By Paul Wielgus

"Of all the meditations I have done over the years, this feels like the most accessible and relevant to my daily life.”
- Annie

We started our Mindfulness For A Happy Life project at the local Village Hall in Cranmore, East Somerset, UK in January 2012. I wanted to bring these wonderful methods into the heart of our own community so we planned to have four "Seasons" of four classes over the year (ie 16 sessions in total,) for obvious reasons.

In summary the approach is highly interactive, combining Mindfulness practise based on John Kabat-Zinn's work with a specific 16G Guideline for each class. In Season One (based on Wisdom theme "How we think") we experimented with a range of approaches such as a mini "World Café" around all Four Wisdom themes (see photos).

Attendees are set simple "homework" practices and feedback at the next class. We vary class content using video, audio support and a wide range of hand-outs and exercises. Over the four fortnightly sessions we had around 24 different people visit, and at the end we did an evaluation, as to what worked and intention to continue etc

Season Two (How we Act) has just successfully finished and we have a "hard core" of eight regular people who are committed to the full program, and will visit our house periodically over the summer to keep their practice going before we start Season Three in September.