I run a Wellbeing Centre and Training School in Ripon in North Yorkshire and I decided to run a Street Wisdom event. As a Mindfulness practitioner, my working week is full seeing clients who experience anxiety, panic, low mood, insomnia etc. Street Wisdom makes accessing Mindfulness techniques accessible, for free. Twelve people booked onto the event and nine turned up.
What struck me first was the complete mix of ages of the people. Two men and seven women. One lady ran an outdoor company and attended to see if it was something she could add to her business and also came with her own question.
I made sure I emailed everyone a week before to give them a rundown of where to meet, gave an idea of what we were doing and to have a question in mind.
We met at and ended the session at my centre with hot drinks and biscuits. I took the attendees up into the busy Market Place, making sure I passed our famous Cathedral.
A few people were reticent to share their actual question which is completely acceptable; whereas the majority were happy to share. People were aghast at how they could embed Mindfulness into a busy life or place. One older lady was amazed that she had never sat in the Market Place in all the years she had lived here. The majority of people agreed they could use Mindfulness in an informal way in their lives to alleviate stress whilst rushing from here to there and living rather than existing.
All in all, it was a great experience: easy to follow the instructions on how to run the event and finishing off with returning to my centre to share. I did receive an email from a lady to say how she felt very safe and nurtured during the event, which is important to me in my line of work.
I have booked my next event in January 2018 and already have 4 bookings!
By Gail Donnan
