resilience Archives - Mindfulness Association

Finding the Calm in Caring

Jacky Seery — Thu, 07 May 2026 09:56:05 +0000

Finding the Calm in Caring: A 5-Week Journey to Resilience

Compassion and Mindfulness for Family Carers

Caring for a loved one is one of life’s most profound roles, but it is also one of the most demanding. When your days are defined by the needs of another, it is easy to lose sight of your own wellbeing. You may find yourself navigating a sea of fatigue, guilt, or a shifting relationship that feels increasingly difficult to manage.

This isn’t just “extra work”—it’s a heavy emotional load. You cannot pour from an empty cup.

Why Join This Course?

This 5-week online programme was specifically developed through MSc research to address the unique pressures faced by family carers. It isn’t about adding more tasks to your evening; it’s about learning practical, evidence-based tools to help you:

Reduce Emotional Fatigue: Move from “role engulfment” to regaining a sense of who you are outside of your caring duties.
Quiet the Inner Critic: Replace feelings of guilt and resentment with self-compassion, acknowledging the difficulty of your role without judgment.
Improve Physical Wellbeing: Use gentle movement and mindfulness to release the physical tension and stress that caring often leaves in the body.
Navigate Difficult Days with Ease: Build the resilience needed to handle shifts in your relationships and the daily challenges of caregiving with more stability.

What You Will Gain

Research conducted during the development of this programme showed that participants experienced:

Higher levels of self-compassion and a more positive sense of self.
Improved psychological and physiological wellbeing.
Stronger, more accepting relationships with the loved ones they care for.

Course Details

Join Tutor Jacky Seery for an accessible, supportive online evening course. Over five weeks, we will explore mindfulness, compassion, and movement techniques designed to fit into your life, not complicate it.

Duration: 5 Weeks starting Tuesday 16th February 2027
Format: Online via Zoom (Evening sessions)
Focus: Practical resilience for real-life caregiving.

What makes this mindfulness course different from generic wellness programmes?

Unlike general wellness courses, this programme is built directly from specialised MSc research focused on the unique challenges of family carers. It addresses specific emotional states like “role engulfment” and caregiving-related guilt through evidence-based mindfulness and compassion techniques.

How can mindfulness specifically help with the "fatigue" and "guilt" experienced by carers?

Research shows that mindfulness helps carers develop a more positive sense of self and the ability to be more accepting of their difficult situations. By practicing self-compassion, you learn to manage the psychological and physiological stress that often leads to burnout and exhaustion.

Who is the tutor, and what is the background of the course material?

The course is led by Jacky Seery, who developed this short programme during her MSc Studies in Mindfulness. The curriculum is grounded in academic research that has already shown improved wellbeing and better relationship dynamics for participating family carers

Is this course suitable for someone with no previous experience in mindfulness?

Yes. This 5-week online evening course is designed as an accessible “journey into self-care” for all experience levels. It provides practical, easy-to-follow techniques in mindfulness and movement that are immediately applicable to your daily caregiving routine.

Can online mindfulness training really improve my relationship with the person I care for?

Yes, research indicates that when carers improve their own psychological wellbeing and resilience, they are often better able to navigate shifting relationship dynamics with greater ease and acceptance.

On Safety – Nadine Pinede

Kristine Mackenzie-Janson — Mon, 01 Sep 2025 10:14:25 +0000

When the storms of life
come bearing down
threatening to
lash you senseless,
seek shelter.
Find the warm
blanket you caress
like the felted fur
of your cat
curled before
a glowing hearth,
of breath that fills
both heart and earth.
Breathe.
There’s always time
to curse the darkness.
After the tears,
light a honeycomb candle
and heal your own sun.
The bridge
from sorrow to joy
may seem to vanish
in the flood,
but who says you
can’t join those
who cross over,
with a single
braided rope
of gratitude.

by Nadine Pinede

What really helps, when ‘the storms of life come bearing down’? What supports us to dig deep to find the resilience to keep going and find new goodness in the eventual aftermath – or even in the thick of it? From reading a bit about Nadine Pinede’s life on her website, I have the sense that she has distilled her life experience into the wisdom that has important things to say on this topic – and this poem offers some powerful hints. Warmth, breath, lighting a candle – and: crossing over from sorrow to joy with ‘a single braided rope of gratitude’. Wow!

And immediately the question: where to find gratitude in the midst of the storms? How to braid a rope out of the thread that might be there? I guess the first and most important thing is to know to look in the direction of gratitude – and then to practice so it grows!

PS We have an upcoming weekend in October 2025 on the topic of gratitude – free for members! Do join us if you’d like to explore what gratitude can bring in your life…

Photo by Nikita Ivanov on Unsplash

I will not regret love – Nikita Gill

Kristine Mackenzie-Janson — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 16:05:04 +0000

I will not regret love.
I will not regret hope.
I will not regret that I still
love the trees and the wind song.
That even through grief
I have found the world generous.
That even through ruin
I have found solace
in the blackbirds call.

by Nikita Gill

A strong, almost defiant poem here from the Irish-Indian writer and poet Nikita Gill. I like how she has embraced social media to share her poetry and how this makes her words current and het ability to respond through poetry to what happens in the world, almost instant.

It resonates with me as a powerful intention to keep expanding my perspective rather than getting sucked into one dominating storyline in my internal world or on the news. And I’m so grateful for the practice of mindfulness to support in doing so – the simple but powerful skill to notice what’s here and without denying or pushing away, find the wider view again and again.

Our colleague Heather often illustrates this by holding her thumbs (as a representative for what’s difficult in our experience) close to her eyes so it’s hard to see anything, and then stretching out her arms, the thumbs have not gotten any smaller but don’t dominate the whole visual field anymore. So yes, there’s grief and ruin, but also generosity and blackbirds, precious memories and current love.

Let’s stay hopeful as this new year is getting underway, and let’s continue to find the bigger picture…

PS if you’d like to access this (and other!) superpower(s) for yourself, join us in the next training of mindfulness – click here to see when that might be…

Photo by Jurjen Vos on Unsplash

Poultice – Brother Richard Hendrick

Fay Adams — Sat, 28 Oct 2023 21:46:56 +0000

Now,
In this time of times
perhaps we have
such need again,
for a poultice placed
gently and
with kindness upon
the rounded body
of the earth
where too long
our self-sickness has
burrowed deep
within and brought
the breaking and the burning
of fever dream,
of pain and sorrow
become now a crown of pain,
a pulsing pandemic
bound tight
about our
wounded world
filled with the,
the pus and poison
that would
set our soul cells
against each other
tearing the woven thread
of being apart.
So then, hear
the ancient remedy,
ever old and ever new,
and with faith go out
to gather the gifts
of kindness,
gentleness,
peace
then bind them
with the binding cloth
of love
and anoint
the broken body
of the world with blessing
that after crisis
cools this earth,
the hearts, the souls
of all that live
may wake from
this fever dream
and see, as
only those who
touch death see,
the grace of dawn
the gift of life
the oneness of
our being.

by Brother Richard Hendrick

The conflict in the Middle East is on many of our minds and hearts. I find the poem above (by Brother Richard Hendrick, a Capuchin monk from Ireland) to be a beautiful prayer for healing. Although it sounds idealistic, I think it expresses a dream that we must have. If we don’t have hope, we won’t have resilience, if we don’t have resilience we can’t act. So, to connect with the dream of healing, to be able to imagine peace, is necessary and important. Joanna Macy says that we must live the hope, and that to live from hope is what ignites possibility. David Adams, a psychologist in the US, did research that found that those who had an optimistic view of human nature, were more likely to be peace activists.

I know I’m speaking for many when I say I feel powerless to help, and for many more when I say I need to limit my exposure to the news. This poem feels like the balm to soothe my frustrated, aching heart. Reading it helps me to continue to look reality in the face. Holding what’s real in one hand and the dream in the other, I feel I can head onwards.

Ps. If you’d like to learn a new way to receive the gifts of poetry come along to our retreat day on Mindfulness Practice Days which is on the 18^th November – a day of mindfulness and poetry, inspired by the serenity prayer.

Photo by Sixteen Miles Out on Unsplash

A Portable Paradise – Roger Robinson

Kristine Mackenzie-Janson — Wed, 18 Nov 2020 10:45:31 +0000

And if I speak of Paradise,
then I’m speaking of my grandmother
who told me to carry it always
on my person, concealed, so
no one else would know but me.
That way they can’t steal it, she’d say.
And if life puts you under pressure,
trace its ridges in your pocket,
smell its piney scent on your handkerchief,
hum its anthem under your breath.
And if your stresses are sustained and daily,
get yourself to an empty room – be it hotel,
hostel or hovel – find a lamp
and empty your paradise onto a desk:
your white sands, green hills and fresh fish.
Shine the lamp on it like the fresh hope
of morning, and keep staring at it till you sleep.

by Roger Robinson

This evocative poem by the writer, musician and educator Roger Robinson (who won the TS Eliot prize earlier this year!) speaks no doubt of his own experience of a life lived between Britain and Trinidad, but to me it also reminded me of the power of the safe place practice that is part of our compassion modules. Whatever is going in my life, I know I can call to mind this place that is unconditionally supportive, where I can feel safe and free to be my full authentic self, and that delights in my presence… not to hide from the present challenges or to escape to an imagined paradise, but to resource myself in a context where I feel supported to be in touch with what’s going on, to feel what’s there, and to reemerge feeling strengthened and more resilient. I love the suggestion to ‘hum its anthem under your breath’ and to connect with it during daily life through touch and smell. Sounds like a powerful method to keep it close and draw on it whenever it’s needed… thank you Roger’s grandmother!

Photo by Kiril Dobrev on Unsplash