Supporting people to live with fatigue, uncertainty and changing capacity

This one-day online workshop explores how mindfulness can offer a compassionate and practical approach to living with persistent and complex fatigue, such as long COVID and Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. It enables participants to consider appropriate adaptions of mindfulness-based approaches for people living with these long-term health conditions.

Fatigue can profoundly affect how people live, work, move, relate to others and participate in everyday life. It is a common and often disabling feature of many long-term health conditions, including Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS), Long Covid, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, functional neurological disorder and fibromyalgia.

For people living with persistent and complex fatigue, self-management can be challenging. It may involve adjusting expectations, changing familiar patterns of activity, finding a different relationship with rest and activity, and adapting to changes in identity, roles and abilities. Alongside the symptoms themselves, people may also experience uncertainty, stigma and misunderstanding.

What is covered?
This one-day online workshop explores how mindfulness can offer a compassionate and practical approach to some of these challenges.

The approach has been developed collaboratively with people living with fatigue within NHS services. Drawing on Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) and Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), the programme has been adapted to recognise the particular needs and experiences of people living with significant and fluctuating fatigue.

The workshop will explore not only how mindfulness practices can be adapted, but also consider specific intentions in mindfulness programmes including approaches to movement, rest, activity and participation. We will consider what it means to practise mindfulness when energy and capacity are limited or unpredictable.

What’s the format?
The workshop will combine accessible teaching and discussion with experiential mindfulness practices.

Who is this for?
Mindfulness teachers and trainees.
Therapists and other health professionals working with people experiencing persistent or complex fatigue.
People living with ME/CFS, Long Covid and other fatiguing conditions who are interested in mindfulness-based approaches.
Others with an interest in developing more compassionate and accessible approaches to mindfulness and fatigue.
No previous experience of mindfulness teaching is required.

The facilitator
Fiona Mckechnie

Learn more and book here: https://sussexmindfulnesscentre.nhs.uk/event/mindfulness-based-approaches-for-fatigue-management/