion is essential to high quality healthcare.

Who is the course for?

The course is for anyone in a leadership role within Health and Social Care and will combine experiential practice and reflection, as well as home practice to help cultivate compassion for ourselves and the people we lead.

What is the format of the course?

The course combines in-session mindfulness and compassion practice with reflection and discussion, as well as an invitation for home mindfulness and compassion practice to help cultivate compassion for ourselves and the people we lead and work with.

Facilitators

Robert Marx

Robert is Co-Lead (Training) for the Sussex Mindfulness Centre. He is a consultant clinical psychologist and has been involved in running mindfulness groups for staff and patients since 2006. He also trains and supervises others doing mindfulness work. He is interested in relational mindfulness and in adaptations of Mindfulness-based Interventions using compassion practices.

Julia Powell

Julia 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 help navigate the challenging times. 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 the British Association of Mindfulness Based Approaches. Julia runs three mindfulness courses for the general population: Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy, Mindfulness for Life and Finding Peace in a Frantic World.

Booking

You can book this event starting in March. In the meantime, if you would like to receive a reminder about this event, please email us spft.smc@nhs.net

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16 December 2025
Mindfulness & cancer: Finding steadiness together
The Sussex Mindfulness Centre is offering two mindfulness courses for people affected by cancer: an eight-week online course for those living with cancer and their loved ones, and a one-day MBCT-Ca masterclass for mindfulness teachers. Two pathways, one focus — compassionate support.

Living with cancer — whether during treatment, in remission, or beyond — brings not only physical challenges, but emotional and mental burdens too. Fear, uncertainty, fatigue, anxiety, and grief can thread their way into each part of life. What if there was a gentle, supportive way to learn to live alongside those experiences — not by fighting them, but by meeting them with kindness, awareness, and presence?

The two mindfulness-based courses aim to do just that. They differ in approach and audience — but both share a commitment to offering space for people affected by cancer to reconnect with themselves, and with others.

1. A deep dive into Mindfulness for Cancer: Teacher training masterclass

A one-day masterclass on Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Cancer (MBCT-Ca) — a specially adapted version of mindfulness training designed for people who have had, or are living with, cancer.

🗓️ Where & When

The masterclass takes place on 12 March 2026, 09:30–16:30. It’s delivered online (via Zoom) — so it’s accessible from anywhere in the UK.

This is a training day for mindfulness teachers or those in mindfulness-teaching training, rather than a class for people living with cancer themselves.

What the masterclass covers

Participants will explore the foundational themes and practices of MBCT-Ca, including:
- The “Four Movements”: Intention, Coming Back, Turning Towards, and Kindness — a framework that helps guide how we bring awareness and compassion to moment-to-moment experience.
- Working with the body: MBCT-Ca places extra emphasis on bodily sensations — honouring the body especially for people whose bodies may feel unfamiliar after illness or treatment.
- Group process and embodied practices: Recognising that sharing with others who’ve had similar experiences can be deeply healing; and offering practices that are gentle and adapted to people living with or recovering from serious illness.
- Brief everyday practices and gentle meditations — tools that participants can carry beyond the class into everyday life and, if trained, into their own teaching work.
The masterclass is experiential — meaning participants will try out practices, reflect in small groups, and consider how to transfer learning into their own work or personal mindfulness.

The lead facilitator is the well-known mindfulness teacher Trish Bartley — a highly experienced teacher in this field. She has worked with cancer patients for decades and is the author of several related books and MBCT-Ca materials.

In a world where physical healing does not always equal emotional healing, this masterclass offers a way for teachers to bring mindful, compassionate support to people living with cancer — and to help create communities of care beyond the hospital and clinic walls.

Find out more about our one-day online masterclass; Mindfulness for Cancer teacher training.

2. A gentle, supportive journey: mindfulness for people living with cancer and loved ones

For people living with or beyond a cancer diagnosis — as well as for their close supporters — the Sussex Mindfulness Centre is offering a specially tailored eight-week course: Mindfulness for living with cancer.

🗓️ Where & When

The course runs from Thursday 16 April to Thursday 4 June 2026, meeting weekly on Thursdays 18:30–21:00. There is an optional half-day retreat on Sunday 24 May 2026 (10:00–14:30) to deepen practice and reflection. The course is online (via Zoom) — making it accessible for participants across the UK.

Who it’s for and what it covers

This course is designed for people living with or beyond a cancer diagnosis, whether they were recently diagnosed or experienced cancer years ago. Importantly, it’s also open to partners, family members, carers or friends — so loved ones who’ve been part of the journey can be included too.
It’s not therapy or counselling, but a skills-based programme built around mindfulness as a tool for self-care, resilience, emotional support, and living more fully.

Before the course begins, each applicant has a 45-minute one-to-one meeting with the course tutor (Chris Barker), to talk through their current situation and hopes for taking part. This helps ensure the timing is right, and that the course can be supportive and safe for them. There are eight weekly sessions of 2.5 hours each, involving mindfulness practices, group discussion, and exercises. Daily home practice is encouraged — about 30 minutes per day, supported by guided audio recordings and weekly notes.

The course offers a safe, compassionate group space: participants can share as much or as little as they like and are invited to explore mindfulness in a way that feels manageable, gentle, and grounded.

For many, the journey of cancer doesn’t end when treatment does. There can be fear of recurrence, ongoing exhaustion, emotional upheaval, and a sense of “what now?” The compassionate structure of this course, and the presence of others who “get it,” offers a space to:
- reconnect with the body and mind in a gentle, grounded way;
- learn skills to manage anxiety, fear, stress, and the ongoing emotional fallout;
- rebuild hope, presence and a sense of self beyond illness;
- share and heal in community — not alone.
Find out more about our eight-week online mindfulness course for people living with cancer.

Why mindfulness matters in cancer care

Mindfulness-based approaches such as MBCT and adapted courses like MBCT-Ca or the “Mindfulness for living with cancer” course have a growing evidence base for helping people with cancer and survivors — and studies so far suggest they can reduce stress, anxiety, depression, improve quality of life, and help people cope with the physical and emotional burdens of illness.

Mindfulness offers presence, calm, a tool-box for emotional self-care, and a community of understanding. And sometimes, that support can make a profound difference in how people live — not just survive.
2 December 2025
Taming the wild horses (and opening the heart)

Paul Johanson writes about the secular and contemplative practices that can release us from our habitual drive towards suffering. These practices form the basis of the Opening the Heart retreat offered in the new year.

There’s an old Tibetan story where a man is standing by the roadside when he sees another man riding past at full speed on a horse. The first man shouts:

Where are you going in such a hurry?”
The rider yells back: “I don’t know! Ask the horse!”

Strong habits powered by deep programming

This is how our minds often are (certainly my mind anyway): racing at full tilt, powered by habitual thought and behaviour, and we seem to have no control at all. And, although this may not be in the spirit of the analogy, I may often be spurring the horse on a bit towards a desired destination, or outcome – even if I know at some level that this could cause me and others to suffer.

Paul Johanson

Our habits are strong due to constant practice, and they are almost always powered by deep programming – through genetics, epigenetics, from your mum and dad (who, as Larkin contends, f— you up).

So, while of course we don’t want to suffer – in common with every sentient being – we often find ourselves racing towards suffering, and it is very difficult to change this. Indeed, much of the suffering we experience in the developed world is the result of culturally approved practices; materialism, inequality, wilful ignorance of cruelty, state-sanctioned violence, institutionalised oppression.

Tackling the fundamental problem of selfishness

Here I would like to introduce a bold and bald statement: all of these begin with and are underpinned by selfishness. As Shantideva, the 8th century Buddhist master says:

All the misery the world contains
Has come through wanting pleasure for oneself”

So, if we want to change our minds it’s not only about trying to rein in the galloping horse of our habitual thinking and behaviours and swimming against the current of mass culture, it’s also essential to tackle the fundamental problem of selfishness.

This is not easy. We human beings have been trying to work with our habitual tendencies for a long time. Paul Gilbert talks (perhaps rather euphemistically) of our ‘tricky brains’ and how they are responsible for much of our psychological difficulty, echoing Aristotle’s writings on how acquiring the ability to control our ‘base passions’ requires a lifetime of practice and experience.

Rewiring the brain towards love

Paul Gilbert also says, helpfully, that the way we are wired is not our fault, enabling a self-compassionate engagement with the very difficult task of psychological change. Pema Chödrön, the modern Buddhist teacher, says that trying to change our habits can feel like trying to change our DNA.

So, where to begin with this seemingly impossible quest? Immediately before the lines quoted above, Shantideva says:

All the joy the world contains
Has come through wishing happiness for others”

Kindness. Love. Warm-heartedness. Compassion. This is where we can start.

If I know that, just like me, all sentient beings want to be happy and not suffer. If I can hold my own suffering with kindness and compassion, if I can begin to accept myself just as I am, then as Carl Rogers famously observed, I can change.

If I ask you right now to think of someone (or a being – it could be a special pet!) you love….bringing them fully to mind…. staying with this image of them…or maybe you and them together…..

Maybe you can begin to notice how your heart warms and opens….feel this for a short while, enriching these warm-hearted feelings….

Maybe thinking how if this person was suffering in some way, you might even wish that you could take on their suffering and give them all your current happiness…

This is possibly quite easy to do, and it connects you to the end of a golden thread of teaching and practice. If you follow this thread, it can lead you to developing these qualities of warmheartedness, loving kindness and compassion so that you can begin to include others in your warm circle of love and compassion. Ultimately, it could include all sentient beings who just like you and your loved one want to be happy and not suffer.

Giving and receiving compassion

In Tibetan Buddhism this sort of practice is known as Lojong or ‘mind training’ as Robert introduced in an earlier blog post.

I’ve been trying to practice the Lojong teachings for many years, including the practice of Tonglen (literally ‘giving and taking’), which is a key meditative practice of exchanging one’s own happiness for anothers’ suffering. When I first did this I found myself becoming very angry for apparently no reason. This was a cause of quite a lot of shame and embarrassment. What was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I be compassionate? I now understand through my own journey with these wonderful, precious teachings that this response is what is termed ‘backdraft’ in the secular Mindful Self-Compassion programme – an overwhelming emotional response that can occur when we begin opening the heart.

Discoveries like this led me to begin to wonder whether it could be possible to offer mind training in a ‘secularised’ format that incorporates much of the modern practice wisdom from psychology and contemplative practices.

These discoveries inspired Robert and I to create our weekend retreat Opening the Heart. And we would like to invite you to join us for a weekend of mind training – of beginning to tame the wild horse of habitual inclination through opening the heart more widely, catching and following the golden thread of these precious practices of love and compassion.

Paul Johanson teaches Mindful Self-Compassion courses for the Sussex Mindfulness Centre. Apart from being a Mindful Self-Compassion teacher, he is a social worker and a cognitive analytic therapist working in private practice, and he is a long-time Buddhist practitioner. You can find out more about him and the retreat here.

25 November 2025
Compassionate Leadership Training course for health and social care leaders -Wednesday afternoon
22 April 2026 at 15:00 to 17:00

Compassionate Leadership Training for health and social care leaders. Compassionate leadership is linked with improved learning and innovation, and reduced staff stress, injuries and absenteeism, and even reduced patient mortality.

Six online weekly two-hour sessions from 22 April until 3 June (no session on 27 May). Following this, there will be monthly follow-up sessions to review our learning and practice. The dates for these are currently being organised.

Overview

At the heart of compassion is the notion that everyone experiences difficulty, and that we can all play a role in alleviating our own difficulties and those of others. Whether this is compassion for ourselves or the people we lead, people who lead us, colleagues or service users. We won’t always feel like helping and will sometimes be tired or overwhelmed or unable to connect.

Although it helps to have positive feelings, we do not have to feel compassion to be compassionate. We can recognise our physical and mental state, resource ourselves as best we can, and respond from our firm compassionate intention, rather than from impulse or intense emotion.

How does this translate into compassion in health, social care and other organisations? How might we think about compassionate leadership, working with colleagues, service users and their friends and families? Prof Michael West has spent his career answering this question, pointing to research that shows how compassionate leadership is linked with improved learning and innovation, and reduced staff stress, injuries and absenteeism, and even reduced patient mortality. In short, compassion is essential to high quality healthcare.

Who is the course for?

The course is for anyone in a leadership role in a health and social care organisation, recognising that leadership occurs throughout health and social care roles, and at different levels of seniority.

What is the format of the course?

The course combines in-session mindfulness and compassion practice with reflection and discussion, as well as an invitation for home mindfulness and compassion practice to help cultivate compassion for ourselves and the people we lead and work with.

Facilitators

Clara Strauss

Clara is Co-Lead (Research) for the Sussex Mindfulness Centre. She is a consultant clinical psychologist, mindfulness teacher and clinical researcher. In her research, Clara is particularly interested in developing and evaluating new forms of mindfulness-based intervention, especially for those people who may not be willing or able to access MBCT. Along with other members of her research team, Clara has been evaluating mindfulness courses for people experiencing depression, for people distressed by hearing voices and for people experiencing obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Nicky Mouat

Nicky is a Mental Health Nurse and Mindfulness teacher. She works in the NHS at Pavilions Drug and Alcohol Service, where she has been facilitating Mindfulness Based Relapse Prevention courses, and holding a weekly drop in for Service. Users and Staff. She has been teaching MBCT for the Wellbeing Service, and Recovery College in Brighton. She was also part of the Myriad Mindfulness in Schools Research Project, and was involved in teaching Mindfulness for Life to teachers in Sussex Schools. She has a particular interest in working with Service Users with ‘Dual Diagnosis’ (Substance Misuse and Mental Health Issues), and the way that Mindfulness can be helpful to this client group.

Booking

Please note, we ask all those who book a place on this course to fill in an application form here that will be sent to the facilitator. If you haven’t already, please head here to the fill in the for m.

The cost of this course is £200. You can secure your place using the form below.

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31 October 2025
Compassionate Leadership Training for Professional Nurse Advocates
22 April 2026 at 15:00 to 17:00 BST

Compassionate leadership is linked with improved learning and innovation, and reduced staff stress, injuries and absenteeism, and even reduced patient mortality.

Join a six-week Compassionate Leadership Training for Professional Nurse Advocates from 22 April 2026. The online course takes place on Wednesdays, from 3pm to 5pm. It starts 22 April (29 Apr, 6,13,20 May), and runs until 3 June 2026. (no session on 27 May).

Find out more about the course below.

Overview

At the heart of compassion is the notion that everyone experiences difficulty, and that we can all play a role in alleviating our own difficulties and those of others. Whether this is compassion for ourselves, the people we lead, colleagues or service users. We won’t always feel like helping and will sometimes be tired or overwhelmed or unable to connect. Although it helps to have positive feelings, we do not have to feel compassion to be compassionate. We can recognise our physical and mental state, resource ourselves as best we can, and respond from our firm compassionate intention, rather than from impulse or intense emotion.

How does this translate into compassion in health and social care organisations? How might we think about compassionate leadership, working with colleagues, service users and their friends and families? Prof Michael West has spent his career answering this question, pointing to research that shows how compassionate leadership is linked with improved learning and innovation, and reduced staff stress, injuries and absenteeism, and even reduced patient mortality. In short, compassion is essential to high quality healthcare.

Dr Robert Marx and Professor Clara Strauss have designed a training programme of six weekly sessions, lasting two hours each.

What to expect

The course combines mindfulness and compassion practice with reflection and discussion, as well as home practice to help cultivate compassion for ourselves and the people we lead and work with.

The course consists of six online weekly two-hour sessions. There will also be a two-hour online consolidation session, three to six months later. This will allow participants to review learning and practice.

You can find out more, and hear from two people who have completed the training here.

Who is the course for?

The course is for anyone in a leadership role within health and social care. It will combine experiential practice and reflection, as well as home practice to help cultivate compassion for ourselves and the people we lead.

Facilitators

Ruth Sequeira

Ruth Sequeira

Ruth Sequeira is as senior trainer, supervisor and mindfulness teacher for the Sussex Mindfulness Centre. She is also a psychological therapist and the Mindfulness and Compassion Training and Retreat Lead at the Mindfulness Network. Ruth has a history of working in mental health services and until recently worked as a clinical lead in the Child & Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) in Sussex. Ruth has a longstanding interest in mindfulness, meditation and movement, and is passionate about increasing access to mindfulness courses in different populations.

Catherine Cameron

Catherine Cameron

Catherine is a clinical psychologist working within the community-based eating disorders service. She has a particular interest in self-compassion in eating disorders treatments. She co-facilitates the mindful self-compassion course for staff with Robert Marx having trained to facilitate the MSC course in 2014 and before that running MBCT-based Mindfulness for Pain courses in Hove Polyclinic. She is also involved in the mindfulness all day retreats run for those who have attended the 8-week courses within Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust.

Apply and book your place

To apply for this course please fill this application form.

For enquiries: spft.smc@nhs.net

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31 October 2025
Compassionate Leadership Training for Professional Nurse Advocates
9 February 2026 at 15:00 to 17:00 GMT

Compassionate leadership is linked with improved learning and innovation, and reduced staff stress, injuries and absenteeism, and even reduced patient mortality.

Join a six-week Compassionate Leadership Training for Professional Nurse Advocates from 9 February 2026. The online course takes place on Mondays, from 3pm to 5pm. It starts 9 February and runs until 16 March 2026. (with no break for half-term).

Find out more about the course below.

Overview

At the heart of compassion is the notion that everyone experiences difficulty, and that we can all play a role in alleviating our own difficulties and those of others. Whether this is compassion for ourselves, the people we lead, colleagues or service users. We won’t always feel like helping and will sometimes be tired or overwhelmed or unable to connect. Although it helps to have positive feelings, we do not have to feel compassion to be compassionate. We can recognise our physical and mental state, resource ourselves as best we can, and respond from our firm compassionate intention, rather than from impulse or intense emotion.

How does this translate into compassion in health and social care organisations? How might we think about compassionate leadership, working with colleagues, service users and their friends and families? Prof Michael West has spent his career answering this question, pointing to research that shows how compassionate leadership is linked with improved learning and innovation, and reduced staff stress, injuries and absenteeism, and even reduced patient mortality. In short, compassion is essential to high quality healthcare.

Dr Robert Marx and Professor Clara Strauss have designed a training programme of six weekly sessions, lasting two hours each.

What to expect

The course combines mindfulness and compassion practice with reflection and discussion, as well as home practice to help cultivate compassion for ourselves and the people we lead and work with.

The course consists of six online weekly two-hour sessions. There will also be a two-hour online consolidation session, three to six months later. This will allow participants to review learning and practice.

You can find out more, and hear from two people who have completed the training here.

Who is the course for?

The course is for anyone in a leadership role within health and social care. It will combine experiential practice and reflection, as well as home practice to help cultivate compassion for ourselves and the people we lead.

Facilitators

Ruth Sequeira

Ruth Sequeira

Ruth Sequeira is as senior trainer, supervisor and mindfulness teacher for the Sussex Mindfulness Centre. She is also a psychological therapist and the Mindfulness and Compassion Training and Retreat Lead at the Mindfulness Network. Ruth has a history of working in mental health services and until recently worked as a clinical lead in the Child & Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) in Sussex. Ruth has a longstanding interest in mindfulness, meditation and movement, and is passionate about increasing access to mindfulness courses in different populations.

Catherine Cameron

Catherine Cameron

Catherine is a clinical psychologist working within the community-based eating disorders service. She has a particular interest in self-compassion in eating disorders treatments. She co-facilitates the mindful self-compassion course for staff with Robert Marx having trained to facilitate the MSC course in 2014 and before that running MBCT-based Mindfulness for Pain courses in Hove Polyclinic. She is also involved in the mindfulness all day retreats run for those who have attended the 8-week courses within Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust.

Apply and book your place

To apply for this course please fill this form

For enquiries: spft.smc@nhs.net

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31 October 2025