BBC Radio Manchester Mindfulness feature

[PeterFreeMindfulness]

Hi everyone,

Been a while since I've dropped by the forum but looks like it's going strong! Hope everyone's well.

Just wanted to let you know, I'm going to be doing some work with BBC Radio Manchester over the next few months - going in on 6 occasions to give a regular guest an introduction to mindfulness. I'm going to be adding blog posts at http://www.freemindfulness.org/blog charting how it is going, it's a bit of an experiment so will see how it evolves.

The first show is tomorrow, Friday 25th July on Becky Want's show which runs from 12.00-15.00, I've been told the slots for mindfulness might be around 13:10 and 14:45 but they are just estimates, probably up to 10 minutes at each point (I'll be practising some mindfulness with the guest in a separate room between those times). If you're in the UK, you can listen live online or 95.1FM, or catch-up with the show for up to a week afterwards. I'm going to try and get hold of recordings, so international people can listen to them.

I figured this might sit will in the 'Mindfulness and me' section because it will chart someone's journey into mindfulness - it's possible Val the regular listener will want to write or record something about the process afterwards, which might be really good to share here.

Wish me luck - my first outing on the radio, so will be practising mindfulness a-plenty and remembering to be kind to myself if it's not perfect

[JonW]

That sounds great, Peter. I'll try to listen to it and look forward to hearing how it went.
All best,
Jon, Hove

[PeterFreeMindfulness]

Thanks Jon!

It went well I think! Val the lady I was teaching seemed to respond really well, so I'm looking forward to seeing how it all unfolds - hopefully a really good opportunity to spread the word about mindfulness. There's a bit about it on their facebook page here if you scroll down: https://www.facebook.com/bbcradiomanchester - and you can listen back to it here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p022qms9 - tune into 1 hour 4 minutes and 43 seconds to hear, followed by a second section at 2 hours 40 minutes and 55 seconds where we hear how Val got on.

It's going to be part of a series over the next few weeks, so would be great to hear your thoughts and if anyone wants to comment on their facebook page! Next one's going to be on Thursday next week sometime between 1-3pm.

[JonW]

Hi Peter.
I enjoyed this greatly. I thought you explained it with great clarity. Superb stuff.
It would be great to have links to the whole mindfulness segment up here on the site. Would that be possible?
All best,
Jon, Hove

[Gareth]

Hi Peter,

So good to hear from you again. I hope the new job is going well.

I'll certainly give this topic some links. If you can persuade Val to do something here in the forum or elsewhere on the site, that would be wonderful. We'd certainly give that some coverage too.

Jon is doing the lion's share of the blog work for us now, so if he takes a look at your blog, maybe we could use one on the site.

[PeterFreeMindfulness]

Thanks Jon - I've emailed the producer to ask about getting clips of the specific sections, that would make it much easier to listen back.

Hi Gareth - yes the job's going well thank you, the service I'm working in is under pressure to meet some tough targets so it's all hands on deck, but I've negotiated with management and have been running some mindfulness sessions for staff to keep up wellbeing/reduce stress (alongside the courses we run for service users). So although it's busy I'm really enjoying the work.

I'll have a chat with Val next week about seeing what she might like to do, the next show should be on Thursday 31st July, on BBC Radio Manchester Becky Want's show (Yvette Fielding's hosting as Becky's away) and we'll have a couple of slots between 1.30pm-3.00pm. Any tweeting about it would be great - the radio station has a twitter account and a facebook page - they said there was quite a bit of interest on Facebook and were impressed by this, so I think if people comment or tweet them about it, it might mean they feature mindfulness more now and in the future.

[JonW]

"Jon is doing the lion's share of the blog work for us now, so if he takes a look at your blog, maybe we could use one on the site."
Yes, let's get that sorted.
Cheers,
Jon

[PeterFreeMindfulness]

Weeks 1 and 2 are now clipped and up on the blog, http://www.freemindfulness.org/blog - the next session is going to be on BBC Radio Manchester this Friday 8th August around 1.30pm and 2.45pm. Val's been responding well to the practices, and it's felt like a really nice thing to be involved with. Val should hopefully be working with Jon soon to record something of her experience to share on the forum.