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Mindfulness maintenance: fortnightly session at the Coates Centre

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grasses in the Oakhaven Hospice garden

Continue your mindfulness practice fortnightly at the Coates Centre

If you are affected by a life-limiting illness, are a carer or are living with a loss or bereavement, we are here to support you.

This session is for experienced meditators who are familiar with a regular sitting practice and that have completed Oakhaven's 6-week Introduction to Mindfulness course. Our fortnightly session, facilitated by our trained volunteer Gillian, is aimed at continuing your mindfulness practice.

The benefits of mindfulness

This skill of developing moment to moment awareness brings benefits to both our physical and mental wellbeing. Mindfulness training has been shown to help reduce stress and anxiety, help better cope with physical and emotional pain, increase cognitive ability, help with memory and improve relationships.

How it works

We can easily be triggered to react to stressful situations in well-worn habitual ways, often our reactions are not helpful in the long run and can lead to further stress.

Through mindfulness practice we will develop greater awareness of thoughts, feelings, and associated bodily-sensations that are normally out of the ordinary field of perception. These can trigger these stressful patterns of thinking and reaction. We learn the skill of not reacting as we usually would and in doing so we break the cycle of triggered reactions.

What you will learn

On the course you will learn a range of formal and informal mindfulness practices which include some meditations, some gentle yoga movement practices and some cognitive exercises. This helps bring greater awareness, concentration and choice to our experience. Being part of a supported learning group is also an important aspect of learning mindfulness.

Together we will be working to change the patterns of mind that have been around for a long time and have become well-worn habits. We will only make progress with this if we put in the time and effort to learn these skills and to practice them on a daily basis. This relies on your willingness to practice regularly at home between class sessions.

The course is held every other Friday from 10am to 12.30pm, at the Coates Centre, Oakhaven Hospice.

Book your space now!

Book your space today by using the form below:

Alternatively, please contact either Lee Rand, Wellbeing Coordinator, or Sally Woods, Complementary Therapy Coordinator, by emailing wellbeing@oakhavenhospice.co.uk or telephone Sally Woods on 01590 638497 or Lee Rand on 01590 613025.

We look forward to warmly welcoming you to Mindfulness Maintenance!

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The Year of the Nurse is remembered with a fabulous Mosimann’s cake.

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A cake by Mosimann’s at Royal Lymington Yacht Club (RLymYC) was presented to the Oakhaven team to mark “Year of the Nurse” which coincides with this most challenging year for nurses everywhere.

Oakhaven Nurses and Professor Paul Dobson, Chairman receive Thank You cake donated by Royal Lymington Yacht Club and Mosimann’s.
Oakhaven Nurses and Professor Paul Dobson receive cake from Royal Lymington Yacht Club and Mosimann’s.

“Oakhaven Hospice is very close to our members’ hearts and we hope that this small gesture of a cake made by our new restaurant partners, Mosimann’s, will thank everyone for the hard work they have put in during this, the most difficult of years,” said Roger Garlick, Commodore of Royal Lymington Yacht Club.

Andrew Ryde, Chief Executive of Oakhaven Hospice thanked RLymYC and explained: “We are incredibly fortunate to have a wonderful team of specialist Nurses, Health Care Assistants, Carers and many other support staff and volunteers, all of whom make Oakhaven a calm, caring, friendly and professional haven for patients facing the end of life.”

“This year, more than ever, we’d like to thank our team who have worked tirelessly to deal with the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic. Whilst finding ways to cope with a national shortage of PPE and Covid-19 tests and scrupulously following ever-changing expert advice, they have all the while continued to provide the high levels of specialist care and support needed by patients and their loved ones.”

Specialist care and support throughout the year

Mosimann’s chef Nick Hebditch presents a cake to Oakhaven nurses to thank the team for their hard work.
Mosimann’s chef Nick Hebditch presents the cake to Oakhaven to thank the team for their hard work.

Our nurses have continued to support patients and their families throughout the pandemic whether that is out in the community or in the hospice itself. This has been an incredibly challenging year for all clinicians providing care, but it is very appropriate that 2020 is the official year of the nurse and gives us all an opportunity to recognise the amazing work they do. We are very pleased that the Royal Lymington Yacht Club and Mosimann’s have so generously provided this cake in recognition of our nurses and other carers.

Rose Walford, one of Oakhaven’s clinical nurse specialists working as part of the community nursing team for the hospice, said “We are so proud to be able to make a difference for our patients. Without the support of Oakhaven Hospice they would struggle to manage in their own homes; with our ability to take our nursing care to them, they are able to stay where they feel most comfortable: at home.”

“Reacting to guidelines and implementing change was a daily occurrence for our whole team, all of whom ‘took it in their stride’ and did so with great spirit and a smile,” said Jenny Butler, Ward Manager at the hospice.

“It is important to remember that it was not just the care staff, nurses and doctors who had to learn a new way to go about their work, but facilities, housekeeping, and the kitchen staff too.

“Although this year has had its fair share of sadness, shock, anger and ‘bewilderment’ it has also shown us all how lucky we are to work in such a caring community – and remembering such this has kept the spirit and smiles flowing. We are truly grateful that at a time of great personal challenge for all, we have remained in our community’s hearts and minds.”

Thank you for your support

Thank you cake for Oakhaven Hospice baked by Nick Hebditch of Mosimann’s at RLymYC.
Thank you cake for Oakhaven Hospice baked by Nick Hebditch of Mosimann’s at RLymYC.

Oakhaven Hospice are thankful to businesses and individuals throughout the New Forest, Waterside and Totton community who donated much-needed PPE when it was scarce, delivered homemade masks for staff and hearts for patients and their loved ones. Pictures, treats and messages of support have also been very gratefully received.

2020 has been a tough year financially for Oakhaven Hospice. Only 14% of Oakhaven Hospice’s costs are provided by the NHS. The rest has to be covered by other means, such as donations, legacies, the charity’s shops and of course fundraising. The Covid pandemic has hit Oakhaven hard, with charity shops closed and fundraising events cancelled or curtailed.

How you can help

Oakhaven Giving is Oakhaven Hospice’s new regular giving initiative. If every adult across the New Forest, Totton and Waterside community each gives the cost of a cup of coffee, just once a month, together we will provide the entire annual needs of our hospice. Together we’re stronger so let’s help each other! Find out more here.

There are many other ways to help Oakhaven in 2021. If you are able to, make a donation or leave a gift in your Will. You might like to volunteer some time – perhaps as a member of the Hospice Neighbours team or for an Oakhaven shop.

Sign up for our monthly email newsletter to keep informed of our latest events, news and opportunities here.

How Mindfulness Can Help in Times of Crisis

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By Paula Noyce, Counsellor and Mindfulness Practitioner

Please don’t stop reading already, I am not going to be suggesting we ‘om’ ourselves through the next four months,,,,

We are, indeed, living in a time of crisis unprecedented in our lifetimes and it is an extremely uncomfortable experience, whether we are frontline professionals or witnesses to the experiences of others.

Mindfulness shows us that experience is sensed first (sight sound smell touch taste) and then interpreted by the mind, albeit so fast we don’t realise it. How we feel emotionally becomes how we feel physically.

When this is the total of how we experience our life, we can become tired and drained.

I found a great Rumi quote: ‘Don’t be the rider who gallops all night and never sees the horse that is beneath him’. 

If you wish to, try this noticing exercise:  If you can, have a small drink with you and take a couple of really small sips before you begin, barely enough to wet your lips.

Then, see if you can gently begin to take your attention along the highlighted words below.  Just notice your responses, this is not a test.

Difficult  Involved  Dangerous  Skilled  Striving   Valued   Fear  Stable  Confused

Anxious   Stoic   Clarity   Simple  Desperate  Safe  Peaceful   Calm  Ease   

How are you feeling now? Perhaps you got two words along and didn’t want to continue. That’s ok, it’s not a test. Notice whether you are judging any of your responses and then simply take a sip of your drink.  Try to stay aware of swallowing it. Then, if you wish to, continue the exercise

Direction   Unknown  Pause  Unbalanced  Relief  Exhausted  Resolve  Isolated

Allow  Discomfort   Brave   Uneasy   Heightened   Spacious  Stressed   Rested   

Revived   Relaxed   Centered   Known   Dread   Grounded  Yield

Perhaps you chose to stop next to a particular word.  Notice how you feel now. If you wish to reflect on the experience, see if you can do that from a sense of curiosity.   There is no right or wrong, simply your awareness of your experience.

Mindfulness can’t cure the Coronavirus or change what is happening, but it can change the way we experience ourselves in it.  By developing a non-judgmental self-awareness we give ourselves the chance to choose a gentler perspective with some moments of mindfulness.

In troubled times it can be difficult to trust that the simplicity of a moment of mindfulness will make any difference at all. If a mindful moment is simply ‘stopping to notice the shape and rhythm of your breathing and see if it could soften and deepen back into a regulated pattern without judging any of the process’ (mindful.org), it might feel too simple to help us work through such difficult moments, as the effort of galloping through the night on our horse as Rumi suggests. But it doesn’t mean we won’t try and help, rather support ourselves while we are trying.

If the idea of mindfulness is too much like navel-gazing for you, try thinking of it as being a great tactician.

Whatever the words are that will invoke in you an awakening to the fact that a mind that needs to achieve needs a body that can carry it, please don’t stop here…..

Journeys bring power and love

back into you.

If you can’t go somewhere,

move in the passageways of the self.

They are like shafts of light,

always changing, and you change

when you explore them.

Jalaluddin Rumi

13th Century Sufi Poet

If you would like to know more about mindfulness and how it can help, here are some links and suggestions:

For tactics, read Sun Tzu’s, The Art of War

Try Dr Sarah Allen’s seven simple grounding techniques for calming down (drsarahallen.com/7-ways-to-calm)

Try watching the brilliant TedTalk given by Kristin Neff called, The Space between Self Esteem and Self Compassion.  TedxCentennialParkWomen – YouTube