Utopia Village, Mindfulness Training Ltd.

Mindfulness Training offers training to counsellors, psychotherapists, coaches, social workers and educators. Our training provides professionals and trainees with effective methods for facilitating stress reduction and personal growth, employing TIR, ACT and MBCT (defined below). We also offer coaching and counselling to individuals.

What is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)?

NEW July/September Introductory ACT course dates now available.

New Intermediate level Skills training with Lindsay Fletcher: 4-5 July 2009. Intermediate ACT Course FULL - now booking for October

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a unique empirically based psychological intervention that uses acceptance and mindfulness strategies, together with commitment and behavior change strategies, to increase psychological flexibility. Psychological flexibility means contacting the present moment fully as a conscious human being, and based on what the situation affords, changing or persisting in behavior in the service of chosen values. ACT also applies Relational Frame Theory (RFT), a well developed theory for understanding how human language contributes to how we think and suffer.
Click here for more on ACT

What is Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT)?

New 4 day (2 weekend) MBCT Experiential Introduction course for October and November

and

NEW Teacher Development Dates: 9-13th Oct.'09

Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) has been developed with the aim of reducing relapse and recurrence for those who are vulnerable to episodes of depression. This empowering way of working has also gained empirical validation. It is needed because the risk of relapse and recurrence in those who have been depressed is very high, and the amount of triggering required for each subsequent episode becomes lower each time depression recurs.
Click here for more on MBCT.

What is Traumatic Incident Reduction (TIR)?

Traumatic Incident Reduction (TIR) is an integrative mindfulness-oriented approach to counselling, best known for addressing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The broader subject of TIR and Life Stress Reduction provides a well developed, thorough and coherent model for mindfulness-based case-formulation and integrative mindfulness-based counselling.
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For information regarding receiving individual counselling please go to
Mindfulness Clinic

Meet the trainers:

MBCT and MBSR Trainer:

Dr. Patrizia C. Collard PhD, BABCP accredited, UKCP reg., MISMA, MAC Patrizia is an experienced MBCT and MBSR trainer and is a Senior Lecturer for Integrative Psychotherapy and Counselling (University of East London). Patrizia was also resident in Hong Kong and China for 9 years where she studied Taoism, Buddhism, Energy work, Meditation and Yoga. Patrizia also has research interests in Autism and Mindfulness. Recent publications: 'Multimodal Stress Therapy' in 'Integration in Psychotherapy', Routledge 2006. 'The Counsellor's Handbook' a practical A-Z guide to integrative counselling and psychotherapy, Nelson Thornes, 2008 Go to training page

ACT Trainer:

Martin Wilks MSc BSc. Psychol, Dip Couns. MSc Couns Psychol,Dip Couns Psychol. BPS Chartered Martin has cultivated a personal mindfulness practice for over 20 years. He runs mindfulness-based groups and counselling services in a London prison. In private practice, for the last 4 years, he has used ACT in short term work and weaves many ACT practices and procedures into longer term mindfulness-based psychotherapy. His research interests include the integration of meditation with co-counselling. Go to training page

ACT Trainer:

Kara Bunting, MA, PhD Candidate, University of Nevada, Reno Kara is a contributor to the book 'A Practical Guide to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy' (Hayes & Strosahl 2004), and has studied extensively under both Kelly Wilson and Steven Hayes. Kara has led a variety of ACT workshops to both therapists and clients for over 5 years, including general workshops and workshops targetting specific clinical concerns. Kara’s particular areas of focus in ACT include the therapeutic relationship and values. Kara is currently leading a research project investigating innovative values interventions with clinical populations.

ACT Trainer:

Lindsay Fletcher, M.A. PhD Candidate, University of Nevada, Reno Lindsay has studied under Steven Hayes, the originator of ACT, for five years. During that time she has led ACT workshops for therapists, taught ACT core competencies, taught an undergraduate course called Acceptance and Mindfulness and authored numerous book chapters and articles. Lindsay has extensive meditation experience and completed a 26-day retreat in Thailand before starting graduate school. She has developed meditation-based ACT protocols for clients with emotional eating problems and insomnia. Her research interests focus on behavioral health and she is currently conducting a trial to test the efficacy of ACT for increasing physical activity. Recent publications: Fletcher, L. & Hayes, S.C. (in press) Phenomenology and Modern Behavioral Psychology. Philosophy, Psychiatry & Psychology Masuda, A., Hayes, S.C., Fletcher, L.B. et al. (2007) Impact of acceptance and commitment therapy versus education on stigma toward people with psychological disorders. Behaviour Research and Therapy 45 (11): 2764-2772 Fletcher, LB & Hayes, S. C. (2005). Relational frame theory, acceptance and commitment therapy, and a functional analytic definition of mindfulness. Journal of Rational Emotive and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. 23 (4): 315-336.

TIR, Schema and LSR Trainer:

Henry J. Whitfield MSc (CBT/REBT) Accredited Advanced TIR trainer and TIR practitioner (TIRA) Henry has research interests in the theoretical and practical integration of mindfulness with cognitive behavioural theories, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and in case-formulated applications of mindfulness. After 4 years as a trauma specialist for Victim Support Lambeth, Henry now works with Refugees and trauma victims at City and Hackney Mind. He also works in private pratice, and teaches widely on the subject of Mindfulness-consistent therapies Recent publications: Towards case-specific applications of mindfulness-based cognitive-behavioural therapies: A Mindfulness-Based Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy - Counselling Psychology Quarterly June; Vol 19(2): 205-217. Routledge (2006) . (See reading page of this site) Traumatic Incident Reduction: Operationalising Rogerian theory in Brief therapy practice. Chapter 4 in Tudor, K. Brief Person-Centred Therapies. Sage (2008). Go to training page

More on TIR

TIR and its related techniques provide a highly coherent approach to integrative and case-formulated mindfulness-based counselling. Many of the tools consist of repetitive exercises, practised in the absence of judgment, that train the client to better focus his/her attention on mental pictures, thoughts or other 'private events'. The continuous focus of attention, intensified through repetition and a suitable environment, can lead to the reduction and even 'extinction' of specific unwanted psychological phenomena. TIR counselling can achieve such an 'extinction' or resolution even with severe trauma symptoms. This is usually accomplished within a small number of sessions.

The broader subject of TIR-LSR (Life Stress Reduction) is a systematic approach for enabling detached, non-judgmental observation of almost any inner or outer world event, whether cognitive, emotive, physiological, behavioural or other.

Tools are varied, person-focused and applied in order to:
1) maintain congruence with the client's own experience
2) to maximise client engagement moment to moment, and
3) to cater to the client's mental resources and problem type at a given time.

The approach also consists of useful strategies for accessing awareness the client was previously unable to access. The broader subject of metapychology is also multimodal, consisting of coaching methods for affecting behavioural changes in the service of specific values (c.f. ACT).

All tools enable the client to achieve greater equanimity* with respect to his/her mental and physical environments.

Mindfulness Training provides regular trainings, supervision groups and support TIR/TIR-LSR counselling, ACT counselling and MBCT. We also provide counselling organisations with in-house training, consulting and supervision for setting up mindfulness-oriented counselling projects or incorporating TIR/TIR-LSR/ACT/MBCT into existing counselling projects. Go to training page...

* Equanimity is the ability to remain unperturbed by an event experienced within the framework of one's body and thoughts as a result of objective observation. This implies that unless one is aware of an actual (internal) experience, one cannot be equanimous towards it. This defined, equanimity relies on awareness on one's thoughts and body sensations (Cayoun, 2003).