Breathworks offers mindfulness-based pain management and strategies for living well to anyone wishing to live a richer life and feel a greater sense of initiative and confidence.

We run two courses based on mindfulness:

Our Living Well with Pain and Illness programme is for anyone wishing to learn to use their own inner resources to manage chronic pain or any other long-term health condition.

• More about the Breathworks Living Well with Pain and Illness Programme

Our Living Well with Stress programme is for anyone who suffers from stress or feels they want to live more fully and effectively, both in their personal and professional lives.

• More about the Breathworks Mindfulness-Based Living Well with Stress Programme

Although the methods on both courses are similar, the emphasis is slightly different.

Mindfulness is the ability to be aware in each moment - aware of self, others and the world around us.  By practising mindfulness we learn to live in the present moment, living life now, rather than being pulled into the past or the future. Being mindful allows us to choose how we respond to life's circumstances, rather than reacting habitually.

We use the name Breathworks for our project because we can learn to constantly use the breath to help us develop mindfulness. Each of us is breathing every moment whilst we are alive, yet most of us barely notice the breath. When we become aware of our breath we can use it as a tool to help bring us back to the present moment.

• More about mindfulness

Breathworks is a not-for-profit organisation that helps people living with pain, long term illness or stress to manage their condition and improve their quality of life. We are rapidly gaining recognition internationally as experts in the field of mindfulness-based pain management.

Our mission statement

• Breathworks exists to alleviate human suffering.
• We help people who are living with pain or other long-term conditions.
• We help people living with stress.
• We teach people to help themselves and others using mindfulness-based techniques.

How we started

Our pain management programme was developed primarily by Vidyamala Burch who has used the practice of mindfulness to manage her own chronic pain for over twenty years. In 2003 she teamed up with Gary Hennessey and Sona Fricker to form Breathworks.

Our legal status

Breathworks is Community Interest Company, which means that any profits will be used to serve the community of people who suffer from pain and stress, not the owners.

Who are our clients?

Our clients are people throughout the world who:

• are living with pain, long term conditions, or stress, OR
• are committed to helping people with  pain, long term conditions, or stress.

What do we do?

• Research and innovation: we work with other experts to continue to deepen our understanding of how practising mindfulness can help people living with pain, stress or long-term conditions.
• Promotion: we promote the use of Mindfulness-based techniques and share our research and experience with the world so that more people can benefit from what we have learned.
• Training and education: we train health professionals and others in Mindfulness-based  techniques; we provide educational products that help people living with pain or stress to help themselves.
• Support the Breathworks community: we nurture and support an international community of people who want to use Mindfulness-based techniques to help both themselves and others to improve their quality of life.

Sharing our expertise

In the last two years Breathworks has run workshops and given talks at:

• Annual Scientific Conference of the British Pain Society (2006), 
• International Conference on Mindfulness and Acceptance, University of Wales, Bangor (2006)
• Annual Congress of the Chartered Society of  Physiotherapists (2006)
• 5th Annual International Scientific Conference: Integrating Mindfulness-Based Interventions into Medicine, Health Care, and Society (Centre for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society, University of Massachusetts)
• Karolinska Instutet Sweden (2007)