Breathworks was founded by Vidyamala Burch, Gary Hennessey and Sona Fricker. All three continue to lead courses in Manchester, train Breathworks trainers and run health professional workshops in the UK and internationally.

See the local course pages for details of other Breathworks trainers

I was born and raised in New Zealand and first became interested in meditation in 1985 when receiving hospital treatment for a spinal injury. I intuited that meditation and mindfulness could offer me a unique means of easing the mental suffering associated with the physical pain I was experiencing, which has turned out to be the case. For the subsequent twenty years I have continued to follow this thread moving to the UK in 1990 to live at a Retreat Centre in Shropshire, training further in meditation and preparing for ordination into the Western Buddhist Order. My spinal condition deteriorated further in the late nineties and I now use crutches or a wheelchair for mobility, but my overall quality of life has continued to improve as I have become more and more adept at managing my responses to my physical condition and enriching my life in other ways.

In 1996 I moved to Manchester and in 2001 I started teaching mindfulness-based approaches to others living with physical pain and illness with funding from the Millennium Commission. In 2004 I founded Breathworks with Sona and Gary, both good friends of mine, who are very experienced meditators and teachers. I am deeply committed to the project and find it extremely satisfying.

I have been on a number of conferences, courses and training retreats with experts in the field of pain management and mindfulness, enabling me to draw on a wide range of approaches in my teaching – using both mindfulness and other recognised pain management interventions. I also continue to attend and lead residential intensive meditation retreats several times a year.

• Being Here - Vidyamala's experience of living with pain
• One Moment at a Time - an article and led meditation by Vidyamala

When I was twenty I learned to meditate, and then became interested in Buddhism as a philosophy and way of life. In 1976 I was ordained into the Western Buddhist Order and have spent most of my adult life practising and teaching meditation and other Buddhist methods of working on the mind.

In 1979 I moved to Manchester to help set up the Manchester Buddhist Centre. In those days the centre was not the large and impressive building that it is today. Working from a small house in the suburbs we led meditation and Buddhism classes for many years. In the fifteen years that I was there I guess that I taught thousands of people to meditate.

Ten years ago I left Manchester to live and work in a Buddhist study retreat centre in North Wales.  I wanted to spend more time reflecting on life and trying to understand more deeply the philosophy behind Buddhist practices.

At the end of this period I felt a need to return to ‘the world’. I wanted to find a way in which I could contribute to society in a more direct way. Consequently, when Vidyamala contacted me to ask me to work with her on her pain management project I jumped at the chance.

In my early twenties I started practising hatha yoga, but it was not long before I took up meditation at a Buddhist centre in North London.  That was back in the early 1970s.  Soon after, I was ordained into the Western Buddhist Order. 

For the subsequent thirty years I have devoted my life to practising and teaching meditation and Buddhist philosophy around the world. I was involved in the establishment and running of several Buddhist centres, including founding a public centre in Stockholm, Sweden, and working as director of a residential retreat centre in the UK, where I spent much time leading and attending intensive retreats. I have led retreats and ordination training programmes in the UK, Germany, Holland, Sweden, North America, Australia and New Zealand. 

Following a powerful experience on a retreat at couple of years ago, I have felt a growing urge to devote more of my life to caring for people who suffer from pain and illness. At that time I had developed a close friendship with Vidyamala and was inspired by the work she was doing teaching mindfulness-based techniques to manage long term health conditions. I trained with Vidyamala in the Breathworks Programme in Manchester and am now based there. I am also involved in expanding the Breathworks Programme into other areas, such as the suffering that arises from the complexities of modern life.